Showing posts with label Mark Strong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark Strong. Show all posts

Saturday, 27 December 2014

Some sort of insomniac response to Benedict C. as Alan T. ...

The beginnings of a review of The Imitation Game (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)

28 December

* Contains some spoilers *

This has the beginnings of a review of The Imitation Game (2014)



It was not the first visit to Bletchley Park (@BParkPodcast), but a friend who had not already been and who came to an excellent amateur production (at The ADC Theatre (@adctheatre)) of Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code was then taken there that same weekend : we easily agreed, seeing The Imitation Game (2014) together (@ImitationGame), that it could have given no such impetus, because it is best watched by someone knowing little about BP or Alan Turing (and unprepared to know more) :




It is fanciful in the extreme to show people trying to crack a code who not only have no notion what would / should happen, if they did so, but who are also – in consequence, and as if such decisions could would be left to them – left squabbling about what to do.

Not only that, but it is presented as if, finding out in the middle of the night on the edge of what is now Milton Keynes in the early 1940s, that someone’s mother is about to be eaten by a shark on a remote beach, one can simply summon up a passing shark-hunter (via the offices of the beneficent Steven Spielberg, no doubt)…








Some film-posters make more fanciful claims than others :



The worst thing about the film (because there were not just half-a-dozen codebreakers, and only one woman amongst them) was also a source of the best : Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) reaching out to what he found kindred in Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), and the sense of their valuing and encouraging (the best in) each other.

Though, that said, it did feel as if one had been there before, with the premiere of Dimensions : A Line, A Loop, A Tangle of Threads, at Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) in 2011… :









Of course, the film has a number of good things about it, from Alexandre Desplat's score settling down nicely, after seeming too prominently like the tappings of Morse Code (even if he is made to over-egg the sentiment at the end ?), to evoking in miniatures the horrors and hypocrisy of Sherborne, but they feel in the significant minority.







So the friend (a former animator) had the same reservations about the doom-laden flights / convoys in impossibly tight formations - that they were designed to have an instant content for those who know nothing about The Second World War, and sought thereby to make a virtue of their alien look and qualities* :




End-notes

* Almost as if machines themselves were waging war, whilst, quite clearly in the editing, we have counterpointed the quiet, calm Turing (supposedly infuriating everyone's patience by being unnecessarily fastidious), but biding his time to rob such machines of their brutal power with a different sort and class of machine...

Yawn ! (Facile sub-Matrix juxtaposition to enliven any in the audience who are uninformed about Turing (and who he was for our times) with a subliminal notion of those things, i.e. that he is Neo to Agent Smith's machine-world...)




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tuesday, 25 November 2014

That film - again !

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

26 November

Before I Go to Sleep (2014) is that film at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (#CamFF), which provoked an uncomfortable response afterwards from the persons questioned (the director / writer (Rowan Joffe), and the original novelist (Steve Watson)) - on a par with the following occasions when :

* A minister from the Home Office, at a launch event for the Community Legal Service, had to admit that making its information Internet based almost certainly meant that those who were most likely to qualify (those on low incomes and, as a likely subset, those also with disabilities) were least likely to be able to access it easily

* A composer, who had been commissioned to write a work in response to and for the same forces as a piece by Mozart, could not say – if Mozart had been plucked from history to meet him – what he would say to Mozart to explain his composition


A spoilery, stinging posting sets out some of the many ways in which the film’s plot fails so often to hang together, but it was then interesting to see, on the Rotten Tomatoes web-site, what even the positive reviews (the so-called ‘fresh’ ones) had to say about it…


Even the ‘Fresh’ reviews...

3* from Helen O’Hara, Empire Magazine

Perhaps it’s a limitation of the material, or overfamiliarity with the themes of the amnesia thriller, but you’re left wishing that the filmmakers hadn’t forgotten all that has gone before when approaching this.


3* from Stella Papamichael, Digital Spy

It's no wonder Christine is so confused about who she can trust, although there are times when she believes too willingly what she is told; often, when it's convenient for the plot. The verbal spills of information are always less interesting than the uncertainty and as the moment of epiphany draws closer, the truth seems less plausible. Consequently, what might have been a smart, insightful thriller is instead a creepy bedtime story.


3* from Allan Hunter, Sunday Express

The first half of the film is the strongest as Joffe retains a firm hold on the material, feeding us revelations that are like tiny explosions that completely change your sense of the story.

He also immerses us in Christine’s dilemma of trying to figure out what kind of person she is and what really happened before the night returns to steal away her memories all over again.
The second half is slightly less successful as the human dilemma gives way to the mechanics of the plot.


And these are people who give the film as many as three stars…




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tuesday, 2 September 2014

Flaws that stopped one sleeping

This is principally a critique of Before I Go to Sleep (2014), not a review

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

2 September (updated 26 November)

* Contains many spoilers – this is principally a critique of Before I Go to Sleep (2014), not a review *

A film such as Cell 211 (Celda 211), despite having a flaw at its centre that was challenging to spot, deserved a release (and, at least on DVD, got one). However, to Before I Got to Sleep (2014), the following Tweet sadly does apply :



As to plausibility, if one wanted a digital camera, one would do well to buy Christine’s make – it is apparently indestructible ! But, on other matters, the question put mainly to Steve Watson, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, at the Q&A on Monday night at Cambridge Film Festival / #CamFF 2014 follows.

Premise : Christine does not remember the previous day, and sees no one, every day, but the person whom she takes to be Ben (because he tells her so)
Question : So what does reason does Mike have to pretend to be Ben [which, in fact, he may do out of guilt, but clearly resents doing] ?

An immediate answer was not forthcoming, which, accepting that writing the book had been some while ago, was fine. However, the best that director / writer Rowan Joffe and he came up with (slightly later) was that of cementing the memory by repeating a version of the past, because Christine’s forgetting is not certain.

Nothing, though, could address the fact (put to Steve) that, if Christine woke up with a sudden memory of the real Ben and being married to him, nothing that fake Ben could do to pretend to be he would make him look like him – and, if she remembered that she was married to the real Ben, he would have to persuade her that he is also Ben, and that he married her after Ben 1 and she divorced…



The book and film’s reality and need is that it wants to present the to us as much as to Christine man who is really Mike (Mike 2) as Ben, and so have us believe that he is her pre-injury husband. Yet, if Mike wanted to pretend that there are images of him marrying Christine, i.e. proof that he is her husband (and so legitimate), he would have done it photographically, not physically.

The images are so patently cut together that they would never convince anyone, let alone a woman staring at them because she cannot remember the events that they show : the film gives us what appeared to be a dishonest close-up of what a crude job it is, with a cut-line between their heads, whereas a medium shot shows the heads touching, or, at any rate, so close that there would be no white space in between

* * * * *

As to the positives, with a variation of date rape, any woman could wake up in bed with a man, not knowing who she is or why is there, and drugged into accepting that she has no memory and that he is her partner… Or we could ask, as philosophers in the past have, how we know that the external world exists and that we are not ‘brains in a vat’ : receiving sensory data with no senses, beyond having those stimuli, to perceive the world that we apparently see and feel …

So it is not as if the film / book does not pose questions. (Though, as Hugh Taylor (Festival supporter and regular put it), it is not as if it is not full of holes, and turns Nicole Kidman into that traditional character of the helpless woman.)

Nonetheless, there is such a spoilery list of things to consider (most of which were evident during or just after the screening, and just condensed into the criticism implied by the question posed) that one must wonder what Watson / Joffe thought they were doing regarding a plot that worked. Not an exhaustive list, but the more obvious ones, follows :

* Mike 1, even if he has good reason to suspect Mike 2, seems to act fairly strangely for a doctor – contacting Christine out of the blue, without her husband’s knowledge (and encouraging her not to change that position), and expecting her to trust him

* In fact, her levels of trust are worryingly high (given what she later fears about him, albeit curiously having been taken to a remote reservoir), and indicate that the issues below (of getting her discharged) should, from the point of view of her vulnerability to exploitation and abuse, have made that extremely difficult without very convincing bona fides

* How does Mike 2 have Christine’s telephone number, if, as we are told, she was discharged from a hospital / home (unless she has some contact with it or equivalent day services) ?

* And how does he have the photographs of Claire (with which he stimulates Christine’s memory of Claire), and would he not have been using photographs of her taken with the man who is really Ben (to trigger memories of those times, too, before the attack) ?

* Maybe some questions of acquired brain injury would be considered a psychiatric issue (under the provisions of s. 1 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (as amended)). If it were thought one, to protect the interests of a person with no memory from exploitation, signing them off to an appropriate place for her care and aftercare would almost certainly have had to be part of the discharge (please see below) – not to somewhere where she is at home all day and almost never leaves the house :

* What does Christine have for lunch ? How does she get vitamin D or exercise, for example, if she does not leave the house (she cannot leave the house, because she does not know where she is ?) ? How are her dental and health needs met, etc. ?

* And, although we only see a period inside term-time, what happens in the holiday ? Can their lives really be confined to a house that is as central to this fantasy as François Ozon’s is in In The House (Dans la maison) (2012) ?

* Neurological tests should have established what (important) part of her amnesia is from the injury, what from the fear-memories of the attack, if she came to this house as recently as four years ago : the film makes scant distinction

* The simplest divorce, where there are no real assets and no children, can be a paper exercise. However, with a wife with a son and who, because of her problems with memory, almost certainly lacks capacity, it is just not clear on what basis one would straightforwardly be obtained. (Out of the possible ones of adultery, ‘unreasonable behaviour’, desertion, two years’ separation with consent, or five years without consent, probably the last, being the time spent in hospital(s).)

* Whenever exactly it happened (the film seems a little unclear, maybe because Mike 2 is lying about the divorce ?), it would have been a major event in any hospital / care home, and almost certainly involving The Court of Protection, because of the need for someone’s valid agreement, to make sure that Christine’s interests would be represented, to what would happen to Adam and how the assets of the marriage would be divided :

* Her share of any proceeds of sale would be held on trust for her, again supervised by the Court, and yet we seem to have the house passed off as where Christine has always lived with Ben…

* Again according to Mike 2, Christine was in hospital / care when he came for her and discharged her – so who was he somehow pretending to be with his forgeries, and why, if that was Ben, he would not have been her next-of-kin as her former husband, so why was he allowed to take her ‘home’ (unless we are to suppose that the hospital / home has somehow forgotten that significant legal step in Christine’s life) ?

* Why would her actual next-of-kin (probably her elder parent) not have been contacted – or is that the nature of Mike 2’s forgery, e.g. to pretend, say, to be her brother ?

* If the attack on Christine was as violent as we see, not only would blood be all over the room and the corridor, but pathology would also have established that it did not take place where her body is found :

* Mike and she may have been checked in under assumed names, but they had met before (maybe there), and no proper police enquiry would have failed to link the injured body to the hotel (because of the blood and a sheet from a hotel), and hence to the people who had occupied it

* One reason is that there are laundry-tags or codes (even if removed), and missing sheets from hotels that night and the type and size of the sheet in which she has been found wrapped would have narrowed the field – just using a hotel sheet, in itself, did so much to implicate Mike

* He did not seem to premeditate the attack, since he was attempting to get Christine to agree for him to call Ben to tell him of the affair, and then got angry and violent towards her with the phone when she tried to stop him : he left her, for some reason naked (would someone have recognized her clothes as such ?), where it is clear that the sheet that he used to clothe her would have been from an airport hotel in the vicinity

* If Claire has been contacting the last place where Christine was an in-patient, why would they have been telling her what she reports about Christine – and why does she not tell Christine that she has a grown-up son ?

* Has Mike dummied up a forged death certificate for Adam (in case Christine has the energy to go through the contents of the tin ?

* The fact that he tells her that she has remembered Claire before is not conclusive that she has not had a memory of her real (former) husband before, but maybe chloroforming her and relying on her having forgotten in the morning is a sufficient remedy for someone intent on living with the woman whom he nearly killed and who is frightened of seeing him every morning – perhaps just for the occasional times when (as we see) her levels of trust lead to intercourse…

* The film also seemed confused as to when Adam was said to have died / when Christine was attacked in relation to it (but maybe because of Mike 2’s lies again)

QED ?

Whatever the quality of the production (with Colin Firth having to contain his role much of the time to give us a shock - and, to go back to that question in the Q&A, the shock that he gives us is precisely because, for our benefit alone, he needlessly pretends to be Ben, rather than being himself), the plotting is just not worthy of it.


With a 36% rating of Rotten on the Rotten Tomatoes web-site from critics, and 50% from audiences, here is a link to what some of even the most positive reviews admitted...




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday, 15 September 2011

Gary Oldman and John Hurt answer some questions

This is some sort of account of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) and its Festival Q&A

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

15 September

As did the director and the writer of the screenplay, after the screening [of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) on Festival opening night]


* Contains spoilers *

It was heartening to hear someone else say that following the plot didn't matter to enjoying the film, and, although I did not really see any of the t.v. series, to agree that recreating the atmosphere of the early 70s was a good thing to witness. (Oh, I did my best to follow the plot, but, in all honesty, I was put off early on by remembering 'Spies' from Fry and Laurie, with, respectively, their own Control and Tony: 'Control, I hear Firefly's been taken', etc.)

That apart, and other irrelevant thoughts that came into my head (about agents and double-agents in relation to much-inferior products such as Salt), I congratulated myself on realizing what had really happened to one character (if only by twigging that it had to be the case with someone of Mark Strong's billing), and seeing the significance of how regimes in all sorts of workplace can change for the worse.

Looking for secret folders and smuggling them out reminded me of Kate Winslet implausibly getting away with it in Enigma, but, for the life of me, I couldn't understand why John Hurt's flat would not have been stripped of the vast assembly of material there (unless it was, despite being transported elsewhere for Gary Oldman's Smiley to look through, just some unrelated hobby of his): it is the first thought on Colin Firth's mind to get to another character's property first and take things from it, when he is reported killed.

What counts, though, as came out in response to the question that I put to Gary Oldman (and others) at the end, is what the characters are experiencing at their deepest level, which, for Smiley, was felt as his wife's infidelity: I had asked what scene (or series of scenes) was central not to the story, but to his experience of the emotional core of the film, and this seemed to be how it would feel, in the circumstances, to need to hear another's account of becoming involved with a woman, what she meant to him, and what he would do to seek to protect her.

Not bad for an opening night!
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