Monsters University

2013

Director: Dan Scanlon

Writers: Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird, Dan Scanlon

Ever since Pixar was taken over by Disney in 2006, something seems to have been happening with their films. Once they were making fascinatingly experimental and pretty out-there films like WALL-E and Up, but now one can't help wondering if the businessmen have started to take over. Any news now concerns sequels, with both Cars 2 and Monsters University coming out, and Finding Dory on the way. Considering just how poor Cars 2 was, having followed the already slightly disappointing Cars, it's easy to think all this is just a project to shift as much merchandise as possible. But we can't forget Pixar is no stranger to sequels, having made the brilliant Toy Story 2 and 3. So how will they fare in the world of the prequel?

Monsters University charts the story of Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James P. "Sully" Sullivan's (John Goodman) friendship from college up to the first film, when they're the top scarers at Monsters Inc. Mike, inspired to become a scarer after a school trip to Monsters Inc. as a cute six year old, works hard to get to university, despite not being a natural scarer. It all comes easily to Sully on the other hand, who lazily assumes he can make it without working. When an incident puts both of their places at uni at risk, they have to work together to win the prestigious Scare Games and get back on track. 

The best Pixar films create vast new worlds and within that populate it with rich lovable characters that have to complete a simple quest. From Finding Nemo’s race across the vast ocean to save a lost fish to The Incredible’s 1950’s inspired comic book adventure, they’ve shown how wonderfully it can be done. Monsters University definitely gets the first parts right. Everyone still loves Mike and Sully from their first adventure, and the campus in the film is an incredible sight, with a whole array of beautifully rendered monsters of all shapes and sizes. As you’d expect, every frame is simply gorgeous to look at.

The problem lies with the plot. What starts as a simple idea quickly multiplies into a rambling set of unoriginal set pieces, all relying too heavily on sports movie and college movie clichés. Like Homer Simpson says after watching too many of these films: “There are two kinds of college students- jocks and nerds. As a jock, it is my duty to give nerds a hard time.” Things are no different here, with Mike and Sully trapped on the side of the nerds, fighting against the world. All the action takes place on campus and, bar one scene venturing to Monsters Inc. itself, this severely restricts the film’s potential to explore exciting new settings and ideas like we know Pixar can do so well. These restrictions, and the sheer fact it’s a prequel, mean it’s not exactly hard to guess how Monsters University will progress which sometimes makes it hard to care.

But overall, does that really matter? Even substandard Pixar is so much better than the vast majority of animations out there, especially now it’s possible for any studio to create quick, cheap-looking computer generated cartoons easily. The amount of love and care that has gone into making this is as obvious as any of the other films. On top of that, it’s still a pretty funny film making good use of their tried-and-tested word play, visual humour and self-referential pastiche.

Monsters University is still a lot of fun to watch, and increasingly rarely in cartoons these days, a film that absolutely everybody can enjoy, here avoiding slipping into crude innuendo and knowingly nudge-and-wink territory designed to keep adults interested in films appealing only to kids. This doesn’t need that; Pixar still have that wonderful ability to make everyone feel like big kids again. It’s just disappointing when you think they can, and have done, so much better than this before. At the very least, it looks so much better than Planes, Disney’s new cash-cow tie-in to Cars. Plus Pixar’s next projected projects, The Good Dinosaur and Inside Out, both sound extremely promising.    

Saboteur

1942
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison, Dorothy Parker

I'm sorry I've been neglecting you blog, just with exams and holidays and all I've been a bit distracted the last few weeks. Plus frankly in this time I haven't even watched that much, including having not been to the cinema in nearly two months, which I'll try to remedy soon. But for now, I figured this would be a good time to expand my viewing of some classic Hitchcock, starting with a boxset I have at home which has been unfairly ignored until now.

Saboteur is his oldest film in the collection and Hitchcock's first film with an all-American cast. I can hardly say I know much about Hitchcock, but this film definitely feels like a precursor to much of his later work; many of the same tropes and trademarks feature: a case of mistaken identity, the use of landmark locations, cross-continental travel, double crossing, beautiful blondes, repressed sexuality. Indeed, Saboteur feels very much like a lite version of North by Northwest or The 39 Steps. 

In this case, Barry Kane (Robert Cummings), a factory worker in an aircraft manufacturing plant is accused of sabotage after a fire envelops the factory, destroying all inside and killing his best friend. Forced to go on the run, he ends up coming into contact with this film's Blonde Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane), and they go on the lam together, aiming to find the real saboteurs behind the attack. Even just the plot is a working version of North by Northwest, although this in itself is not a bad thing. It's an immensely enjoyable film, very tightly packed together and rapidly paced to make this a short but sprightly experience, with no time wasted on meandering plotting or heavy character development.

Despite having a lower budget than he would later come to receive, Hitchcock still manages to create some notable setpieces: a shootout in a movie theatre and the climax on the Statue of Liberty being the standouts. However, it may be down to an under-developed script or a rushed scene but the very end of the film does feel very anticlimactic and brief, especially given what it follows.

What is unusual with this is just how American it actually feels. Of course much of Hitchcock's best work is set in big cities and small towns in the US, but due to the wartime context there are times when this lapses into blundering propaganda. It is interesting in how explicitly it chooses to reference the war, but Kane's journey across America where he learns the true nature of democratic kindness and an inherent love of one's neighbour from a kindly blind man and a trope of travelling circus freaks can feel heavy-handed at times. Occasional impassioned speeches and wonderfully devious double-crossing villains only serve to accentuate this. It feels more blunt when you consider Hitchcock made the fantastically nuanced and psychologically complex Shadow of a Doubt just a year later.

But these still remain different films. At heart, Saboteur is a perfectly acceptable pulpy thriller. It's very much a Hitchcock film, but this earlier work feels like a work-in-progress when compared to his later output. The plot is quite flawed at points, and some scenes had me questioning how characters would suddenly end up in different places instantly following some strange editing. But this may be down to its need to maintain its very lively pacing. In the end, I didn't care that this was a more undeveloped version of his later work; I had a lot of fun watching this and found myself greatly engaged by it. It's still an expertly shot film which makes great use of close-ups to create some notable tension. 

The Great Gatsby

2013
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Writers: Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce

A film based on a novel about the wild excesses of the 1920s and its consequences both socially and economically, though numerous versions of The Great Gatsby have been made before, the timing of this one feels quite pertinent regarding the state of the world now. F. Scott Fitzgerald's iconic story has now been re-imagined by the frenetic and visually lush mind of Baz Luhrmann and it's harder to think of a more suitable director.

It's immensely beautiful to look at, filled with an incredibly rich décor of stunning art deco sets and costumes, and lots of very good-looking people. It takes the iconography of the 1920s and updates it, makes it feel new again. There have been questions about the use of the modern soundtrack but personally I think it works, conveying the sense of vibrancy and modernity revellers would have felt at Gatsby's lavish parties, something which couldn't have been translated to today's audiences through use of dated period music.

If Luhrmann was trying to express the atmosphere of this period of New York as being all surface and superficiality, then he undoubtedly succeeds. The party scenes, which surprisingly are quite infrequent, are filled with a heady aura of decadence as crowds of people perform for the swooping and glorifying cameras. But the rest of the film looks marvellous too, especially the depiction of New York itself, artificially digital-looking but still with the power to allure, filmed from the top of skyscrapers then BASE jumping down to the crowds below.

There is also the interesting contrast with the 'valley of ashes', the industrial wasteland between the glamour of the city and the decadence of West Egg. Its closeness belying the fragility of this aristocratic existence, the flip-side of the coin that provides the energy and the illicit means for Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) to create and maintain his lifestyle, as well as harbouring his and this whole society's downfall.

Yet much of this substance is lost beneath the surface. Despite the film continuously reminding us of how literary this story is through the use of prose literally written on the screen and the interesting addition of the story of Nick Carraway's (Tobey Maguire) writing process, the film remains visual at best. Gatsby's earliest scenes are brimming with stylistic excess- a simple sit-down lunch is filmed with endlessly sweeping and zooming cameras, accompanied by near constant cutting between shots to the point it becomes almost nauseating. Thankfully it calms down a lot after these scenes, but the building of the romantic plot is left to fill the gap, and prevalence for surface undermines this, rendering the more dramatic scenes later on slower and more distant.

Leonardo DiCaprio is excellent as the mysterious and layered Jay Gatsby but, as much as I love Carey Mulligan, her Daisy can't compete and thus their romance is left to feel cold. We are supposed to see Daisy the way Gatsby sees her with his undying all-consuming devotion, yet the film prefers to reserve its loving gaze for Gatsby himself, turning him into an omnipotent figure but leaving everything else feeling imperfect. By the end many of the characters are left to stand around in the background as Gatsby dominates- the developing relationship between Nick and Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki) is barely given time to play. 

The heavy-handed use of motifs, especially the green light of the bay and the self-referencial all-seeing eyes, whilst important in expressing the themes of yearning and consequence, end up being forced down your throat like too many shots of champagne. By the end you can understand Nick's disgust with the lifestyle, but the film is so much in love with the look and feel of it all that this message is undermined. The characters we are meant to engage with are kept at a distance, and all we are left with are the surfaces to admire.

Brideshead Revisited

2008
Director: Julian Jarrold
Writers: Jeremy Brock, Andrew Davies

I try really hard to make sure that when I watch a film remake or even adaptation I don’t let my views of the original impact how I see the film. Yet I inevitably find that’s pretty much impossible to do- there’s very rarely been a film I’ve considered better than the book it’s based upon. And this problem has been exemplified for me by finally watching the 2008 big-screen version of Brideshead Revisited. Comparisons with the seminal 1981 TV serial are inescapable in pretty much all reviews I’ve read about it. Having both read the Evelyn Waugh novel and watched the serial, really liking it to the point that I chose to write an essay about it for my TV module, using these as comparison points was going to be inevitable.

Unfortunately, this meant that the 2008 version did not fare as well in my eyes. The serial is just so iconic and beautifully put together that any picture I conjure in my mind of Brideshead is of that show. Watching this film then just felt a bit… off. For me, Jeremy Irons is Charles Ryder and Anthony Andrews is Sebastian Flyte. Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw both do perfectly great jobs in their respective roles; in fact all the performances are excellent. It’s just they couldn’t compete with the original conceptions for me. Even the teddy bear they got for Aloysius felt wrong! It’s sad that so many people’s perception of this film are so much under the influence of the TV serial, but that was just so with-it, perfectly capturing the very mood and feel of the novel.

This tries hard to recreate the sense of melancholy and nostalgia for youthful joys but just can’t match what has been done before. But even without that mighty expectation of matching the serial, this film just can’t truly convey the essence in the same way. Everything is seemingly held at arm’s length and in the end it just ends up at times becoming just a little bit, well, dull. There was no great change in me when seeing the transition from the playful days of Charles and Sebastian’s time together to Charles’s eventual marriage and later life, the mood just didn’t shift like it should. The framing device of Charles’s wartime visit to Brideshead is relatively absent from the film, making the rush of emotions he feels about the place feel less marked and definite. This makes me realise just how much insight Charles’s near omnipresent voiceover in the serial actually granted into the characters and the overall feelings of the time.

Of course the film has slightly different intentions and interests to the serial. Whilst that was more focused on Charles’s nostalgia for the past and about the decline of the aristocracy, the film prefers to explore the more modern sensibilities of the complexities of relationships, religion and sexuality. A lot of time is spent on the subtleties of Charles and Sebastian’s relationship; Sebastian is more definitely presented as homosexual in this but Charles instead is shown less questionably as heterosexual. The film skirts around the nature of their relationship which is implied in the novel as being romantic and possibly sexual; instead it is shown more as a close friendship, with Sebastian presented as infatuated with Charles but he instead seemingly interested in sister Julia (Hayley Atwell) from the start, glossing over the idea the novel proposes that Charles’s attraction to her might be mostly dictated by her similarity to Sebastian and her links with Brideshead, both of which mean so much to him.

This is a shame, for whilst this change does give a nice explanation for the sudden worsening of Sebastian’s alcoholism part-way through, it leaves him as being a more one-dimensional character, defined only by his alcohol addiction and his infatuation for Charles. Charles’s feelings for Sebastian are a lot less ambiguous; however there is refreshingly greater focus on his flaws, namely what he calls his “hunger” for affection and the sense of home and family that Brideshed offers, and the damage that he causes and it causes for him. The sexual tension between him and Julia is nicely foregrounded, and the tension this causes for her with her Catholic upbringing is one of the things this film handles best. Emma Thompson is excellent as usual as the icy matriarch Lady Marchmain, giving us a intersting look into how her religious domineering affects her children. We really see just how dysfunctional this family actually is, I felt more so than the serial.

But comparisons with the serial aside, Brideshead as a film just doesn’t work so well. The serial took 13 hours to adapt the book, examining in really close detail and taking a near-glacial pace which actually helps express the tone. This has only 2 hours, meaning sometimes it feels rushed. Yet despite this at other times it felt quite slow, as in not much was actually happening. It all looks beautiful, the production design is excellent; but that’s just what it comes down to: surface.

Sure, the interest on setting and costume is a feature of most period dramas, but here the characters and emotions never seem to break through enough to have much of an impact. We don’t get an entire sense of just how special Brideshead is to Charles, this being a motivation for much of the plot. The painting he does in the estate, his literal imprint in Brideshead, is never shown. The film by the end feels more like a conventional period romance, characterised by its love triangle, and not an especially exemplary one at that. The novel’s “gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past”, the very features that have defined it, are lost in this.

Martyrs, and the state of modern horror

2008
Writer/ Director- Pascal Laugier

I’m still trying to make my mind up about horror films. Most of them just don’t look that good really. Frankly most of them aren’t. But I still want to see more- when horror is good, it can be really fucking great. The problem is, the extent of my horror viewing goes no further than the old American classics, your Halloweens and Exorcists. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both very fine films but I suppose I am feeling a little more adventurous now. I guess what’s mainly stopping me now is, well… I hate to admit it but maybe I'm a little bit scared of what I’ll find.

The two most obvious trends going right now seem to be the Paranormal Activity/ Insidious slow build jumpy scare flicks and the gratuitous Saw-type torture porn debacles. The problem is neither seems at all daring or interesting. It doesn't help that the main example of a recent jumpy horror film I’ve seen was The Fourth Kind, which frankly was terrible- you know you can do much better when people are getting freaked out by smiling owls and glowing lights. I know there are better ones out there, yet still they look the same, and watching a film where the entire purpose is simply waiting for the bit where something jumps out screaming hardly seems entertaining.

At the other end of the scale is the all-out assault on decency and tolerability that are the gorno films. Unlike the ghost stories, these just shove everything on screen whether it needs or even should be on there. Saw was a surprisingly good film because whilst the context was fairly heavy, it had a point to it- there were characters with motivations and layers and some semblance of a plot. Yet the sequels and imitators seem to be nothing more than a perverts’ eye-view of showing people agonising in increasingly outlandish and graphic ways which I really can’t be doing with. I don’t see the appeal of watching people being mutilated, unless the films' popularity is down to some need to make oneself feel better by seeing how much worse it can get? Okay so maybe I’m a bit squeamish but it’s hardly engaging watching something which is no more than visual pollution for my eyes. It’s not body horror- David Cronenberg’s work proves that onscreen gore and distortion can say something, can really get under your skin and make you feel what they feel, which is what the best cinema does.

So I suppose my biggest fear here is simply wasting my time with a load of pointless crap. Sure the good films are probably going to horrify and upset me but that’s the point: I want to see something that will warp my worldview and change my thinking, show me something I’ve never seen before. Where can I find this then? One route I could take instead could be the arthouse horror film? As flawed and bizarre as it was, I have a great deal of admiration for Antichrist, though this is mainly down to my being a big fan of Lars von Trier and his brand of cinema which deliberately pushes audiences for reactions and does whatever the hell it wants to. A trend that’s caught my attention is the rise of the New French Extremism movement, French horror from the last 10-15 years that take a no holds barred approach to sex, violence, suffering both physical and mental and the general breaking of taboos. I’m intrigued as to why this trend has been happening in France of all places, what might be happening socially and culturally that would foster such a transition; maybe similar to the rise of J-horror in the 1990s? Some notable examples have been Irréversible, Switchblade Romance and Ils. Anything I’ve read about them has talked of how they’ve polarised audiences due to their graphic content yet received some great acclaim from critics as great works of cinema.

Martyrs, therefore, must be as good a place to start as anywhere. 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, with comments ranging from it being “unforgettable (not necessarily a good thing)”, “sadistic”, and “garbage” to it having “gravity and beauty”. One thing all agreed on was how unremittingly brutal this film is. It starts with 10 year old Lucie escaping from a decrepit building, having been abused and tortured for a sustained period of time. She’s taken into a children’s home, but remains plagued with visions of a savage and horrible creature that only she can see. 15 years later, Lucie and her friend Anna turn up at the home of the people she believes were behind her captivity, seeking revenge. What follows is a descent into violence, suffering and extremes as the full extent of Lucie’s past is revealed.

I don’t want to ruin it by giving anything away but Martyrs is definitely an endurance test of a film. It is ruthlessly intense and unwaveringly graphic- nothing is hidden away, some of which was a bit too much for me as I clutched behind my cushion. It’s also intensely nihilistic, depicting a world where humans are without any trace of humanity, where people are willing to abuse and torture others to get what they want. You can’t help wondering whether it was all genuinely necessary- do they really need to show every injury and every attack in such detail? It’s undeniably powerful and will definitely provoke a response as intended but it surely could have done that without being so bloody?

Either way, whilst Martyrs is definitely a torture porn film, what distinguishes it is what it’s trying to achieve. This is a film about the nature of suffering and the quasi-philosophical issues this raises about the relationship between body and mind, the conditions of the material world and the capabilities of humans for evil alongside compassion. Whilst this all sounds a little pretentious, it isn’t an overwhelming factor of the film- instead that is given to the sustained scenes of abuse and violence. But these themes do give Martyrs some sense of purpose beyond the usual mindless torture films, as well as ideas that dwell on the mind after the credits have rolled alongside the pretty unforgettable images.

However the film works best in the first two-thirds when it is less about the reasons behind the events that have happened and more about what is actually happening. The appearances of the apparition are horribly tense and unpleasant, producing the genuine scary moments (at least for me, I don’t know whether a more hardened horror viewer will think as much of it). It’s all very visceral, as we see Lucie and Anna’s friendship tested by the extremities around them. The appearance of a new nameless character halfway through genuinely disturbed me, as the plot thickens and some really horrifying images are shown. It’s just in the final third that the course of the film changes- we are presented with the monotony and severity of suffering rather than the effects of it as shown before. The reasons behind it are interesting to consider but in the end it doesn’t have a great deal to say, finishing with a bit of a cop-out rather than a conclusion.

There’s no denying Martyrs is a very well made film, with magnificent visual effects and two brilliant performances from the two leads and overall it is an effective horror film that really pushes boundaries and affects the viewer in a number of ways. It’s not an enjoyable film; I don’t think I ever want to see it again. But I’m glad I have seen it and would recommend it if you can stomach it. The problem is that whilst the film is offering a condemnation on violence and the conditions that promote it, at face value it often looks like simply a depiction of the brutalisation of women in the way that it dwells so garishly on the bloodletting. It’s deeply problematic- it succeeds where Michael Haneke’s Funny Games failed thematically but the very nature of the film itself seemingly undermines the message it’s trying to promote. This film can work, but maybe you shouldn’t think about it too much and just simply experience it for what it is.    

Cloud Atlas

2012

Directors and Writers: Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski

For a film of such scale and ambition as well as having such a large big name cast, the fact that Cloud Atlas has had a relatively muted impact is quite surprising. When the directors believe the best way to promote their film, a time travelling, genre-hopping fable on the nature of existence, is to release a 6 minute extended trailer then you know at the very least it’s going to be something pretty interesting. Much of what was shown focused on the vast and varied visuals, along with some voiceovers attempting to convey the philosophical nature of the film’s content as well as internal references to its literary nature and background as an adaptation of a novel by David Mitchell. However, the miss-marketing of the film which struggled to advertise such a difficult product as well as some of the most polarised reviews in a long time could go some way to explain the lack of a response it has had from the public.

Cloud Atlas intercuts between six storylines all taking place in different times and places but edited together to feel like they’re running simultaneously. The earliest focuses on a lawyer travelling across the Pacific after a business trip and his changing world view after his meeting with a stowaway slave and his descent into increasingly life-threatening illness. The next is set across England and Scotland in 1936 and follows the life of Robert Frobisher, a budding composer engaged in a secret homosexual relationship, who begins work as an amanuensis to a famed musician, allowing him time to develop his own masterpiece. Then we meet Luisa Rey, a journalist in 1973 San Francisco investigating a conspiracy in a nearby nuclear reactor and a company resorting to increasingly criminal methods to keep its secrets hidden.

The fourth concerns publisher Timothy Cavendish in 2012 and his retreat into hiding after receiving threats from an imprisoned client. On the run, he finds himself bizarrely trapped in a tyrannical old people’s home, where we witness his and other inmate’s attempt at escape. After we jump to the future: 2144 and Neo Seoul, Korea where cloned waitress Sonmi-451 is alerted to the world beyond from which she has previously been prevented from seeing, one which is oppressive and self-destructive. Finally there is the distant post-apocalyptic future, and the encounter between a primitive tribe and a technologically advanced race seeing something hidden in the wilderness.

It’s a helluvalot to take in and you do find yourself spending a good half an hour/first third of the film simply trying to work out who everyone is and how everything pieces together. One of the biggest selling points of Cloud Atlas is the ensemble cast all playing multiple roles across the six stories, each of them even playing different ages, races and genders in the hope of expressing one of the film’s biggest themes of the connectedness of human beings and the nature of the human spirit in reincarnation. Whilst some reviewers have had issues with this device and the heavy use of prosthetics and make up to transform them all, personally I quite liked it, at least in terms of the novelty of it; although it can be fascinating to see how these characters pop up in different places, how they’ve changed or stayed the same, how they’re linked or related to each other. Plus you can get the sheer weirdness of seeing Tom Hanks play an Irish gangster, Jim Sturgess a Korean freedom fighter or Hugo Weaving a Nurse Ratched-type villain. One problem is you do find yourself spending time distracted from the diegesis whilst you attempt to guess who’s playing who or marvelling at who’s just appeared in a completely new appearance.

A lot of big themes are discussed in this: the cyclical nature of existence and how this is tied into religious and philosophical notions of reincarnation and transmigration of souls, as well as the appearance of déjà vu and how no matter what or who is involved, history is bound into repeating itself. It’s about human nature and the capabilities for people in any situation for good or evil, love and compassion or greed- how history can be changed by moments of sacrifice. Occasionally it feels like it’s trying to take on too much, when it tries to justify the overall content with the odd montage here or there at pivotal moments in the stories, all edited together with heavy cross-cutting and voiceovers talking existential nonsense. Yet these themes give Cloud Atlas a greater sense of purpose, at least compared to a lot of other spectacle-driven blockbusters. The recurring links between stories- the half-finished diary, a piece of music, love letters- are a nice touch, although it would have been better if some of them could have been extended to take on more major roles.

One thing I liked particularly about this film was the level of compassion one ends up feeling for the major characters. It may just simply be the length amount of time we see each on screen but watching the developing relationships between each of them is genuinely engaging and in some cases almost quite touching, such as that between Sonmi and Hae-Joo Chang or Frobisher and Sixsmith. There’s even time for some lighter moments, like Cavendish’s odyssey of escape which is a lot of fun and his memories of his childhood love. There are plenty of captivating setpieces too: a hoverbike chase through Seoul, the breakout from the retirement home, the assassination attempts.

It all looks bloody good too. The production design on this is excellent and frankly it needed to be- with all the jumping around through time, each story needs its own distinct look to enable us to keep up. You can tell a lot of thought and care has gone into creating each one. I especially liked the murky and monochromic look of 1970s San Francisco, which looks nice and distinct from the other parts. Some recognition should also be given to the beautiful soundtrack, which uses repeated motifs to better express the unity across the entire film.

The problem is that despite all the stories and characters and developments, it frankly doesn’t have that much to say. First of all, at nearly three hours, it is definitely too long. Not that what was onscreen was ever boring, but it could have been more concise which might have helped clarify what it was trying to say- although that is one of the problems with adapting such a difficult novel. It’s just when you look at each of the six stories in themselves, you realise that not a great deal actually happens overall.  The four middle parts work the best; the first is let down by a rather dull narrative and lack of development which is accentuated when compared with the other parts, whilst in the last the characters speak a heavy sort of pidgin English which is hard to understand plus the context itself is much more unrelatable and therefore less engaging. The 1936 part works best as a story in itself, one about forbidden love and battling against different sorts of oppression. The 2012 part is definitely the most fun. The 2144 story gets all the most memorable scenes. But many of these stories end up relying on different sorts of generic clichés to formulate their identities, which is a little disappointing.  And overall by the end, despite all the action that has happened, it feels like not a great deal has been said. Sure we’ve had plenty of moments displaying the overall links between different times, places, and people but in the end, not much has really changed. Each story ends, and that’s it; no overarching revelations or developments, just the reinforcement of those big ideas over and over again, which frankly, isn’t enough.

But still, I found myself thinking about this film for days afterwards. Plenty of the scenes and characters are memorable and help to distinguish this from many other big budget films. There certainly is a lot to admire about Cloud Atlas. Whilst I understand a lot of the criticisms that have been levelled at this film, it doesn’t seem fair to be just so loathsome about it. It’s refreshing to see a film which tries to be at once entertaining and thoughtful, one which is open to exploring deep themes and philosophies and making it engaging and accessible. Of course, the Wachowskis did a far better job of that with The Matrix, but this film isn’t the complete failure that some have made it out to be. Yeah it’s messy and it’s definitely flawed, but it’s exciting to see something so ambitious and original being explored and personally this sort of thing should be encouraged. But following the less than rapturous response this has received, that looks increasingly unlikely. Sure we’ll still have some nice thoughtful art films and plenty of big budget action flicks, but why must they always be so distinct? It’s risk taking like this that keeps cinema fresh at a time of zombified franchises and endless sequels, so here’s hoping this would have had a bit more of an impact for some people than others, to galvanise some spark into film. 

Holy Motors

2012
Director: Leos Carax
Writer: Leos Carax

Compared to previous years, 2012 personally hasn’t been a standout year for new films. There have been some entertaining rides along the way: Moonrise Kingdom was a charming love letter to young romance, The Dark Knight Rises was a sprawling, busy, flawed but ultimately epic film about the breakdown of socio-ethical values and the superhero myth while Skyfall simply re-affirmed my love of James Bond films. But there wasn’t much that that truly inspired or enthralled me to any great extent. There was Amour, Michael Haneke’s soul-crushing study of an elderly man’s devotion to his wife whose mind is slowly dying but for me the real standout this year was Holy Motors.

Despite not winning any prizes at the Cannes Film Festival this year, Holy Motors was the film which seemed to generate the greatest amount of buzz and fervour out of anything playing on all of the websites, blogs and reviews I was finding. I didn’t know anything about the director Leos Carax (this is his first film for 13 years) or any of the major actors in it. All I knew were some bizarre details about the plot which didn’t seem to make much sense and some glowing reviews praising its originality; it was intriguing. The trailer didn’t offer much more- just a series of distinct and memorable clips and images but it was enough for me. I couldn't wait to see it.

So what is it about then? We follow a day in the life of the mysterious figure Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant), during his bizarre odyssey across Paris in the back of a white stretched limo driven by his dutiful chauffeur Céline (Édith Scob). His day involves him engaging in a series of ‘appointments’, for each of which he has to perform a new character in public complete with new costumes, make-up and personality. He starts the day as a middle aged banker leaving his art deco home replete with luxury cars and armed security. Throughout the film he plays an elderly crippled woman begging for change, an ordinary man picking up his daughter from a party, an assassin assigned to kill his doppelganger and an actor performing stunts for motion capture animation on a soundstage, amongst several other roles. The reason why he does this is never made entirely clear and the only thing linking them is Monsieur Oscar himself.  

To put it bluntly, this film is insane. A very funny series of surrealist stories, Holy Motors is not constructed like or driven by any narrative conventions but instead takes the fundamentals of cinematic form and genre and subverts them, inviting the audience into this strange dreamscape not through narrative engagement but through bold imagery, warped humour and a strong awareness of itself. It’s a massively self-conscious film, filled with loving homages to previous French cinema and playfully running wild with ideas that don’t make much sense together and encourage the viewer to be aware that they are watching a film. Some might get frustrated by its clear lack of structure or purpose but for me the real joy of this film was never being able to guess what was about to happen next. Surrealism is so hard to do but this makes it look easy, making something that can at once be crudely funny, deliciously disturbing or knowingly tedious and existential.

Filled with unique and unforgettable setpieces, Holy Motors is frenetic, vivid and schizophrenic. It is a film about cinema- beginning with a prologue in which the director Carax himself wakes from a dream in a hotel room and breaks through a wall with a giant key embedded in his finger, he emerges at the back of a packed cinema filled with an attentive crowd. He’s transfixed by this new world, one formed by the artistic visions of the subconscious where anything is possible. Throughout the film, it asserts itself as a cinematic vision. Everyone in it is aware that they are performing for someone watching- indeed it is their professions. Each character M. Oscar plays is within its own cinematic realm- one time it is a violent thriller, another a languid melodrama about death filled with highly emotional performances and overblown cliché dialogue; it even turns into a musical as bizarrely Kylie Minogue turns up and sings a song about loss, heartbreak and change. Clips from early cinema of dancers and male bodies on display are spliced throughout. There’s even an intermission. The best bit is M. Oscar’s third appointment, a masterful sequence; he plays a revolting sewer dweller that emerges in the Père Lachaise cemetery to the theme from Godzilla, where he discovers a photoshoot by a deranged photographer and an American model whom he kidnaps and takes to his underground lair. So ludicrously funny, it’s also a scathing satire of contemporary France (sewers filled with illegal immigrants, a woman being disguised in a burka) and of self-obsessed celebrity culture.

Holy Motors is not like anything else I’ve ever seen recently. It’s refreshing to see something which doesn’t try to force overwrought thematic subtext down your throat. Instead you’re invited to simply enjoy the ride and marvel in the spectacle of a film that doesn’t take itself at all seriously. Certainly some viewers might dislike its unconventionality and puzzling content which is full of questions and secrets, but it’s just so much fun that these don’t matter. They’re not what this is about anyway; this is a hallucogenic experiment of the capabilities of cinema, so wonderfully formed and put together.

*Spoilers* But seriously, what is it about? It can definitely be seen as treatise on the art of acting and the nature of performance. In his TARDIS-like limo seemingly bigger on the inside and filled with boxes of props, costumes and make-up, we see the upmost care M. Oscar puts into each of his performances, the vast amount of time he spends carefully preparing for each role. The true centrepiece of the film is Lavant’s extraordinary performance, he truly throws himself fully into each character and it’s delightful to watch.

Holy Motors could also be about the performances we ourselves put on everyday- how we mark ourselves in the world through our behaviour, appearance and manner and how this is distinguished from our true selves seen only in private. We catch only brief glimpses of the real Oscar, when he is alone in the limo with Céline- he’s gradually downtrodden and tired as the day continues. One wonders if he’s grown increasingly weary of having to play so many such exacting roles while his real self grows older and is increasingly exerted. We catch a brief snippet of his strain as he takes a sneaky cigarette before entering the house of his final performance of the day, sighing, knowing he has to do it all over again tomorrow. The only glimpses of the real world he ever gets during the day is by watching the Parisian streets glide past on a television monitor in his limo. He spends his day interacting with families and strangers but everything that occurs, all the emotions he feels, are false; he’s definitely a lonely man consumed by a wider societal need to perform, to entertain and to distract. This is applicable to everyone in the film- Céline at the end of the day puts on a mask, this perhaps being the performance she puts on in her personal life (as well as being a reference to the wonderful French horror film Eyes Without a Face which Edith Scob also starred in). Eva Mendes’s kidnapped model retains her emotionless public persona required for her work, even during the chaos happening around her in the sewers away from the photoshoot.

One theory I want to propose is how Oscar could be developing melancholia over his growing old and his lack of genuine human relationships. Each of his roles could in some way reflect his own phobias and insecurities. He has no genuine family, yet the film is filled with daughters or daughter-figures (the little girl saying goodbye at the start, the self-hating daughter leaving the party, the devoted niece by her dying uncle’s bedside, the chimpanzees), perhaps stating his own desire for a child or something to give him purpose. The sewer monster’s final descent into almost childlike dependency yet one tinged with a creepy sexual undercurrent belays his desperate need for interaction. The assassin’s murder of himself (which is then repeated vice versa) could be a sense of self-loathing. The crippled woman, alone and begging, or at the other end of the scale, the banker attacked in the street, could be his future- isolated and misunderstood by the rest of the world that demands homogeneity.

It seems the world is changing around Oscar- he describes how he started this work and his love of it for “the beauty of the act”, yet he laments the loss of the beholder to appreciate this beauty. This could be a protest at the state of modern technology in the world- he decries how he unable to see the cameras anymore, perhaps because they are too small, and therefore he can no longer be aware of the audience watching him. Further, we can see the acts he performs on the soundstage with the contortionist for the motion capture- here the camera lingers on the fluidity and form of their bodies and ultimately juxtaposes this with the final product their movements are helping to create: a crude animation about copulating dragon monsters or whatever the hell they are. It’s not worthy of their efforts and it masks the real artists at work- the dedicated actors. Finally there is the wickedly silly scene at the very end of the film, where fears of being replaced and made inadequate by new machines are discussed, complaints about how people no longer want to see anything beyond what they use and want.

One major question is who is Oscar really performing for? It seems he’s in the business of creating filmic fiction for someone- it’s implied he’s be doing this for some time and we meet several other actors also engaged in acting for unseen audiences. Are the crowds unseen, and if so how are they watching? Oscar says he cannot see the cameras anymore, so does that mean they are actually there? Is anyone actually watching, or is this business (that of cinema itself and the art of performance) slowly dying, to be replaced cheap imitations and lazy commercialism? Or is the camera simply Carax’s, and the audience we ourselves watching right now? Few films have taken such measures as to make the viewer alert to the fact that we are watching something artificial and staged, created for artistic and entertainment purposes. Do we simply take for granted the efforts that go into creating cinematic art, and are we ignoring the truly deserving artworks in favour of those that pride novelty, technological gimmickry and convention over creative innovation? Oscar’s performance in the mo-cap studio is restricted and dictated by a demanding unseen voice, telling him exactly what to do; this then compared to his gloriously unhinged performance as the sewer monster.

Frankly, I could be way off the mark with all of these interpretations- Holy Motors is so dense in content which is so hypnagogic that it is open to any number of readings. People could easily hate this film, simply sit back and enjoy what’s happening or try hard to engage with its deranged content, but either way they can never say that they’ve ever seen anything like this before. Its refusal to follow the rules or frankly even simply make perfect sense is inspiring to watch and consider and that’s why for me Holy Motors is the best film of 2012.

Oi, shut it you slag. It's the fucking Sweeney.

2012

Director: Nick Love

Writer: Nick Love

Something I should really do more is to go to see films I wouldn’t normally see. Sure it can be a bit hit and miss but I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how good some of them ended up being. Even better is seeing films I know nothing about and therefore going in without the tainting of prior expectations. So it was a Sunday afternoon and I was unbelievably bored at home when my parents announced they were going out to see The Sweeney and were asking if I wanted to tag along. I didn’t know much about it, other than a few majorly negative reviews. Dad wanted to see it due to his being a big fan of the original TV show in the 70s and was hoping this remake would live up to his high regard for it. To be honest I wasn’t bothered, but I bugger all else to do and hey, it’s a free film- why not? It might be fun.

With the amount I know about the original series, going into this was pretty much like knowing nothing. The original show from the mid 1970s starred the great John Thaw and Dennis Waterman as two detectives. That’s all I knew. According to Wikipedia, the title refers to Sweeney Todd, the cockney rhyming slang for Flying Squad, a branch of the police which deals with violent crime and armed robbery. With its themes of police brutality, violent crime and the cutting of corners and bending of laws to ultimately get the job done, this seems to fall within the guise of the Dirty Harry imitators I mentioned a few posts ago. The Sweeney was supposedly remarkable in its time for showing a high degree of realism as well as more brutal and flawed characters and far more onscreen violence than any other cop drama.

This time the main roles are played by Ray Winstone and Ben ‘Plan B’ Drew as Jack Regan and George Carter respectively. Two members of the more renegade Sweeney department, Regan is the oldest and most cynical of the squad while Carter is his protégé- young but still with his own battle scars. Our first glimpse of them is on the way to stopping a raid of a warehouse by an armed gang. The banter in the car on the way there is respective of much of the language and tone of the film- coarse, explicit and quick. This time they’re rating one of the guy’s girlfriend out of ten based on looks; it seems misogynistic but two members of the squad are girls and they get right into the banter too so it’s okay… I guess? The raid setpiece that follows is equally representative of the action in this film- shouty, sweary and with lots of shit getting smashed up. The level of destruction in this is something I’d normally associate with action spoofs or parodys but here it’s quite serious. When they drive in the warehouse they don’t just pull up and get out but instead smash through some crates and then into the getaway car, wrecking both vehicles. The violence is rapid and brutal, with the whole realism-assuring shaky handheld camera and jumpy editing. The action scenes are actually a lot of fun and generally well put together, with a shootout in Trafalgar Square being a highlight as well as some watchable car chases.

Although probably why they stand out so much is because the rest of the film doesn’t offer so much. The plot is unfortunately pretty feeble- the whole investigation is pretty slight with much of their progress coming via informants, helpful coincidence or the odd bit of violent interrogation which isn’t the most satisfying or engaging of stories. Frankly it was hard to care who was actually behind the crime because it just wasn’t interesting enough. I know this wasn’t going to be Agatha Christie-levels of intricate pacing and deviant plot twists but I was hoping for a little more bone for all the meat.

The main characters aren’t the most engrossing of leads either. This is nothing to do with the actors- Drew does a perfectly decent job and Winstone does the cockney tough bastard act he can do in his sleep which makes him definitely the best thing about this film. It’s just there’s not much to the chracters- Mum said how they were far less sympathetic than the original duo. Much of their onscreen time is occupied with cocky self-satisfied macho posturing rather than actual normal behaviour. Of course they do have personal lives- Carter is an up-and-coming cop with a young child and a pregnant girlfriend while Regan is an overweight slightly embittered man who begins an affair with the distant wife of Ivan Lewis, the sleazy bureaucratic cop with a vendetta against Regan and the Sweeney. Sadly, these side plots are pretty much thrown aside during the second half as the needs of the case take over. Scenes between the two leads are surprisingly lightweight although some were entertainingly boisterous. For me this mainly comes down to the brisk dialogue and their bloody need to fucking well swear every shitting other motherfucking word. Yeah, banter can be fun if it’s done well which it sometimes is here. And I couldn’t help smiling every time Winstone, without irony, would call a criminal a slag.

My Dad said afterwards that this wasn’t a bad film but he was disappointed with it. For him it did have the legacy of the TV show to live up to but ultimately I agree. It was a relatively enjoyable if forgettable action film which thankfully delivered on its main promise. I suppose it was better for me than I knew nothing about the show; this was no more than run of the mill generic action. Although in some ways it couldn’t help actually feeling a little bit dated despite its modern day setting. The plotting, the OTT shootouts, the themes of violent police retaliation and the debate over whether these methods are superior to the red tape of following by the book would fit better in the 1970s when problems within the real life Flying Squad were making news, whereas here they don’t gel as well with modern conventions of crime drama- such as the ethics of punishment or the focus on details and technology in the solving process. Plus who actually robs banks nowadays? The criminals break into a supposedly exclusive and private bank with surprising ease which just doesn’t ring true. Again, it’s not a bad film (although there were some badly done matching on actions which irritated me a bit), I guess it’s just not a very good film either. It was made by Nick Love, the man behind other such emancipated male fantasies like The Football Factory (2004) and The Business (2005) which work perfectly well in their own ways; it’s just like this, they don’t appeal to me- beating other guys to a pulp isn’t really my idea of fun.

Dirty Harry

1971
Director: Don Siegel

Writers: Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Reisner

With far too much time on my hands during holidays, they’re always a good time to catch up with films I haven’t seen for a long time. After a year supposedly studying film academically, I suppose I wanted to see whether my opinions on any of my favourite films would be any different. To be honest, I doubt they ever would, not unless I could now see some glaring flaw in any of them I wasn’t aware of before, but I have no idea what they could possibly be. I still don’t watch them in the same way as the films we study at uni- I’m not going out of my way to note the mise-en-scene or studying the editing techniques; to me they’re still simply films I love to watch. Although I’ve found that on some base level, I do keep an eye open for these things when I watch films for fun (especially if they’re particularly distinct), just not in as much detail as during lectures.

It’s from this slightly confused standpoint that I decided to watch a film I’ve always had a lot of love for: Dirty Harry. Along with the likes of A Clockwork Orange, Pulp Fiction, Being John Malkovich and several others, this is one of the few films that are actually quite personal to me in that they were amongst the ones I watched when I was around 13/14 and being more adventurous in my viewing. These were some of the films that showed me how diverse and captivating cinema could be and ignited my passion for film which remains today. Dirty Harry also has the honour of being my first introduction to the living legend that is Clint Eastwood, a man whose sheer screen presence and effortless cool is still a pleasure to watch. Dirty Harry is still my favourite Clint film and his most memorable role, revisited across four sequels of unfortunately widely varying quality.

It had been a few years since I last watched this and so I wanted to see whether my high regard of it was still deserved or whether I was simply looking at it through rose tinted glasses. It is very different to a lot of my other top films in terms of factors like its content, scale, the period it was made in and its visuals. Of course I’d be worried if all my favourite films were especially similar but I did wonder what it was about this film that kept leading me to look on it so positively.

The time: 1971. The place: San Francisco. The city is being held hostage by a sadistic serial sniper known only as Scorpio. He has already murdered a young woman by shooting her from a rooftop and now demands $100, 000 or else he will kill another person each day. With the police on high alert, Inspector Harry Callaghan is assigned to the case. His no-nonsense style, lack of respect for his superiors and unorthodox methods have helped form the basis of many onscreen maverick cop imitations ever since. They’ve also developed his infamous reputation in the police department- many different theories are suggested as to why he’s called ‘Dirty’ Harry, from the fact that he’s the one most willing to do all the dirty jobs to the point that he is simply a bit of a perv (as evidenced several times during the film). What starts as a routine investigation soon escalates into an intense battle between Callaghan and Scorpio, with the two men resorting to increasingly offhand tricks to win their own personal wars.

I think that’s where this film’s greatest strength lies: in its simplicity. It’s less a police thriller and more a study into two dark and violent men. Rewatching it this time made me realise how similar they both are; it just happens one is on the side of the law and one isn’t. Both are driven solely by single forces- Scorpio with his sadistic love of killing and Callaghan with his need to enforce the law, although as the film progresses his methods become increasingly unethical as his desire to overpower Scorpio overtakes. Very little is revealed about the lives of either man other than the events onscreen. Scorpio’s name or history is never discovered, his life seems to consist of nothing more than his insatiable urge to cause pain. A scene of him robing a liquor store shows he has no interest in money or gaining possessions; he’s simply there to retrieve a new weapon to restart his campaign, although he does slip a bottle of whisky on the way out. He’s always presented in a dehumanised manner- our first glimpse of him at the very start is simply that of the barrel of his rifle. We don’t see his face until about 10 minutes later and don’t hear his flat voice later still; even then it’s only on the other end of a telephone line where we can’t see him. The music distorts and becomes far more sinister in his presence.

Similarly, Callaghan is shown as being motivated almost entirely by his work. There is frequent reference to the fact that he doesn’t have a wife and the only time we do see him off-work, he’s using his time to follow Scorpio. We learn little more about him, other than brief glimpses into his voyeuristic tendencies and his general dislike for other people, especially those in power he sees as ineffective (although he does show increasing respect for his new partner Chico Gonzalez after he shows his capabilities in the field). Many critics and reviewers have pointed out the conservative right-wing tendencies of the character and the film and its series in general. This sort of view never really occurred to me the first times I watched this, as I tend to prefer to remain generally apolitical when I watch films, although now Callaghan’s desire to preserve justice over an need to follow rules or preserve human rights  is quite obvious. The controversy surrounding this film in the early 1970s doesn’t seem at all shocking now, although I can understand why it caused such concern over issues like police brutality and fascist ideals, with scenes such as Callaghan torturing information out of an unhelpful Scorpio or shooting a gang of African-American bank robbers being the most obvious. At times it does seem like a critique of the legal system, one which is slow, ineffectual and which preserves the rights of the criminal over those of the victim, a criticism which still rings around today. The film does definitely seem to side with Callaghan on this issue, most notably when Scorpio, having been captured, is released because the evidence is inadmissible due to it being collected without a warrant. However, Callaghan’s methods are so unusual and so extreme than they can hardly be called realistic; it seems this film is intended more as a study of Callaghan himself and how his determination to stop this criminal drives him to extreme lengths, with any sort of social commentary coming second in priority.

Dirty Harry is definitely intended to be an entertaining piece of action cinema and it’s in that sense that it works so well. The pacing is very brisk and precise; no time is wasted on showing anything which isn’t entirely relevant. Instead we get a series of strong and memorable set-pieces, the telephone chase around town and the school bus hijacking especially. Don Siegel directs this very well with a strong steady eye for detail- the violence in this film is convincingly messy and unchoreographed-looking yet retains a sense of style and clarity that makes it incredibly watchable and tense. There’s also an intelligent use of time and place; San Francisco is treated almost like a character in itself with numerous long shots of skylines tied with intimate filming right on the streets and alleys to give it a distinct feel. Several landmarks are used inventively in the action sequences; what stood out for me was the ironic use of religious imagery such as the cross in Mount Davidson Park and the neon ‘Jesus Saves’ sign outside the church, these two locations being home to some of the bloodiest violence in the film. These signs reflect the burgeoning tolerance and general peace of the city being put under threat by this maniac. The city is also distinguished here because of its association with the Zodiac killings that took place here in the late 1960s and that would have been still fresh in the memory of those who watched this when it was released. Those real life crimes were obviously an inspiration for the writers as similarities are drawn such as the sending of threatening letters and the threat of kidnapping a schoolbus full of children. This is referenced directly in David Fincher’s rich drama Zodiac (2007), based on the investigation of the murders, where investigators watching Dirty Harry at the cinema are shown to be visibly uncomfortable with how much overlap there actually is between reality and fiction.

 My brother complains that Clint Eastwood always plays the same role no matter what film he’s in. I suppose there is an element of truth in that (definitely in his earlier films) although his demeanour is most definitely his own and for me that’s what makes him so watchable. Here he is cocksure and confident; you can’t imagine him taking any shit off anyone. Harry Callaghan is just such a distinct character, with a swagger and a smart-talking economy with words all to himself. His ironic tone with his superiors and the mayor are a lot of fun- I loved spotting the homage to this in The Naked Gun with Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin repeating Callaghan’s ‘I shoot the bastard’ speech. And of course you can’t forget Andy Robinson’s chilling turn as Scorpio, who on first appearances seems so unlikely- director Don Siegel describes how he has “the face of a choirboy”. But often it’s simply the cold smirk on his face that makes him so horrendously unpleasant, this marring of supposed innocence with such evil. His disintegration from the calm controlled sniper to the maniacally driven monster is creepy; he is definitely one of the most horrible movie villains I can think of.

What’s stood out for me on this repeat viewing is just how unbelievably dark and grim this film is. Although age adds to this, it is definitely a grimy looking film as we’re introduced to some of the most inhospitable parts of San Francisco hidden in the shadows. Lalo Schifrin’s jazzy score does add a touch of class but ultimately this is a supremely gritty film. It’s so cheesy of me to say this but Dirty Harry is very much a dirty film, not necessarily because it is explicit but because it doesn’t hesitate from showing the dark underbelly of urban space, the impersonal machine-like working process of law enforcement and the blackest reaches of human depravity- there are no limits to which either Scorpio or Callaghan will go to which will stop them from overcoming the other. I’m surprised how much of this I missed when I watched it at around age 14. Then it was just a highly watchable thriller, one that has aged surprisingly well. It’s strange how much more disturbed I was by it this time, although I’m glad I was because seeing this in a new way was refreshing and it reaffirmed my respect for this film. I know this has ended up turning more into an essay than a review but I guess I just have a lot to think about with this- I’m glad I still like this film so much, it certainly makes my favourites list much more intriguing.