Hannibal
Dr Hannibal
Lecter is a ridiculous character. Be he played by Brian Cox in Manhunter
or the more celebrated version by Anthony Hopkins, he is a character who
bears absolutely no relationship to any kind of serial killer that has
ever existed. Erudite, supernaturally clever and master of no disguise
at all - Hannibal would have it that not only has he eluded the authorities
for ten years, but he has not even drawn new attention on to himself by
any of his occasional bouts of hunger. He is as preposterous as a vampire
- which he not coincidentally seems a more scientific update of. And Hannibal
- placing him for the first time centre stage - inflates that myth to dizzying
heights of silliness.
I am not
a particular fan of Tony Hopkins. He has a tendency to camp it up or even
overact - but mainly he pitches his performance at a different level to
the rest of the players seeming often out of place. One of the reasons
why I quite liked the Silence Of The Lambs was the fact that this was used
sparingly - but mainly because Jodie Foster was so good in it. Foster declined
the sequel - for obvious reasons - and into those big boots has tippietoed
the diminutive feet of Julianne Moore. Now I particularly dislike Moore
so you can see why I was not overly keen to see Hannibal. A couple of actors
I don’t like in a film about a character I do not really care for. So it
is surprising I liked it as much as I did.
There is
very little in the way of plot in Hannibal. People try to catch him, people
tend to die. This is because Hannibal is built up as such a genius that
any suggestion that he is fallible would undermine the tenet of the character.
This is a flaw when it comes to Starling - which Moore plays with a surprising
degree of intensity to actually suggest that since The End Of The Affair
she might have actually started to become an okay actress. Starling is
a much more interesting, more real character - yet it is only Hannibal’s
obsession with her which allows her to get close to him. The rest of the
film is red herrings, and pretty padding in Florence. Plot contrivances
and idiosyncracy rules the day, nothing much makes sense here. But this
would only truly be a flaw in a thriller. And Hannibal is not a thriller.
It is more some kind of Grand Gugnol horror black comedy. Different tone
requires different rules.
Ridley Scott,
suddenly deciding to be the second most prolific director in the world
(after Steven Soderbergh o’course) films this all with some style. He may
have knocked it out quite quickly, but he has obviously thought about certain
aspects of his source novel. So much so that he gives it a different, better
ending. Much as Silence Of The Lambs sparkled when Hopkins and Foster interacted,
Moore and Hopkins share a similar rapport. It is a pity this is not further
developed, but the film end is - whilst again thoroughly unbelievable -
is at least a solidly entertaining resolution. Around this central arc
we also get a couple of other good performances, Ray Liotta’s slimey FBI
agent exudes pointless evil while Gary Oldman’s Mason Verger is this films
enigma. Indeed Oldman - though uncredited due to heavy make-up - manages
to do for Hannibal what Hopkins did for The Silence OF The Lambs. He is
both creapy, amusing and driven - something which Hannibal can no longer
be at centre stage.
Hannibal
is a thoroughly pointless movie. The status quo is pretty much retained
at the end, and the title character wafts through the entire picture without
ever really being in danger. All that said, it is an oddly entertaining
spectacle - and one far preferable to actually reading the book. This is
a class act, everyone involved is supposed to be pretty good - even down
to David Mamet on script duties. Yet there is the gleeful feeling that
they are all slumming it, just creating slightly naughty, oddly joyful
entertainment. Its not big, its not clever and it certainly isn’t art.
But it is actually quite good fun.(7)
IF THIS
WAS A CAR CRASH: The Silence Of The Lambs (quite obviously) ramming into
a good modern day vampire movie - say Near Dark. With a wry sense of humour
too.
Happiness
"Happiness,
where are you?" as the soundtrack goes and as the film should be entitled.
Though this is no "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" rip off - more a savage
and blacker than black comedy drama of late nineties America and its sexual
mores. Multi-layered, with intertwining plot lines, Happiness concerns
itself with the relationships of three sisters, and their relationships
(plus a half hearted look at their parents). It is a deeply uncomfortable
film to watch, but very well written and containing more nuggets of truth
than we could probably wish to see about the twisted psyche of modern man.
Okay, I
knew that this would be an unpleasant film. Every review said it was unpleasant,
and I had see Todd Solondz previous film Welcome To The Dollhouse - which
was a nasty view of adolescence. I was prepared, as was my viewing companion.
That did not mean we did not squirm through the whole thing. (Michelle
squirms more than most anyway, its bone/muscle misuse thing and she is
seeing a physio about it if you're worried.) In a lot of ways the film
is similar to Welcome To The Dollhouse. There is no overarching plot, and
our nominal hero is, in their own way also rather unpleasant. Welcome To
The Dollhouse was perhaps more focussed in that it did have a central character,
that of the teenage girl. Happiness widens its scope, and therefore loses
a touch of audience identification. It is only in the last half hour when
you feel the film is actually going somewhere, and not just a collection
of humourous, but horrible, sketches.
Amongst
these sketches we have Joy (unfulfilled single sister) dumping a man(fantastically
played with venom by Jon Lovitz) who then responds in a rather nasty way,
and later commits suicide. We have Allen fantisizing about Helen ("successful"/pretentious
writer sister) but unable to talk to her, resorting to being a sexual phone
pest. Even the sister with the "perfect life" Trish is unknowingly saddled
with a peodophile husband and a son obsessed with when he will first "come".
There are more stories as well, Allen and Helen's neighbour who lusts after
Allen. Joy's Russian student, literally takes her for a ride. And all the
while things never get any better.
The style
will put a lot of people off. The content even more people off. It has
that blackly dark detatched sense of humour that we all get sometimes late
at night when a bit pissed. The type that makes us tell those sick jokes,
that your friends all think have gone a little bit too far? If you recognise
that, then you know where Happiness is coming from. And it runs the gamut
of bad taste, always with a sickly comic touch. In many ways the ensemble
acting, and the intertwining of plot-lines is much like Woody Allen at
his darkest hour. But it only gains its heart and soul in its last half
hour, and then it really grabs you.
The paedophile
subplot comes out as the crux of the entire piece. This may well be due
to the greater care and sensitivity which is used in the writing and direction
in this piece. Solondz was obviously on dangerous ground, and therefore
he tries much harder to reign the whole section in. In this he is helped
by one of his regulars Dylan Baker, who is magnificent as the everyman
father with a tortured secret. The whole development makes you feel rather
sorry for the character, which on paper would seem unthinkable. However
we see how this man cannot help himself and the quietly powerful scene
where his son confronts him is both logical within the framework of the
film and intensely moving. Unlike the rest of the film, Solondz seems to
offer us a message here - in as much as paedophiles are ordinary people
like you or me. Of course this is not a message which is comfortable to
society - we like to think of our seual deviants and criminals as "monsters",
so we do not have to understand them. If they could be anyone, if they
did not have a missing gene - then what seperates us from them?
This section
aside, Happiness offers few conclusions. Its thesis is people are as depraved
and weirder than you can imagine, all in the pursuit of happiness. This
happiness would appear to be derived from sex, yet it is their sexual lives
which make them miserable. Indeed the final scene of the film offers us
despair if we follow this line further. Th boy, desperate to come - finally
does. Fantastically pleased with himself he soon realises that that's all
there is. To get that rush again requires more sex (onanism or not). So
he is now indoctrinated into the adult world where happiness is elusive,
momentary and sexual.
Happiness
is not an awful lot of fun to watch, though it is at times laugh out loud
funny. The problem is, every time you laugh, you feel guilty as if implicated
into the storyline. So by no means a recomendation for the popcorn set.
But if you want a film which will deliver the most moving scene you are
likely to see this year, Happiness is the one. For the rest of you, I hear
Mike Myers is going to be in the Scooby Doo movie. (8)
IF THIS
FILM WAS A CAR CRASH: It would be Shadows And Fog shunting Man Bites Dog.
No casualties. A few arrests. Fred, Daphne and Thelma rubber necking as
they drive the Mystery Machine by.
Happy,
Texas
One thing
you can say for the late nineties is that it pretty much marked a demise
for the formula movie. Not that new formula movies did not pop up in their
place - but certainly during the eighties there were a number of set scenario's
you could trust a couple of films rocking out a year with in their tow.
Often a safe place to harbour a star, your formula movie would give you
the basics for a crowd-pleasing night out. Problem is, the formula gets
mined to death and people no longer want to see them. Standard formula
movies would be the "unconventional cop doing anything to catch a nasty
villain"; the fish out of water romantic comedy or the buddy movie. These
live on in spirit, and occasional flashes appear in other more complex
films. Recently however there have been a couple of stabs at these unreconstructed
formula flicks. Blue Streak was one, a major studio fish out of water thriller
(an Eddie Murphy movie in all but name and star). And Happy, Texas is another.
Unlike Blue
Streak, Happy, Texas (methinks that comma could get confusing later on)
is a low budget indie affair. Little star power in here - what there is
of top billing is wrassled between Bill Macy and Jeremy Northam - so the
film has to get by on charm and story. In relies more on its charm, truth
be told, which it has in bucket loads. The story is as formulaic as its
original set up allows: which is a fine set-up. If there is any film which
could ever truly be said to be a sit-com, i.e. a comedy who's humour is
derived almost purely from situation: Happy, Texas is that film.
So: Sit.
Three convicts escape, in a very amusing armadillo assisted manner (pity
the armadillo's did not pop up through the rest of the flick. They gave
the movie a darker edge). One convict is a bad-ass mofo who goes his own
way (yeah, right) the other two hitch up, steal a motor home and end up
in Happy, Texas. Where the gay, children's pageant organising van owners
were originally going (this is the kind of coincidence Magnolia was banging
on about). So our situation is as follows: two straight men pretending
to be gay, a criminal teaching little children how to perform, plus the
sundry bank robbing, falling in love plots. Seems relatively amusing for
an hour and a half flick.
And relatively
amusing it is. You can count the number of missed gags that could have
been in this flick on a very large abacus, yet it is still pretty funny.
For its premise, the film remains resolutely politically correct - but
not so far as it cannot wring humour out of its stereotypes. But where
a film even ten years ago may have gone for a bit of gay bashing, HT avoids
this as being too nasty. This is a sunny film, wholly inconsequential but
amusing enough to pass your time. Its stars turn in good performances (Steve
Zahn in particular as the more incoherent of our convicts managing to make
what seems unlikeable into a quite loveable character). Jeremy Northam
also shows more promise than most of his films last year, and actually
could do the Cary Grant he suggested he might be in The Misadventures Of
Margaret.
Happy, Texas
is a formula movie of the kind they tend not to make anymore. It has dozens
of missed opportunities and its action sequences are rather poor - truth
be told. Its ending is slapdash and in general the whole affair could be
a lot better scripted and tighter. But the film has charm. The very fact
that this kind of movie rarely gets made these days makes it a surprising
novelty, and everyone is obviously having a good time. Undemanding, but
fun. Certainly a break from the serious angst drama's or even the headfuck
comedies of the last few weeks. Happy, Texas is just that - a happy film.
(7)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Priscilla: Queen of the desert shakes the shaky
hand of Doc Hollywood, or something like that.
His
Girl Friday
Lets just
say we're going Cary Grant nuts round here. Or appreciating that finally
the Curzon Soho has wheeled out a Sunday lunchtime double bill which both
interests me and does not involve a film I've seen in the last year. (If
they ever get round to doing their Daytrippers and Buffalo 66 double bill
again, I would insist on you going to see). So here we have a double bill
of sharp-talking fun comedies, His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby. The
connection? Well Howard Hawks directing, Cary Grant starring and they fact
that they are both too damn good.
Both have
been described as screwball comedies, but this is actually inaccurate.
Bringing Up Baby is a screwball comedy, but there is nothing screwy about
His Girl Friday. Sure its quick witted, if quick witted allows us to get
more than one joke per minute, but there is a serious solid heart under
all of the films apparent fripperies. It is a satire, a rather pointedly
cynical satire at that, dressed in the clothing of light entertainment.
And there is no better way of making your point than slipping it under
the radar of popular entertainment.
The play
The Front Page, of which this is one of many adaptations, is a slightly
harder hitting piece. Its bite is left to ridicule a political system where
toying with a mans life can be a valid way of campaigning for re-election.
It also has a virulent anti-death penalty theme, which - though not ignored
in His Girl Friday - is certainly diluted. It is easy to see how and why
this dilution comes about. The masterstroke is turning Hildy Johnson from
a man in the play, into a woman. At least, that's masterstroke number one.
Masterstroke number two is in the casting, and number three is in the script.
A script which uses pretty much all of The Front Page's script, then layers
a whole new subplot of romantic comedy on top. Literally. His Girl Friday
rocks in shorter than any other filmed version of the Front Page, yet has
a script almost twice the length. The simple key was to have everyone talking
at the same time, yet in distinctive manners. For this you need a great
cast, which I mentioned, they certainly got.
Cary Grant
was a star. Acting was not his thing, being a presence was. He had the
enviable ability of playing lovable cads. Heroic cowards (North By Northwest?).
Characters who, on paper would be insufferable, in his hands became centerpieces.
Here, as Walter Burns, he is a misogenistic, manipulative, work minded
pig of a man - the kind of press leach that Hildy, and other characters
moan about. Yet he is lovable, dashing and exciting compared to Ralph Bellamy's
insurance salesman. (As an aside, what other film would have the guts to
describe a character as "looking like the actor who played him" - yet that's
exactly what happens here.) In return Rosalind Russell has supreme comic
timing, confident yet torn. There are some rather long takes in this movie
where Grant and Russell just banter and bicker at a mile a minute - and
it all seems so natural. Hawks had obviously provided them with an atmosphere
convivial to work, and this certainly comes across on screen.
His Girl
Friday is a masterpiece of comedy. In its field, as a fast talking romantic
comedy it has never been bettered, everything here is perfect. It still
stands up to close scrutiny today, despite its staginess and lack of anything
excessively cinematic about it. It got a good story from the play, and
then beefed it up. They just do not make films like this these days, it
would be nice to see them try. (10)
IF
THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Maybe The Front Page with Bringing Up Baby,
but that's really just to fit in with the conventions of this here piece.
Its no car crash, its a classic.
High
Fidelity
Pumpkin
State rule number five or so reads that if John Cusack is in a film I have
to see it. 2000 has so far been a pretty triumphant year for Mr Cusack
(see Being John Malkovitch), and as loathe as I am to say it, High Fidelity
continues that trend. Loathe, because not only am I pretty anti films adaptations
of books, but adaptations which take so many liberties with the source
material are even more annoying. On top of which the relative unfilmability
of what is almost a stream of consciousness novel, and the fact that Nick
Hornby's original is a touch close to home in certain areas made this a
project I was wary of.
I should
have known better. Cusack has produced and co-written with the same team
that produced Gross Point Blank, another quirky but consumate stab at the
romantic, coming of age, school reunion hitman comedy. In comparison High
Fidelity is relatively mainstream film, it replaces GPB's school reunion
and hitman aspects with record store a early mid-life crisis. And in retrospect
there is no better man to play the insecure record collecting hero that
Cusack - a man who's acting style is all veneer of confidence over hidden
depths. What is more, merely by his deep involvement with the project you
know that he understands the material.
The most
striking aspect of High Fidelity is not its use of music (which is nicely
pegged between the modern obscurity and the old classic). Instead it is
the bold decision to break the fourth wall and give Cusack an awful lot
of to camera monologues. Usually a technique which fails abysmally, Cusack
succeeds better that anyone since Michael Caine in Alfie. The way the scene
can segue from a monologue to action is seemless and does not feel forced.
And Cusack is a good self depreciating comedian - and since that is pretty
much what the film is all about it works well.
Of course
it helps that Cusack has surrounded himself with a top-notch cast. Finally
Catherine Zeta-Jones gets an (interestingly uncredited) cameo where she
can actually do something of note. Joan Cusack rocks up as the mutual friend,
and while as Laura Iben Hjelje has a strange accent she plays the role
in such a cooly effortless manner that you can see both why she loves Rob,
and
why he loves her. However the main acting honours go to Jack Black as the
record shop assistant from hell - an instantly recognisable grotesque creation
who is both very funny and allowed to grow. More than any other film of
its type (rom com) of the last ten years this does feel like a slice of
life.
That is
not to say that there are not problems with High Fidelity. Like its source
material its joy does not lie in its plot, what there is of it. The film
does not drag, but you do get the feeling that if it had ended ten minutes
earlier at a slightly more climatic moment the film would not have lost
anything. Tim Robbins' cameo is also the only one note thing in the film
- perhaps since we see him from Rob's point of view - but it does stick
out in a film of otherwise fleshed out performances. Lisa Bonet's role
is more important but does not convince, and perhaps this is why the size
of this role has been shrunk from the book. Finally, a note on the transplanting
of the setting from London to Chicago. It really does not matter - Cusack
knows Chicago so Chicago is where it is. The problem with many British
films is that they are about Britain first, story second. This would have
almost definitely happened with a London based High Fidelity. Here we get
to see the characters without the baggage. It works better, unfortunately.
High Fidelity
is a triumph for John Cusack, considering his involvement. It is also a
great example of how to do a book. Much of the book is filleted here, leaving
us however with the essence of the story, and (nearly) all of the characters.
Stephen Frears - a personal pick of Cusack's since their work together
on the Grifters - deserves an awful lot of credit too for both reigning
Cusack in and letting the film flow as well as it does. Cusack may only
make these personal projects every couple of years, but they are worth
waiting for. High Fidelity is that rarest of breeds - a romantic comedy
for grown ups. (9)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Gross Point Blank slams into You've Got Mail, or
perhaps the Shop Around The Corner and creates a rather lovely mess on
the pavement infront of the hideous Empire Records. Pity they didn't use
The Kids From Fame tune as the title track though.
The
Hole
Trailers
for movies are merely the same as old vaudeville billboards. As advertisements
they are nowhere near as imaginative as any of the car or perfume shorts
we see before the films, and considering that they are the dumbest of cinema
adverts you get the vague idea how simplistic they are. After all most
trailers consist of a cleverly strung together set of clips from the movie,
usually the good bits, telling us pretty much what the tone, characters
(and if you are unluck) the story will be. Which puts you in an odd situation
when you go see a film whose trailer promises one thing, and the film delivers
something else. The trailers to The Hole have been knocking around for
a good six months - and quite grisly they were too. The film on the other
hand, well its not exactly horror.
The Hole
is a thriller from the unpredictable narrator school. The tale is simple,
four schoolkids bunk off of a field trip (Wales - Ugh!). Amongst them we
have the standard stereotypes, jock, posh twit, teen queen, weirdo - though
worth noting that this is a British public school so only one of them (two
if you count Thora Birch’s unpredictable accent) are American. Anyway,
they are locked in the hole by forces unknown and what follows is the long,
slow starvation and onset of illness. As described well in the trailer.
Except that
is not what follows. Mindful that there is little suspense in the eventual
death of all his characters Nick Hamm then pulls us out of the story. This
is after all a version of events told by Birch’s Liz - and she clearly
places the blame on supercilious nerd boy. We then see the tale as he imagines
it - and its a touch sexier. It still does not cut to the maggot heavy
quick which is where the gross out shocks and thrills are to be had in
an emaciation movie. The time wasted in dallying with the frankly obvious
mystery is almost as annoying as the “this is how I did it” storytelling
conceit which the film eventually uses to get us to the point of the film.
Watching the panic and various deaths unfold it becomes clear that this
possibly could have held the attention. Instead we are left with a weak
twist ending with holes in the plot larger than the titular hole.
Its all
a bit of a pity because the set up is convincing. What is more Hamm and
his cast presents five teenagers from public school who you actually come
to like. This is no mean feat, especially since these are supposed to be
obnoxious stereotypes. The film deals with interesting ideas like cliques,
puppy love and alienation obliquely, but so much better than its actual
plot. It also makes best use of the contrast in its visuals. But outside
the teens the characters are both thick and dull (the police in general).
I cannot help think how much different the film might have been if Holly
Aird’s spiky copper from The Criminal was in here instead of Davidtz’s
dull psychiatrist cop. In the end though the film feels over long and has
one too many plot holes in it to convince. And the scares only come in
the last reel, by which point we already know what the cause is.
The Hole
is a technically competent film, and there are some really good performances
in it - though not from its stars (Birch almost pulls it off, but the accent
really doesn’t help). In the end though the film cannot decide if it is
a horror movie (it isn’t), a thriller (no thrills) or a mystery (a simple
one). A viewing of The Blair Witch Project would have certainly helped
up the psychological ante, or a look at The Usual Suspects could have seen
how important plot consistency is. As my mate Paul would say - its not
real. In this case I’ve got to agree. (5)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: The Usual Suspects meets a teen horror movie, with
The Blair Witch Project just dying to get involved - poor love.
Holy
Smoke
Mental note:
there is no room for the phrase saucer nips in this review. That out of
the way, we have an early afternoon showing of Holy Smoke (opening titles,
this is written in smoke, nice effect - cheers). Jane Campion's new comedy
drama about cult religions, deprogramming and the battle of the sexes -
and the battle of the ages. And some piss, nudity, Harvey Keitel's flabby
arse and another chance for those of us who enjoyed them so much in Hideous
Kinky to see Kate Winslet's… (Mental note).
As that
description suggests, Holy Smoke is a little bit of a mess. This is a great
pity because there is an awful lot going on in here to merit some discussion.
Unfortunately it suffers - like Dogma did - of being about religion and
being comic. It suffers in a wholly different way however. Rather than
be irreverent about its guru and its hippy trappings, the film is at great
pains to show the religion and religious aspects in a vaguely positive
light. It does not urge us to go out to India to find our own personal
guru, but it would not be too perturbed if we did. Ruth (Kate Winslett)
gains enlightenment of a sort, and so her family kidnap her and send her
out into the desert to be deprogrammed. Shades of the temptation of Jesus
there - and the film does mix its religious metaphors more than a number
of times. However once we are out of India and suburbia (shown to be equally
impoverished in various ways) this becomes a two hander between Ruth and
her deprogrammer - PJ Waters (Harvey Keitel).
A battle
of wits is what Campion is aiming at here. You can certainly see her point.
Whilst Ruth may be seen to be the one easily led from her character sketch,
she is presented as a woman with more than a little force of will. Keitel
is dropped on us as this super cool, super confident deprogrammer. Has
he met his match in Ruth? Well, that is obvious from the beginning - this
is a film in many ways about empowerment. What is less clear is where Ruth
gains this power from .Much is said about the deprogramming technique,
little is shown. What is shown seems pretty inconclusive (hiding someone's
sari up a tree is not the most obvious method). The flop comes when Ruth
starts to play with PJ, when he starts to become dependent on her. Yet
again, apart from a bit of pissing and vulnerable eyelash flicking, it
is wholly unclear where Ruth gains this power from. Whilst the bare bones
of the film work, the fleshing out leaves an awful lot to be desired.
Holy Smoke
is best in its moments of absurdist comedy. Ruth's family are as fine a
set of cinematic oddballs as you'll see in any movie, and there are flashes
of real comic timing. At the same time, the film uses this absurdity to
skew us away from the family, and is in a lot of ways patronising. It is
quite unclear how this calm, centred being played (rather expertly) by
Winslett, could ever have sprung from this family. And unfortunately Keitel
appears to be sleepwalking through much of the movie. The film uses his
iconic presence as a shorthand for character back story - and with such
a low key performance it leaves the film wanting. Indeed, characterisation
is a problem throughout the film - the rather long drawn out ending makes
it clear that Campion is not sure what she is trying to say, and how she
wants to say it - presenting us with a happyish ending.
Holy Smoke
is the work of a now very accomplished director, and it is obvious that
she is having quite a lot of fun here. Unfortunately she does so at the
expense of making a wholly coherent film. The odd pieces of camera trickery
and effects are sure, and the soundtrack well picked (at least the Neil
Diamond bits are). Nevertheless Campion is trying to do more than just
poke fun at either cults or cult deprogrammers - and on this level she
fails. Whilst Winslet gives her usual good performance, the lack of any
real point to the film hurts the overall package. An emu's egg. (6)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Disclosure slams into Kundan, whilst running over
Harvey Keitel in a nice little red dress and with lippy on. My mate John
says the reason to go to the cinema is to see stuff you've never seen before.
Do you really want to see Harvey Keitel in a dress?
Human
Traffic
So where
was I in the second summer of love eh? I was mowing my Gran's lawn, and
that was certainly as close as I got to any grass. Whilst I lived nary
a mile away from the M25, I was not inducted into such Orbital raves until
much later in life. And to be fair, I'm not the biggest club goer in the
world. Yeah, I shuffle up to them every now and then, and whilst I have
a vague appreciation (and collection) of various areas of dance music -
the bottom line is I'm rubbish at both dancing and taking drugs. In conclusion
I would say I have merely a second cousiny relationship with club culture.
I recognise it, visit it occasionally but I certainly don't send it Christmas
and Birthday cards.
Human Traffic
celebrates said scene. This bothered me. By now you may be a touch au fait
with my style, which tends to go like this. A film bothers me. I don't
go and see it until about four weeks after its released and then I hail
it as the best thing since sliced bread. That's what I do, get used to
it. Its exactly what I'm going to do here. So what "bothered" me about
Human Traffic. Three things. The trailer - it were damn lousy. It had all
the cliches of dance and drug culture with nothing resembling wit. It had
a Star Wars monologue fer chrissakes which not only was not original and
not funny, but it barely even had any dialogue. Second problem was that
of zeitgeist jumping. It was always going to be old, a picture about ecstasy
culture which has been around twelve years. Come on. And the third problem
- I'm ashamed to say - was that it was British, and be proclaimed (at least
by the Guardian) as the best British film of the year, and (woe betide)
the Welsh Trainspotting. (Now I thought the Welsh Trainspotting was Twin
Town, though of course that might be forgotten now since Twin Town was
shite).
So trailers
can misrepresent a film. So the film acknowledges it has come in late,
and does so in an amusing fashion. And so the geezer in the Guardian was
right. Human Traffic may not be the best movie ever made, it may not be
the best film of the year. But its a hell of a lot better than most British
films, and is strikingly original to boot. So what happens. Five characters
(admittedly all with ludicrous nicknames) spend a weekend, like they spend
all weekends, clubbing and taking drugs. As an after thought there is a
vague sub plot concerning Jip - our main narrator - who is suffering from
sexual paranoia, and his sexual rescue by his mate Lulu (see what I meant
about those names). This sub sub plot is resolved, as is an even tinier
plot about a younger brother doing his first set of drugs. But neither
of these are the point. The film manages both a state of the nation address
whilst at the same time being vaguely representative of every potential
pitfall a weekend can offer. And it does it with style.
How? Our
lead character Jip has an awful lot to do with this. Since he narrates
much of the proceedings this is important. And amiable he is, relentlessly
human a self conscious of all of his failings. Much like the film itself
he pre-empts much criticism and lays it on himself. He is the one paranoid,
he is the one involved in our mid film drugs lecture. He is the one who
delivers the quite potentially hideously embaressing New National Anthem.
And he is the one at the heart of most of the films fantasy sequences.
The film is littered with them, and they are very well executed. Short,
snappy they illustrate various little things which every viewer will recognise
at least fifty percent of. They don't intrude because there is no plot,
and they do further our understanding of the evening.
The chief
sucess though is from the script. It takes its own stock characters and
really convinces us that they are friends. They have their own language,
their own problems and their own games they play with each other. It contrasts
this with their difficulties with other generations, and the feelings of
alienation that they both genuinely feel and equally accept as cliche.
There is a nice piece at the end where they saw they canot see themselves
doing this for the rest of their lives. The mark of this generation is
explained by Jip - we are constantly, self consciously trying to be cool.
Human Traffic
is not without its flaws. Some of its gags falls flat, the aforementioned
Star Wars conversation is uncomfortable (but rather understandable in the
circumstances). It does try and tag on a vague drugs aren't all good message
near the end which counter-acts the "drugs are neither good or bad" stance
which was taken earlier. But its made with an awful lot of gusto, has plenty
of ideas and at the bottom line succeeds in entertaining and representing
part of a generation. Perhaps its closest peer would be Dazed And Confused,
but that film came twenty years too late, and perhaps was too knowing to
represent the seventies. This is bang on the money, represents the Nineties
in the Nineties - and is also very funny. And could not have been made
anywhere else, which is surely the best thing you can say about a British
film. (9)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Dazed And Confused, twenty years older, smashing
into Trainspotting ten years ago and ending up in a resolute picture of
now, on the outskirts of some crap Twin Town (and trust me - Twin Town
is crap).
L'Humanité
Sometimes
it is mind-numbingly easy to take the piss out of French films. The classic
sense of melodrama, the over obsession with sex, the sex itself. Its as
much as a stylistic cliché as the explosion in an American action
film. All that said - it does not mean that a French film of the old school
- as L'Humanité is - cannot work. And as much as I wanted to dislike
the film, from the very start, I found it very difficult to really garner
any ire about it. Instead a ended up wandering out of the cinema marvelling
at a film which, on paper, I would have absolutely despised.
The story
is simple. The film follows Pharon - a policeman in his early thirties
- in a small town in Northern France. The film (almost) opens with the
discovery of the body of a young local girl, left raped and murdered on
the edge of town. The film then follows the investigation, along with Pharon's
edgy relationship with Domino, a friend who lives down the street to him
and her boyfriend. And that is pretty much it. There is a mystery which
gets solved - just about - and various subtle character things happen.
There is a bit of gratutitous sex too in case things get very boring. And
considering the film is two and a half hours long - you would expect things
to get boring.
The best
comparison here is with Magnolia. I think Magnolia is a great movie, but
it felt too long. And that was a film packed with stories, soundtrack and
clever visuals. Bruno Dumont, director of L'Humanité, does none
of these things. The pace of the film is unremittingly slow. There is no
real soundtrack to talk of, and the camera remains relatively static throughout.
The opening shot is of Pheron walking across a field, and then falling
down and laying in the soft, clay mud for about thirty seconds. Nothing
happens. And yet there is conviction in this scene, something in the acting
and the firm way that the film need never get any faster which draws you
in.
Much of
the films success has to go down to the actors - in particular Emmanuel
Schotté and Severine Canelle - a Pheron and Domino. Pheron has an
impassive face, it is the face of a watcher and while the film slowly reveals
small amounts about him it never panders to an audience who desperately
want to know why. Hints are dropped and left loose. That all said, these
are performances brought out by the director who knows not to rush things.
Part of this is to underline the slowness of life in the small town, how
everything is interconnected. The film spends half an hour on the inconsequential
aspects of Pheron's life before we get back to the case in hand. Whilst
intellectually I was raging against this slow film with lack of any interest,
I was watching quite avidly. I think this is down do an insidious conviction
that the characters presented, a sense of hopeless reality which was nevertheless
fascinating. This is often ascribed to be due to the non-professional actors
being used, but in that case so much more is down to their direction.
This is
not to say that there are not problems with L'Humanité. I would
be loathe to recommend it to others because I am still not sure why I reacted
the way I did to it. I feel you really have to be in the right mood for
it, else it almost definitely will bore you. On top of that, the film tries
to have the best of both worlds with its reality. On the one hand we have
the very human love triangle. On the other hand the almost Inspector Morse-like
qualities of the murder case. The case feels artificially created, to drive
the story and its conclusion could not be more convenient. It would be
wrong to say that L'Humanité has a happy ending, but its the ending
that ties up more loose ends than any real life situation would.
I liked
L'Humanité, in spite of myself. I can only assume I was won over
by the film itself rather than my capricious nature. But the mere fact
that I cannot be sure has to stand against the film. It certainly has the
trapping sof the kind of film I would usually hate. The sex feels gratuitous,
and adds to an already confusing set of impressionistic vignettes. Pheron
has a habit of embracing criminals which is neither in character or realistic
- yet the film stands or falls on its verisimilitude. However the mix ultimately
worked for me, and as suspicious as I am of the whole package, I cannot
really damn a film for that. (8)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: An episode of Inspector Morse with The Bicycle Thieves.
Just with an oddly happy ending
