An
Ideal Husband
Ideal made
some of my favourite games as a kid. All I needed from my unwrapping of
Christmas presents was that little oval (much like the droppy down ATV
logo), plastered in the corner of the box. It was my guarantee of short
playing time, low production values, more gaudy plastic than you could
shake a (Ker-Plunk!) stick at and tons and tons of noise. Buckaroo, Mouse
Trap, and of course the aforementioned Ker-Plunk! were all from the stables
of Ideal, irritated grown-ups hangovers and generally made my childhood
a much better place to be.
Unfortunately
the "Ideal" in An Ideal Husband is not the legendary games company of yore.
Instead it is the middle word in the title of a play by Oscar Wilde. Note
the use of the "play" word, for I shall be coming back to it later. In
the film Rupert Everett plays the perhaps ironic titular character, Sir
Arthur Goring, a thoroughly idle and narcissistic batchelor about town.
He gets embroiled into the the machinations of Mrs Chieveley (Julianne
Moore), who is trying to blackmail on of his friends - Sir Robert Chiltern
(Jeremy Northam). Via the route of friendship, and attempted dailiances
at unwanted courtship between him and Miss Mabel (Minnie Driver). There
is also a complication with regards to Chiltern's wife, an old flame of
Goring's - played by Cate Blanchett. This of course is Oscar Wilde, of
whom a self referential facsimile turns up during the play, so it is in
general a happy piece, with plenty of epigrams.
There are
two ways of looking at films based on plays. The source material is very
good, and this is bolstered by a magnificent cast. Everett as Goring has
the requisite plum, and yet his one dimensional character slowly blossoms
as we find out about his more sensitive past. All the female characters
fit perfectly, especially Minnie Driver who is turns infuriating and charming.
The farce builds expertly, and we do get to feel for these characters.
However, this is a play. It is not a film. Just by plonking our characters
in a number of different settings, it does not explain why the medium of
film help this piece. And there is the other matter that, as good a play
as An Ideal Husband is, it is certainly not Wilde's best and next to a
lot of contemporary fiction the gaping holes in its plot tends to appear.
The first act in particular is as unengaging as exposition as any teen
horror film I have ever seen.
An interesting
comparison would be with The Misadventures Of Margaret which I saw the
day before. Both, coincidentally, count Jeremy Northam amongst their casts.
Both are overtly wordy, and witty treatises on love. Margaret wins out
in a head to head because it is a film, it uses the language of film to
forward the plot. It has fantasy sequences, it has wordless jokes that
would be impossible to reproduce on stage. In return there is a small cast
intensity which An Ideal Husband has which is best presented on stage.
There is also the other matter that on stage, the play would have been
longer.
The script
of an Ideal Husband has been cut for the cinema, and in such a way that
it makes one of the denouments inexplicable. We are supposed to feel from
about halfway through that Lord Goring has fallen for Miss Mabel, and while
circumstances keep preventing him, he wishes to propose. Yet within the
film he barely speaks to her up to this point. This is almost certainly
because a pair of talking heads, batting their idiosyncratic philosophy
at each other was deemed uncinematic, and least damaging to the plot if
cut. This is a great pity, as Driver ends up being under used, whilst she
is easily the most amusing when supplying her side of the arguments. Indeed
I often forget how good Minnie Driver is, until I see her in yet another
film, she really never turns in a bad performance. But, to be fair, nor
does anyone else in An Ideal Husband.
I am alsways
wary about any form of adaptation for the screen, asking inevitably Why?
The film of An Ideal Husband really never answers that question, it brings
nothing new to the party. Its fun, but you sense you would have more fun
seeing it in the theatre. Or even, dare I say it, at home playing Ker-Plunk!
(5)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: It would be someone dropping a theatre in the middle
of a motorway watching the mayhem ensue.
Ikinai
Favourite
things? Very rarely does the dog bite, but every now and then I can be
found to be feeling blue. So I think of a few of my favourite things -
and how badly done most of them are. Y’see one of my very favourite things
is the black comedy. It cuts to what I’ve often believed to be the central
conceit of human existence, our awareness that we are going to die. When
coupled with the general unfairness of life, there are really only three
responses. To constantly ponder your own mortality leads either to suicide
or terminal philosophy. The usual response is to ignore the fact, apart
from our darkest hours. But the third response, is to gleefully take it
to its logical extreme and laugh at it.
Ikinai is
a Japanese black comedy, from the stable (but not directly) from Office
Kitano. Directed by Takeshio Kitano’s usual cinematographer, the story
is one ripe with potential. A group of desperate men fix up a coach tour
with the aim of crashing said coach, killing them all and providing their
families with the money to pay off their debts (in most cases). One of
them cracks before the tour, and his ticket is taken by his neice - an
eighteen year old student. She is unaware of the tours purpose, and her
joie de vivre and life is contrasted by the dour people around her. And
of course, her presence will make the deaths all the more plausible…
Ikanai is
best in its first half, when the very deadpan contrast between the teenager
and the various men waiting to die is always wry, and often laugh out loud
funny. There is some flashback to some of the men’s’ original plight, and
our characters are crudely delineated, the effect of the girl is to humanise
them as they go on. The humour is all juxtaposition, the audience are aware
of the gravity of the situation, and therefore the absurdity of many of
the ways the girl spends her time. And opposed to her is the black suited
figure of death, who never smiles and is single-minded in his pursuit of
all these deaths. Tellingly we never find out the reason why he wishes
to commit suicide, he is there as a very obvious metaphor. But - at least
in the first half - his very unwavering dryness is very funny.
The problem
with black comedies is you have to really stick to your guns to make them
work. This tends to require everybody dying at the end. Which is fine,
but precludes characterisation a touch. The standard technique to hook
an audience into a movie is to find them a character they can identify
with, care about as the film unfolds. Without this connection, most films
turn into just a discussion of what if’s. But with this connection, you
feel cheated when your lead dies just because of the whims of the plot
demands it - the film does not satisfy. Hence in most black comedies, there
becomes a point where it turns into serious drama, or cops out into light
comedy. It does not fit properly, usually creating a flawed piece of work.
And this is exactly what happens in Ikinai.
When our
heroine finds out they are all going to die, the film dramatically turns
into serious mode. The comedy - previously based on misunderstanding and
farce - now has nowhere to go except the odd bit of incongruous slapstick.
That’s fine up to a point, there are serious issues at the heart of Ikinai,
and its obvious that the director wishes to draw these out. This however
just lowers it to a pretty ordinary level of pathos which is nowhere near
as interesting or engaging as the first half. The film does have a natural
crescendo - the question whether the bus will crash or not. But how we
reach our resolution is stagey, and less thought through than the more
obvious arguments put forward by our heroine. The film leaves its final
punch to the very end which is futile attempt to regain its black core.
So whilst the end is engaging, it does not work from the black comedy perspective
or pure drama front.
Ikinai is
a Japanese film, and as such comes from a different storytelling perspective.
That said, I have seen enough Japanese films to get the undercurrent of
various techniques, and a lot of the cut scenes here - meaningful views
of our characters in heavily filtered lighting knocking about a tin can
- are merely trite. It appears to be an attempt to imbue extra meaning
into something which is already as meaningful as it is going to get. Ikinai
was never going to be an in depth meditation on death - but when it is
funny, it is damn funny. It is merely a pity it never gets to keeping up
that momentum. The actors manage to hold their own in all of this, what
characterisation there is of our secondary characters is done through the
acting as the script does not really dwell on them. And the film looks
great, as befits a tour film it does highlight some great countryside and
tourist attractions. All kept going by a pan-pipe type score which is correctly
flippant enough to make the film bounce along though the comic segment.
As I said,
black comedies are a favourite thing of mine. But to do black comedy you
have to keep upping the ante until everybody dies. This is why Dr Strangelove
is probably the best black comedy ever. Of late, black comedies have been
too worried about keeping an audience in, by having a lead character you
care for. Ikinai makes this mistake, and loses both its comedy and its
real impact. It is even more bizarre when you actually see the films ending.
So when it is good, it is very very good, but it doesn’t stay all good
- so it isn’t one of my favourite things. (6)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: A good suicidal black comedy, hitting something
altogether more serious.
The
Insider
To all intents
and purposes a pretty lousy name for a film that. The Insider promises
little as a title, is neither punchy nor sexy and does not tell us what
the film is going to be about. The fact that it is a 'Macho' Michael Mann
movie might offer us up a few more suggestions, or the oddly made poster
with the planometric view of a box of cigarettes on the side might just
give us a few more hints. Because here is Michael Mann, literally hot off
the success of Heat giving us another fine actor conflict "man's gotta
do what a man's gotta do"-er. This time, the men are played by Al Pacino
(again) and Russell Crowe. But unlike Heat there are no explosions and
no shots fired.
Call it
pre-millennial angst if you will (these films were made before them clocks
turned all noughty), but there seems to be a taste for true stories battering
big business in Hollywood at the moment. From John Travolta's unpalatable
A Civil Action, via the superior Erin Brockovich - to which The Insider
now joins. Based on a true story about a whistle-blower in the tobacco
industry, The Insider is a gritty, almost psychological tale of what it
takes to be in that position. With the power of the tobacco industry in
the USA as a political and legal lobby, the film is really interested in
the sway the industry has over ordinary peoples lives. Therefore the Insider
is much more interesting when it deals with these pressures - something
it does very well via Russell Crowe's tobacco scientist.
I know relatively
little about Crowe, except from being impressed with him in LA Confidential.
Here he could be seen to be fighting a losing battle - playing warts and
all an emotional, unstable man who is hideously indecisive. To complicate
matters this man of science is greying, liver spotted and considerably
older than Crowe. On top of this, Crowe is doing a Mel Gibson American
accent, being Australian it is relatively noticeable. All this aside though,
Crowe manages to portray this hugely flawed man of science as a hero -
his constant battles with personal demons are far and away the quietest
and most interesting thing on display here. Which makes them riveting because
the rest of the film - whilst being a touch more bio-pic formulaic is still
a good ride.
The Insider
is very much a two hander, with two concurrent storylines. The first is
that of Crowe's moral dilemma, to break his confidentiality agreement and
endanger his family to do the right thing. The second is Al Pacino's news
editors battle to get the story on screen - thus justifying Crowe's faith
in him. This is played out at a different tempo to the more cerebral moral
problems - giving the film a much needed injection of pace when indecision
threatens to cripple the film. That said, for all of Pacino's bluster and
high moral ground - it quite clear that the constraints of the bio-pic
style hit hard with this character. This is a still famous US journalist,
and is painted as nothing but a strong, crusading journalist. No flaws
are explored in this character, therefore you get the feeling that there
is something missing. When, in the last third of the film, the action is
almost totally aimed at Pacino - the film loses much of its verisimilitude.
Michael
Mann directs this in a very similar way to the way Soderbergh helmed Erin
Brockovich. A lot of hand held stuff - perhaps more impressionistic than
Soderbergh - but certainly with the aim of giving it a documentary style.
It is easily as macho a film as Heat, without the violence or more traditional
themes of that movie. And despite its length (two hours forty minutes)
it is never anything but compelling. Mann wrests good performances, and
his own script has little excess in what is a complex story. There are
certainly flaws, by almost abandoning Crowe's character the film loses
its urgency in the last quarter. And I counted one person smoking in the
entire film, odd for a film about the evils of what would appear - by this
films suggestion - to be an ailing insdutry. There is the feeling that
certain things have been glossed over - but at least the film is honest
when it comes to the statutory explanatory paragraphs at the end. This
is a dramatisation of true events, and something have been added for dramatic
effect. Perhaps these are the films most powerful moments - you get the
feeling that Crowe's character was not so involved in the film as Pacino's
- and therefore his delusional suicidal moments could be mere fiction.
They are also the most powerful parts of the film.
The Insider
is a great film in the tradition of All The Presidents' Men. The conspiracy
film has been quiet for the last twenty years (Stone's JFK can hardly be
held up as a shining example). Nevertheless with both The Insider and Erin
Brockovich out there, it is a genre which has suddenly sprung back to life.
The Insider is a film you should see, for the quality of acting, and the
true moral dilemma that lies in the centre of it. I doubt you will see
a better exposition of heroism this year. (9)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: All The Presidents' Men (again) this time ramming
into Heat. I tell you, I would not want to be driving All The Presidents'
Men this week.
The
Iron Giant
I remember
being rather excited at school when we were told - aged seven - that we
were going to read The Iron Man. Whilst he was not my favourite Marvel
Super Hero, it was rare that anyone wheeled out any comics in class unless
it was the last day of term. Comics were not really a common thing anyway
in the suburbs of London, the occasional tie in edition of Spider-man and
his Amazing Friends (Fridge Bloke and Gas Hob Girl) used to flop on to
our newsagent shelves in a blue moon. So I suppose disappointment was bound
to set in when it turned out to be a rather twee and dour tale set in the
north of England by some bloke called Ted Hughes. I later found out that
Ted Hughes was a poet of some repute, had been married to proto-goth Sylvia
Plath and that The Iron Man was written to cheer up his kids after Ms Plath
left dinner on the side and her own head in the oven. It made a touch more
sense then, it certainly was not as dour as your ma topping herself, and
after a time its relatively simplistic tale of an alien creature being
feared and then befriended (and then fighting some rubbish alien bat creature)
was rather resonant. And here it is again - in animated form.
The Iron
Giant (name changed probably for the very reason noted above) is by no
means a faithful adaptation of Ted Hughes novella. The setting is transplanted
to 1950's Maine, and no room was found for the giant leathery bat creature
bit. But the basics of the story are in there, and the basics are pretty
much a big, metal ET. The Iron Giant manages to be better than most ET
rip-offs (it would be hard not to better Mac & Me) and probably beats
ET at its own game. Subtlety, complexity married with great animation and
a punchy story. That is not what we expect from a kids movie. Oh yeah,
and no songs.
You heard
me. No songs.
That's right.
Let it sink in for a bit. Whilst the animation has all the traditional
trappings of Disney, it is sumptuously drawn and free flowing, this is
not a Disney film. It is also not a Don Bluth rip-off Disney. This is an
intelligent, well told story which does not need characters bursting into
song. (This in itself is odd since Pete Townshend bought the property to
Warner Bros just so it could be done as a musical - or more accurately
one of his rather clunky rock operas.) Instead, director Brad Bird has
relied solely on character, plot and script. No amusing animal sidekicks.
There is very little here which could not have been done live action. Except
of course - the Giant.
There were
not many kids in the cinema where I saw it, but I did fear the worst for
the ones that were there. One cried during the Gap advert before the film
- admittedly a perfectly natural reaction. However once the film started
they were captivated. The film is not rushed, it has its moments of quiet,
but there is momentum, and our lead character is very, very sympathetic.
It takes a child's sense of wonder, and really pushes it to its limits.
That, and the adult characters, especially Harry Connick Jr's beatnik,
are fleshed out perfectly. All the flash visuals in the world mean nothing
if you can't tell a story, but in The Iron Giant - story comes first. It
would be easy to say this is where Disney have gone wrong, they forget
story - but since their stock in trade for the last few years have been
bastardising classic of literature (The Hunchback of Notre Dame with a
happy ending?) this accusation does not hold up. What Disney animation
appears to forget is that not every tale fits the same formula. To be fair
they got a lot closer to the ideal with Tarzan, but The Iron Giant is miles
ahead in terms of complexity, storytelling and in just being a plain good
movie.
There are
plenty of other things about The Iron Giant which could be brought up.
The transplanting of the film to the fifties is very clever, harking back
to a simpler age perhaps, but also playing exceptionally well with cold
war paranoia. Your five year old need not know about "Duck and cover" propaganda
films before watching the film, the subtler touches are layered beneath
the surface. You don't need to know what a beatnik is to appreciate the
beatnik character. But if you do, then it gives you that little thrill
of recognition. The character design, especially for the giant, is superlative.
The score is inventive, being at turns playful at other classical. All
of these things contribute to making The Iron Giant certainly the best
traditionally animated film of the decade, and up there with the non-traditional
stuff (Toy Story and The Nightmare Before Christmas are both pretty song
heavy after all). Disney eat your heart out, this is how to do a cartoon.(10)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: ET meets The Terminator. You know - for kids.
