101
Reykjavik
Just when
I’ve constructed a nice new archival system, a film comes along like this
which challenges me to categorise it. 101 - should that go under O for
One hundred and One - or should I create a whole new system for numbers.
Damn it, under O it goes, but it certainly gets more than 0 in the ratings.
Its not the first Icelandic film I have ever seen (the honour goes to Devil’s
Island not reviewed here) but it certainly can be said to be the pre-occupied
with what it is to be Icelandic. If you live in a country which is always
under snow what do you do? Well the answer here appears to be pretty much
drink.
I like films
about drinking. I have a sneaking admiration of nihilists, I suppose I
find the idea of the swing between hedonism and melancholia romantic. Not
that you would find me drinking my life away like Hylnur the lead character
here. Indeed whilst he cuts an amusing figure he is by no means sympathetic.
Simple and pathetic would be a closer description. Living with his mother
in his late twenties, no job, getting up late and drinking the social away.
Horrible to the woman who loves him, generally unpleasant to people around
him. Eminently watchable, but eminently annoying too.
101 Reykjavik
is a coming of age tale, that of adolescence end. It just so happens that
this is a severely extended adolescence which is coming to an end. Hylnur’s
mother takes up with her Spanish flamenco teacher Lola - a flickering flame
of a free spirit in this icy town played by Victoria Abril. A random (or
is it?) drunken night of passion gets Lola pregnant and Hylnur finds himself
in the difficult situation of being a father, brother and uncle all at
the same time. Juggling this with his not girlfriend being pregnant things
all look pear shaped. So cue lots of going to the pub, vaguely metaphysical
rambling and someone getting a bit of a life. This is a slacker comedy
dealing with adult themes in a childish manner. It is - all in all - rather
good fun utilising the titular city and ice particularly well.
The film
pretty much relies on the elusive charm of Hylnur (Hilmir Gudnanson) which
is does for the most part. He is annoyingly self obsessed, but he is also
very recognisable in this. Cinematically as well we are given some breathtaking
shots of the Icelandic countryside and interesting ones of the capital,
and its scenes of drunkeness do have an oddly dislocated feel in themselves.
The main irritant in the film is unfortunately Damon Albarn’s contribution
to the score. It initially is quite jaunty, modern and interesting but
ends up bugging the hell out of you. About the point that Albarn decides
to remind us constantly that Abril’s character is called Lola by playing
a raspy farting version of the Kinks song on a melodica over and over.
101 Reykjavik
is a gently beguiling comedy. The self indulgences and arrested childhood
of the lead character is luckily tempered by the films playful sense of
humour and a real sense of despair as his world starts to crumble around
him. He acts like a spoiled child, which is exactly what he is, and so
therefore it is a particularly involving character arc to follow. To top
it with a cracking turn from Abril - spitting in English while everyone
around talks in Icelandic - gives the film an extra layer of class. Not
a huge movie, but one for the adolescent in all of us: telling us to get
a job. (8)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: It would be Devil’s Island - for the Icelandic -
mixed with Slacker. Top it off with your latter day lesbian film of choice.
Onegin
Now don't
get me wrong, I love a nice piece of period drama as much as the next man.
Shows a real dedication to duty, getting all them costumes right, making
the buildings look as they did, knocking out any anachronisms that might
have limped into your set. And whilst they tend to have rather sedate storylines,
being based on classics of European literature, they do have the depth
and strength of emotion in both plot and characterisation to really suck
you in. Now I cannot say I go a bomb for the Merchant Ivory school of period
drama, but when something a little bit different comes along I'll certainly
give it a gander.
Okay, now
I've explained why I went to see Onegin (period drama yes, Russian verse
novel based equals a bit different) I need to explain why I slept through
most of it. There are two contributing factors here, and surprisingly neither
is booze. The previous night I had been running a bit low on kip, therefore
I was a little bit tired. The second factor is however the film. It is,
how say, a little bit slow. However the fact that I fitfully drowsed through
most of it does not mean I am not in a good position to tell that Onegin
is actually rather a good movie.
I know,
I would be confused too. Let me try to provide some context. The story
of Onegin is a simple one, bored Russian noble (Ralph Fiennes) goes to
the country, gets more bored. Bored Russian noble meets beautiful and intriguing
girl (Liv Tyler). Beautiful and intriguing girl falls in love with Russian
noble, he spurns advance. After a few years, and a violent, tragic death,
bored Russian noble meets beautiful and intriguing girl, realised he is
in love She spurns him. Bish bash bosh - classic three act tragedy. And
that - ladies and gentlemen - is pretty much all there is to Onegin. That,
plus the nice costumes, the period dressings and oodles of snow. There
are three scenes of note, of any import in this film, the rest is just
window dressing.
The window
dressing is important though, it provides the tales epic sweep, its depth.
Yet nothing really happens for the first half hour, then the second half
hour, and only really in the last half hour do things start to become all
too watchable. Like in Ratcatcher, the quiet, the inconsequential conversations,
and the rather good soundtrack all combine to create atmosphere. Dona,
who I was with, likened the film to one big inevitable dance. The characters
spin around each other, and create this web. She also said it felt like
good literature, and who am I to argue with an English graduate. The story
has a certain timelessness, a classical quality.
This classical
quality is also matched by its actors. Ralph Fiennes (one of many Fiennes
involved, along with his sister Martha who directed) plays Onegin with
a detached air, which crumbles into pitiable despair near the end of the
film. Liv Tyler on the other hand is goes the other, controlled passion
recedes to ice (of a sort). She is becoming increasingly impressive as
an actress, here her accent isn't as cut glass as in Plunkett & Macleane
- but then it needs not be (they are all Russian after all, the English
accent is just period drama shorthand). In particular the finale scene
between Tyler and Fiennes, both crackles with the acting, and the direction
- done in a pure white room, with Tyler in white and Fiennes all in black,
it looks as well as plays perfectly.
Onegin is
a classic tragedy, and as such is no bed of roses to watch. It is slow,
full of meaningful looks, scenes which merely pad out the inevitable. This
is not to say it is a bad film, though I suppose I have to accept that
any film you can sleep through cannot be perfect. Nevertheles any film
you can sleep though ad still get the full emotional whack from cannot
be all bad, so lets say its one for the Sunday afternoon. (7)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Dr Zhivago, but short, with a rather similar plot
to Love & Death.
One
Day In September
Good trend
this documentary rush we are getting at the moment. All pretty good documentaries
too. I won't bang back on about why the documentary film can potentially
be as good as any other form, let's say that is taken as read and move
on. Instead I would like to draw to the attention of the class that the
events of One Day In September occur exactly one year, and one day before
I was born. This is in no way significant, merely that as a youth I believed
dates had a certain magic to them (it was all that number stuff, and as
a kid I was pushed towards the field of Maths). I always held a soft spot
for August 6th (one month before my birthday and date of Hiroshima). But
what really surprised me is that I knew nothing about September 5th, 1972
despite it being only one year from my birth.
September
5th, the titular One Day In September. The day that a band of Palestinians
took a group of Israeli Olympic athletes hostage in the Olympic Village.
This was the first major act by a Palestinian group on the world stage,
and they could not have picked a larger one. Not only were these the Olympics
(this ideal of which being peace and brotherhood to all men), but these
were being staged in Germany - a country which had a bit of a history when
it came to the Jewish question. The subsequent stalemate, and attempts
by the German's to create a resolution are the themes of One Day In September.
This is
resolutely a narrative piece of film-making. There is very little in the
way of analysis present of the events. Rather than why did they happen,
the director John MacDonald prefers to take the simpler of route of historical
recreation. Given the still volatile Middle Eastern political situation
this was possibly a wise choice - and as with The Filth And the Fury there
is more than enough narrative to fill this out. Lack of analysis is not
necessarily a bad thing. Analysis on its own is pretty dull to look at,
wheras here MacDonald has a wealth of sources to dip into. This was the
first major televised world disaster, huge chunks of scheduling were held
open for the Olympics, and therefore the news just dips into it. So with
a large amount of television footage, doubled with some rather well chosen
interviewees (including the last remaining Palestinian involved), the story
is told more than comprehensively.
Bottom line
with any film, is it interesting, is it watchable? One Day In September
is for two reasons. First, the story it tells is very compelling. This
definitely comes from the "you could not make it up" file of true stories.
MacDonald paints a pretty damning picture of the German authorities, leaving
perhaps a few unanswered questions as a subtext for the audience to try
and work out for themselves. The Germans were keen to expunge the memory
of the Berlin Olympics, but there is a hint in the film that in some small
way the fact that the were trying to save Jews may have influenced some
of the decisions made by individuals. Secondly the film uses its footage
of the Games to evoke a time and a place - this being 1972 Munich. Whilst
it may seem out of place to have a rock and dance score to a documentary
- the time spent with both music and footage pays off a dividend.
The only
question which arises from One Day In September is one of taste, and one
that did not really bother me too much. We live in a time of sensationalist
journalism after all, it would be churlish to criticise what is a rather
good - if simple - documentary for slightly doing what the rest of news
media does all the time. Those expecting to see anything but a cursory
look at the Palestinian struggle will be disappointed, but this film does
not set out to be political. Merely it shows what happened, and suggests
quite strongly that everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.
Perhaps some might see this as absolving the Palestinians their responsibility
for the deaths which occurred, in favour of blaming the inept Germans.
I do not think so.
One Day
In September is an impressive documentary which does pretty much what it
sets out to do. Cinema is a visual medium and whilst I see a role for more
in depth analysis of items like this, I think the right choice was made
not to delve too much into the whys and wherefores. That it introduced
to a piece of history that I was unaware of despite it occurring merely
a year before my birth also made it feel more than worthwhile. Charges
of sensationalism and poor taste have been levelled at it, which I think
are on the whole unfounded. In the end - like most films - it's a good
story well told. What makes it that little bit more powerful and tragic
is that it is true.(8)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: A good Panorama stre-e-e-tched into Day Of the Jackal
(And JFK - you magic bullet fans)
Orphans
There is
something weird in the state of British film making at the moment. Its
mainly the peek of the Boom-Bust mentality where we get a new film every
week. A lot of these films are no good, and you walk away thinking "what-if".
A few of them are quite good, but could have been made anywhere. And a
few of them fit in a fine British tradition of being in-yer-face, ballsy
British as fuck. Or, as in the case of Orphans, Scottish-as-fuck. Of course
some people don't like Scottish films because they can't understand the
accent. To which I say, a) you're missing two of the best British films
from the last year, and b) fucking learn.
Orphans
is very much a companion piece to Ken Loach's "My Name Is Joe", released
late last year. This is probably no surprise, as Orphans was written and
directed by Peter Mullins, who played the eponymous Joe. It certainly inhabits
the same world of Scottish low lives, between the tenements and new tower
blocks, and the feeling of menace which permeats the whole scene. But wheras
"My Name Is Joe" was a classically constructed tragic love story, about
a reformed man trying to do his best, but ending up losing everything,
"Orphans" is almost its opposite. The story of four siblings (three brothers
and one sister) trying to come to terms with the death of their mother.
This being inner city Scotland, they do this in relatively violent ways.
Via this dark process the characters learn, grow and eventually triumph.
This starts dark, and ends up with a positive message.
Orphans
is at its heart a black comedy, and a surreal black comedy at that. Yet
despite shackling itself with two of the most unsympathetic mediums (remember
the last black comedy you really rooted for the hero in?) it manages the
almost impossible, and makes you feel for these characters. Mullen's does
this in three ways. First, the casting. Douglas Henshall (This Years Love)
is a star, he has fantastic screen presence and makes his initially unsympathetic
character very watchable. All the performances are good on top of this,
and Mullins has an eye for the real as well as the absurd, his Glasgow
is peopled by what appear to be real people (and on the budget he's working
on - they quite possibly are). And if these real people are ugly or disabled,
then hey, all the more real life. Secondly, Mullens has a great eye for
character development. We have four characters all wrestling with the same
dillema in different ways, and that all of them do develop slowly, but
surely comes from a sure hand from this debut director. But Mullens final
masterstroke is to never under estimate his audiences' capacity to juggle
the difficult character studies, with some tremendously black humour. Its
a given that a serious films needs a strong moral centre, yet this film
doesn't - yet gets along nicely. It has all the nastiness of Trainspotting,
without the glib theatricals. You genuinely get the feeling that these
terrible things are really happening, no matter how surreal it gets.
Terrible
things happening to normal, morally suspect, people. Such as? Well, we
have a glassing, a stabbing, some atrocious singing, people imprisoned
in the back room of a pub, torture, spitting in black bean beef, the shooting
of a police car, a mooted idea of a rape, a wank, some come in someones
face, the destruction of the Virgin Mary twice, another shooting, this
time accidental, a fight on a cetral reservation, an awful lot of blood,
a god almighty storm ripping the room off of a church, and tho cap it all,
some Billy Connelly on a car stereo. Not to mention possibly the worst
gag ever committed to celluloid ("She ain't heavy, she's my mother"). When
listed it really does look hideously far fetched, yet as I said, it all
works. And it is all bleakly funny, in that "glad it isn't happening to
me" way. Yet Mullen's never forgets to include hope in his panorama. Just
when things are at its blackest, he strands the paraplegic sister on her
own in the street. There is an ominous sense that if he was ever going
to cross that line it would be here. And instead a young child finds her
and takes her home, to be looked after. "Orphans" is a film that knows
that contrast, rather than excess, proves its point.
Orphans
is by no means a technical masterpiece, though it is shot compentantly
and with an eye for building flair. Neither is it structured all that well,
the intro takes to long to get to the dizzyingly absurd heights the rest
of the film revels in. Nevertheless it is a fantastically raw film, honest
and the kind of film that anyone should be proud of being involved with.
Not only does it have a strong message ("death is for the dead"), but its
not afraid to reach that message by playing with shock, and black comedy.
Its a good film which deserves a wide audience, and if Alexander Walker
traps on one more time about not being able to understand what Scottish
people say - I'll do him. (8)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: One of Comfort and Joys Ice Cream Vans hitting Renton
from Trainspotting as he was crossing the street.
