If Polanski: Unauthorized wasn't all you'd hoped and dreamed it'd be, you can go ahead and check out the director's first feature film (Polanski, not Damian Chapa, ha!), Knife in the Water [Nóż w wodzie], for free at The Auteurs, courtesy of Criterion's free monthly series on the site. Currently, the focus is on directors' first films. Check out one of my very favorite films, Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher, if you haven't already. The other films in this series: Jane Campion's wonderful Sweetie, Agnès Varda's La pointe-courte, Sam Fuller's I Shot Jesse James and Marco Bellocchio's Fists in the Pocket [I pugni in tasca] (the latter not being one of my favorites by any means, but hey, if you've already seen the other five...)
Showing posts with label Lynne Ramsay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lynne Ramsay. Show all posts
Monday, October 12, 2009
Online Viewing @ TheAuteurs
If Polanski: Unauthorized wasn't all you'd hoped and dreamed it'd be, you can go ahead and check out the director's first feature film (Polanski, not Damian Chapa, ha!), Knife in the Water [Nóż w wodzie], for free at The Auteurs, courtesy of Criterion's free monthly series on the site. Currently, the focus is on directors' first films. Check out one of my very favorite films, Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher, if you haven't already. The other films in this series: Jane Campion's wonderful Sweetie, Agnès Varda's La pointe-courte, Sam Fuller's I Shot Jesse James and Marco Bellocchio's Fists in the Pocket [I pugni in tasca] (the latter not being one of my favorites by any means, but hey, if you've already seen the other five...)
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Decade List: Morvern Callar (2002)
Morvern Callar - dir. Lynne RamsayApproaching a novel deemed "unfilmable" by both the literary and cinematic community can be the greatest challenge for a filmmaker, a make-or-break endeavor that's worked for some (Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange) and failed for twice as many (Alan Rudolph's Breakfast of Champions, Tom Tykwer's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer). Alan Warner's 1995 novel Morvern Callar, a first-person narrative about a young woman who finds the body of her boyfriend, who committed suicide, in their apartment around Christmas time, was one of those novels, and how Lynne Ramsay, successfully living up to her promise after Ratcatcher, visualized such a difficult work into a film as dazzling as this amazes me to this day.
In expert fashion, Ramsay operates with a complex narrative voice, a different breed of the novel's "first person." The film is entirely singular and dependent on the titular Morvern, played perfectly by Samantha Morton. While the film relies solely on her, it's not a window to her interior consciousness. Before killing himself, Morvern's boyfriend leaves her with an array of Christmas gifts, the most significant one a cassette player and accompanying mixtape which provides the auditory clue to the film's relationship to its protagonist. Shifting seamlessly from the diegetic sounds from her headphones to the encompassing swirl of music which takes over the film, Ramsay utilizes a tactic that feels either prudent or thoughtless when used by lesser filmmakers. And yet, it provides the film's rhythm, one of visual and phonic poetry, as well as defining the film's placement to its character.
Ramsay never feels the inclination to explain or defend Morvern's actions throughout the course of the film. With ethically questionable decisions like disposing of her boyfriend's body and sending his novel to a publisher's office with her name on it, Morvern views her world the same way Ramsay views her, seeking an unjudgmental beauty in humble surroundings. Ramsay's search is altogether more successful than Morvern's, as the money in her boyfriend's bank account allows her to escape to Spain with her best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), who reveals before the trip that she fucked her boyfriend behind Morvern's back. It's never clear whether Morvern is in a state of emotional paralysis, akin to Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, or if this it her ticket out.
Though plot is significantly less important that mood, Ramsay raises a number of questions about interpretation and gender. When the novel Morvern's boyfriend wrote is met with enthusiasm from the publishers, the term "distinctive female voice" (possibly) suggests a covert motive from the representatives. Is that the book's selling point, and to what level does that change what her boyfriend has written? Warner's novel is written from the point of view of a woman by a man. Ramsay's film is a woman's interpretation of a man writing as the voice of a woman. Does our perception of the film, or the novel, hang on these perspectives? Answering (or trying to) these questions would certainly disrupt the film, so Ramsay simply acknowledges their hovering presence and continues on the journey.
Shot by Alwin H. Kuchler, who also shot Ratcatcher and Ramsay's short Gasman, I can think of few films I'd want continuously projected on my wall more than Morvern Callar. The images are consistently breathtaking, something that could never be truly conveyed through the stills I've chosen as its beauty is only enhanced by the movement of both the camera and the subjects. Like the audio track, Kuchler's camera weaves the interior and exterior together meticulously. The cinematography, sound design, performances and narrative voice all assemble marvelously, making Morvern Callar a bold, enigmatic and seminal work of one of the most promising voices in contemporary cinema.
With: Samantha Morton, Kathleen McDermott, Raife Patrick Burchell, Ruby Milton, James Wilson, Dolly WellsScreenplay: Liana Dognini, Lynne Ramsay, based on the novel by Alan Warner
Cinematography: Alwin H. Kuchler
Country of Origin: UK
US Distributor: Palm Pictures
Premiere: May 2002 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 16 October 2002 (Chicago International Film Festival)
Awards: Prix de la jeunesse (Cannes Film Festival); Best Actress - Kathleen McDermott (Scottish BAFTAs); Best Actress - Samantha Morton, Best Technical Achievement - Alwin H. Kuchler (British Independent Film Awards)
Monday, April 13, 2009
The Most Wonderful Newspaper Article Of Our Age
In my line of work, I have to read a lot of newspaper articles. Seriously, a lot. Many of them are vicious and unpleasant right-wing shrieks of terror as the world slowly disassembles their medieval belief systems. The likes of Peter Hitchens, Amanda Platell, Charles Moore, Melanie Phillips, Richard Littlejohn, Kelvin McKenzie, Leo McKinstry, and many many more yank handfuls of hair from their scalps in an effort to out-selfish each other, demonising everything and everyone that would look vaguely out-of-place in a 1950s Somerset country house. Reading their nauseating bilewords smeared across the page like a mental skidmark has been one of the more upsetting things I have had to do in this life, and tends to make me forget that not all Fleet Street pundits are Mannequins of Lazy-Thinking Evil.
This week, thanks to a link from, of all people, The Internet Commenter Formerly Known As Moriarty, I have found my favourite piece of UK journalism of the decade. Anne Billson, novelist and Buffy fan, has said the unsayable about the British film industry; it is in a terminal state, and the causes have been there all along.
I agree with so much of what she wrote that I could just copy and paste the whole thing here and just finish off this post with multiple exclamation points of joy, especially with her catty single-sentence drubbing of Mike Leigh. I love it so much I'll pretend I don't mind that she didn't give some praise to John Boorman, who made one of the most visually innovative movies of all time (as well as three of the battiest and most lovable), though I suspect she's more concerned with the recent crop of British film directors. Of all the targets she hit, this in particular struck me as a salient point:
Later on Billson mentions the UK directors who emulate shots from American directors for no other reason than that they liked that shot, not because it is the right shot for the scene. It's funny that she mentions Atonement earlier in the piece. Though there were some shots there that were admirable, the big setpiece single take shot of the Dunkirk evacuation is one of the most overrated shots of the past few years. I take my hat off to Joe Wright for managing the logistical nightmare of it, but what was the point of it? On a narrative level it was meaningless, even though a lot of extraneous information was handed to us.
While I understand that Wright was making a visual reference to the Dunkirk passage in McEwan's novel, it still looked stupid, with the characters wandering around the beach in circles in order to show everything off while Dario Marianelli's music did a lot of the heavy lifting. Compare that to single takes like the nightclub scene in Goodfellas, or the opening long takes from The Player, or Snake Eyes, or The Bonfire of the Vanities. Story happens in those scenes. We discover things about the characters. In Atonement, we're just checking out a beach.
This is not to say there are no British directors who have an amazing eye. Sadly, they're often not lauded in the UK and their careers stall. My favourite British style-genius of the past decade, Lynne Ramsay, created two distinctive and brilliant films, almost got to adapt The Lovely Bones, and then disappeared to work on un-named projects. Garth Jennings has spent so long making Son of Rambow made and promoted that he doesn't even seem to have anything else in the pipeline. Michael Winterbottom once made movies I couldn't wait to see, though that has sadly changed over time. Peter Greenaway buggered off to the Netherlands a while back and his movies retreated to the kind of Matthew-Barney-esque obscurity they always should have had, that weird successful period back in the 80s notwithstanding. We're still waiting for the next movie by the wonderful Pawel Pawlikowski. Terence Malick is now more prolific than he is, shockingly enough.
Many other UK directors who understand what to do with a camera (to varying degrees) have hopped over to America as soon as they could; Paul Greengrass, Martin Campbell, Edgar Wright, Roger Michell, Mike Newell, Stephen Frears, Kevin MacDonald, Pete Travis, etc. etc. The other conspicuous style-addict in British cinema, who won an Best Director Oscar this year and whose name I'm sick of reading everywhere, is probably going to spend some time in Hollywood making worthy films for a while. In fact, the only British director who wants to keep filming in the UK is Neil Marshall, bless him. His next film, Centurion, already sounds unmissable.
Still, I'm surprised Billson doesn't mention the Scott Brothers, as they are surely two of the most influential directors of the past twenty years even if they have made movies that many people consider beneath contempt. Their style has been adapted and ripped-off more than almost any other filmmakers around; surely that's something the patriotic UK film buff can be pleased about. That said, I can understand why she doesn't mention other style-heavy filmmakers from the same background (i.e. advertising), such as Alan Parker and Adrian Lyne, who barely have a good film between them.
Sadly for the UK, Ridley and Tony Scott stayed away while their films became more interesting (Tony Scott had a run of fun action movies in the early 90s, and Ridley makes a lot of flat but ambitious films I feel compelled to see, such as Kingdom of Heaven and Black Hawk Down), and Alan Parker came back to run the UK Film Council. Disastrous. It would have been the worst of all worlds if Adrian Lyne had made anything in the last seven years. I will never forgive him for his disastrous adaptation of Lolita, which remains one of the five worst films of the decade. Yes, worse than Fatal Attraction, Nine and a Half Weeks, and Indecent Proposal glommed together into a big lump of misogynistic Silly Putty, and then bounced off our eyeballs for over two hours. The man is a menace to society.
Why am I dragging up all of this bile? Because last week I saw possibly my favourite British movie of the last ten years, and what's most horrible is that I don't think Billson would like it, primarily because it's not that visual. More on that tomorrow...
ETA: And by "tomorrow" I of course meant two days from now...
This week, thanks to a link from, of all people, The Internet Commenter Formerly Known As Moriarty, I have found my favourite piece of UK journalism of the decade. Anne Billson, novelist and Buffy fan, has said the unsayable about the British film industry; it is in a terminal state, and the causes have been there all along.
I agree with so much of what she wrote that I could just copy and paste the whole thing here and just finish off this post with multiple exclamation points of joy, especially with her catty single-sentence drubbing of Mike Leigh. I love it so much I'll pretend I don't mind that she didn't give some praise to John Boorman, who made one of the most visually innovative movies of all time (as well as three of the battiest and most lovable), though I suspect she's more concerned with the recent crop of British film directors. Of all the targets she hit, this in particular struck me as a salient point:
I once heard a British film director say in an interview that he wasn't interested in telling a story visually (why were you directing a bloody film then?), and it's clear he's not the only one. Historically, Britain has produced more world-class writers than painters, and words tend to be valued far above visual imagery, if only because reading and listening apparently require more effort than looking, and so are deemed to be worthier pursuits.
Later on Billson mentions the UK directors who emulate shots from American directors for no other reason than that they liked that shot, not because it is the right shot for the scene. It's funny that she mentions Atonement earlier in the piece. Though there were some shots there that were admirable, the big setpiece single take shot of the Dunkirk evacuation is one of the most overrated shots of the past few years. I take my hat off to Joe Wright for managing the logistical nightmare of it, but what was the point of it? On a narrative level it was meaningless, even though a lot of extraneous information was handed to us.
While I understand that Wright was making a visual reference to the Dunkirk passage in McEwan's novel, it still looked stupid, with the characters wandering around the beach in circles in order to show everything off while Dario Marianelli's music did a lot of the heavy lifting. Compare that to single takes like the nightclub scene in Goodfellas, or the opening long takes from The Player, or Snake Eyes, or The Bonfire of the Vanities. Story happens in those scenes. We discover things about the characters. In Atonement, we're just checking out a beach.
This is not to say there are no British directors who have an amazing eye. Sadly, they're often not lauded in the UK and their careers stall. My favourite British style-genius of the past decade, Lynne Ramsay, created two distinctive and brilliant films, almost got to adapt The Lovely Bones, and then disappeared to work on un-named projects. Garth Jennings has spent so long making Son of Rambow made and promoted that he doesn't even seem to have anything else in the pipeline. Michael Winterbottom once made movies I couldn't wait to see, though that has sadly changed over time. Peter Greenaway buggered off to the Netherlands a while back and his movies retreated to the kind of Matthew-Barney-esque obscurity they always should have had, that weird successful period back in the 80s notwithstanding. We're still waiting for the next movie by the wonderful Pawel Pawlikowski. Terence Malick is now more prolific than he is, shockingly enough.
Many other UK directors who understand what to do with a camera (to varying degrees) have hopped over to America as soon as they could; Paul Greengrass, Martin Campbell, Edgar Wright, Roger Michell, Mike Newell, Stephen Frears, Kevin MacDonald, Pete Travis, etc. etc. The other conspicuous style-addict in British cinema, who won an Best Director Oscar this year and whose name I'm sick of reading everywhere, is probably going to spend some time in Hollywood making worthy films for a while. In fact, the only British director who wants to keep filming in the UK is Neil Marshall, bless him. His next film, Centurion, already sounds unmissable.
Still, I'm surprised Billson doesn't mention the Scott Brothers, as they are surely two of the most influential directors of the past twenty years even if they have made movies that many people consider beneath contempt. Their style has been adapted and ripped-off more than almost any other filmmakers around; surely that's something the patriotic UK film buff can be pleased about. That said, I can understand why she doesn't mention other style-heavy filmmakers from the same background (i.e. advertising), such as Alan Parker and Adrian Lyne, who barely have a good film between them.
Sadly for the UK, Ridley and Tony Scott stayed away while their films became more interesting (Tony Scott had a run of fun action movies in the early 90s, and Ridley makes a lot of flat but ambitious films I feel compelled to see, such as Kingdom of Heaven and Black Hawk Down), and Alan Parker came back to run the UK Film Council. Disastrous. It would have been the worst of all worlds if Adrian Lyne had made anything in the last seven years. I will never forgive him for his disastrous adaptation of Lolita, which remains one of the five worst films of the decade. Yes, worse than Fatal Attraction, Nine and a Half Weeks, and Indecent Proposal glommed together into a big lump of misogynistic Silly Putty, and then bounced off our eyeballs for over two hours. The man is a menace to society.
Why am I dragging up all of this bile? Because last week I saw possibly my favourite British movie of the last ten years, and what's most horrible is that I don't think Billson would like it, primarily because it's not that visual. More on that tomorrow...
ETA: And by "tomorrow" I of course meant two days from now...
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Coming (or Not Coming) in 2009: Part 2
Part two of my posts looking at the films that should show up at the major film festivals in 2009 focuses on the rest of Europe. I'm the first to admit my francophile bias in reducing over thirty countries to the same space I devoted to France. Again, feel free to check my previous posts about the Berlinale, where I've already mentioned new films from Lukas Moodysson, Sally Potter, Costa-Gavras, Stephen Frears, Hans-Christian Schmid and Theo Angelopoulos.
There are several reasons to be excited for Pedro Almodóvar's latest film Los abrazos rotos [Broken Embraces]. For starters, the two-time Oscar winner has been on a hot streak ever since All About My Mother [Todo sobre mi madre]. Then, you've got Penélope Cruz, whose turn in the director's Volver changed my ambivalence about her into absolute adoration, and she's playing two roles! And if that weren't enough, Rossy de Palma is back in her first film with the director in fourteen years. Rounding out the rest of the cast is Lola Dueñas (who played Cruz's sister in Volver), Chus Lampreave (a constant in Almodóvar's films), Ángela Molina (That Obscure Object of Desire [Cet obscur objet du désir]) and Lluís Homar (Bad Education [La mala educación]). Broken Embraces hits theatres in Spain on 18 March, followed by a very likely showing at Cannes in May (Volver previously won a collective Best Actress prize) and a US release from Sony Pictures Classics beginning in November.
After reportedly being fired from directing The Lovely Bones (now being done by Peter Jackson), it looks like Lynne Ramsay's next project is to be an adaptation of Lionel Shriver's novel We Need to Talk About Kevin. There's talk around the Internet that her script is fabulous, and though I've found little information about the project as a whole, I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that the film will be ready sometime this year. It's been seven years since Morvern Callar...
Andrew Grant posted earlier this week that one-third of Lars von Trier's latest Antichrist, a horror film which stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, will screen at Berlinale for distributors (likely American ones as the film has distribution already in just about every European country). The earliest release date I have for the film is 19 August in France through Les Films du Losange.
After that disastrous Funny Games remake, Michael Haneke has returned to Austria for Das weiße Band [The White Tape or the Teacher's Tale]. Originally intended as another collaboration with late actor Ulrich Mühe, the film now stars Susanne Lothar who was in the director's The Castle [Das Schloß], Funny Games and The Piano Teacher [La pianiste] and Ulrich Tukur (The Lives of Others [Das Leben der Anderen], Amen.). Les Films du Losange will release the film in France on 21 October; no word yet on a US release.
Werner Herzog will follow up his first Oscar nomination (for Encounters at the End of the World) with Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which according to the director has nothing to do with the Abel Ferrara film. The IMDb reports the film is in post-production, but I have no information further than that. It stars Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Fairuza Balk, Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dourif and Xzibit.
I can't seem to find a lot about Béla Tarr's latest film (reportedly his last) A Torinói ló [The Turin Horse]. I'll post more when I come across it.
It seems to be up in the air whether Paul Verhoeven's The Winter Queen, the project he was doing with Milla Jovovich that was put on hold when she got pregnant, is still going to be made. There's also a lot of talk about Verhoeven directing the sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair (the remake). I hope we found out soon what he's up to.
Paul Greengrass' new film Green Zone re-teams the director with Matt Damon, although there's still talks about another Bourne film in the works. Green Zone will be released by Universal later this year, likely around the holiday season; Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs, Brendan Gleeson and Greg Kinnear also star.
Ken Loach's Looking for Eric will be released on 12 June in the UK from Icon. The film is about footy player Eric Cantona, who plays himself. Look for it to possibly debut at Cannes, as Loach won the Palme d'Or in 2006 for The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
A new thriller by director Ole Bornedal (Nightwatch [Nattevagten], Just Another Love Story [Kærlighed på film]) entitled Fri os dra det onde, which loosely translates to Deliver Us from Evil in English, will be out in Denmark on 29 March. No word on a release outside of its native country yet.
Philip Ridley (The Reflecting Skin, The Passion of Darkly Noon) returns to the screen this year with Heartless, which stars Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe), Clémence Poésy (In Bruges), Timothy Spall, Eddie Marsan (Happy-Go-Lucky), Noel Clarke (Kidulthood) and Luke Treadaway (Brothers of the Head). In Interview Magazine, he said he hopes to screen the film at Cannes this year.
Andrea Arnold's second feature film, after Red Road, is called Fish Tank, co-produced by Kees Kasander who has worked with Peter Greenaway for most of his career. Fish Tank stars Michael Fassbender (Hunger) and Harry Treadaway (the other brother in Brothers of the Head) and will likely make its debut at Cannes. Artificial Eye holds the UK rights.
Speaking of Arnold, the second installment of the Advance Party film series, entitled Rounding Up Donkeys, will be released sometime this year. Kate Dickie and Martin Compston are the only cast members listed on the IMDb. Rounding Up Donkeys will be the feature debut for Morag McKinnon, whose short Birthday appears on Cinema 16's British Short Films DVD.
Isabel Coixet's latest Map of the Sounds of Tokyo stars Rinko Kikuchi and Sergi López and should be out sometime later this year.
A 18 December release is set for Alejandro Amenábar's new film Agora, a big-budget historical epic set in Egypt and starring Rachel Weisz. Agora, a Spanish/American co-production, will be Amenábar's first film since winning the Oscar for The Sea Inside [Mar adentro]. The film should be out in Spain sometime in September.
After seeing Mother of Tears, how could you not be excited for Dario Argento's new film? No dates have been set for Giallo, which suffered numerous cast changes after Asia Argento, Vincent Gallo (who was not too pleased to be working alongside Ms. Argento) and Ray Liotta, but it is currently in post-production. Adrien Brody and Emmanuelle Seigner star.
Danis Tanovic, the Oscar-winning director of No Man's Land, directs his first English-language film, entitled Triage. Colin Farrell, Christopher Lee, Paz Vega, Kelly Reilly and Juliet Stevenson star. Canal Plus will release the film in France later this year and no word on a US release.
Colin Farrell will also star in Neil Jordan's latest Ondine, which also stars Stephen Rea. The fantasy film about a mermaid has no release date set.
Nikita Mikhalkov is currently working on a sequel to Burnt by the Sun, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1995 as well as the Grand Prix at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. I don't know anything further.
The new film from Dagur Kári (Noi, the Albino), The Good Heart, will reunite Brian Cox with Paul Dano, who previously starred together in Michael Cuesta's L.I.E., alongside Isild Le Besco.
Lech Majewski (Garden of Earthly Delights) is currently filming The Mill and the Cross with Charlotte Rampling, Michael York and Rutger Hauer. We'll see if it's finished in time for the fall fests.
The latest film from Julio Medem (Sex and Lucía [Lucía y el sexo]) Habitación en Roma [Room in Rome] will be a variation on Matías Bize's En la cama, according to Variety. The English-language film will star Elena Anaya, Najwa Nimri, Enrico Lo Verso (Hannibal) and newcomer Natasha Yarovenko. Anaya and Nimri both co-starred in Lucía.
And finally, in my French post, I neglected to mention Cédric Kahn's new film Regrets which stars Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Yvan Attal. Mars Distribution will be releasing it in France on 8 April.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Adventures In Awesome: Want! Now! (4)
While wasting time farting about on AV Club last night, the subject of Brasseye and The Day Today came up during a discussion of UK comedy, as it usually does. Understandable, considering the massive effect it had on pretty much everyone who saw it and clasped it to their bosom. Even though it was broadcast over a decade ago, I can't think of any other UK comedy that has come close to that level of brilliance except The Thick Of It. Don't get me wrong, I have loved many shows made since then; Father Ted and Black Books, The Office, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Big Train, and Outnumbered spring to mind immediately, and my DVDs of those shows comprise almost the entirety of my UK TV collection amid swathes of US boxsets. Even so, none of those shows have had the same effect on me as Chris Morris' work. Here is the great man hanging around at CERN, which he apparently visited recently.
During the AV Club chat, I remembered the radio predecessor to The Day Today; On The Hour, four episodes of which had previously been released by the BBC. My cassette copy bit the dust a while back from overuse, leaving me bereft. But now my pain is over. Inspired by that seemingly pointless chat, a quick search revealed that I had been horribly oblivious to Warp Records' release of the complete On The Hour in two CD boxsets (and on iTunes).
My life is a little more complete now. Finally I can find out what happened to Alan Partridge and his zombie wife after all these years (On The Hour was possibly even more willing to indulge in flights of fancy than the TV version, which was hobbled by budget restrictions, obviously). This revelation - which is old news to fans, I'm sure - comes after the recent screening of Armando Iannucci's feature debut, In The Loop, the feature version of The Thick of It, at Sundance.
This is probably the movie I'm most excited about this year (and have already gone on about it at length), a fact made even more remarkable by the fact that it's made by BBC Films, who had seemed to have abandoned their boldness (see their previous support for Lynne Ramsay and Pawel Pawlikowski as a kind of proof) in favour of endless costume dramas and literary navel-gazing. A new version of Brideshead Revisited? An out-of-date adaptation of Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road? The love life of Dylan Thomas? It's been a crummy 2008 for them, especially as the other major film investor in the UK, FilmFour, had returned from financial collapse to bring us In Bruges, Hunger, and Slumdog Millionaire. Yes yes, I might not like that film, but it's way more daring than some turgid, poorly-cast adaptation of The Other Boleyn Girl.
Luckily for BBC Films, they now have a roster containing In The Loop, An Education (starring Carey "Sally Sparrow" Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard sans his recent egregious Trigorin beard that he had cultivated for his run in The Seagull), Grant Heslov's directorial debut Men Who Stare At Goats, the Churchill-tastic Into The Storm, Bright Star (yes, a historical drama about literary figures, but it's by Jane Campion so I'm bound to be interested), Martin Campbell's remake of his rightly celebrated Edge of Darkness, and Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, which will hopefully be as good as her excellent feature debut Red Road. Fair to say things are looking up. Those first two movies, Loop and Education, have been shown at Sundance, and according to Storyville editor Nick Fraser and Indie journo Gaynor Flynn, they have been rapturously embraced by audiences. It's rare that I endorse UK culture on this blog, but when it's promising, or distinct, or truly wonderful, it needs to be praised to the highest of high heavens.
During the AV Club chat, I remembered the radio predecessor to The Day Today; On The Hour, four episodes of which had previously been released by the BBC. My cassette copy bit the dust a while back from overuse, leaving me bereft. But now my pain is over. Inspired by that seemingly pointless chat, a quick search revealed that I had been horribly oblivious to Warp Records' release of the complete On The Hour in two CD boxsets (and on iTunes).
My life is a little more complete now. Finally I can find out what happened to Alan Partridge and his zombie wife after all these years (On The Hour was possibly even more willing to indulge in flights of fancy than the TV version, which was hobbled by budget restrictions, obviously). This revelation - which is old news to fans, I'm sure - comes after the recent screening of Armando Iannucci's feature debut, In The Loop, the feature version of The Thick of It, at Sundance.
This is probably the movie I'm most excited about this year (and have already gone on about it at length), a fact made even more remarkable by the fact that it's made by BBC Films, who had seemed to have abandoned their boldness (see their previous support for Lynne Ramsay and Pawel Pawlikowski as a kind of proof) in favour of endless costume dramas and literary navel-gazing. A new version of Brideshead Revisited? An out-of-date adaptation of Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road? The love life of Dylan Thomas? It's been a crummy 2008 for them, especially as the other major film investor in the UK, FilmFour, had returned from financial collapse to bring us In Bruges, Hunger, and Slumdog Millionaire. Yes yes, I might not like that film, but it's way more daring than some turgid, poorly-cast adaptation of The Other Boleyn Girl.
Luckily for BBC Films, they now have a roster containing In The Loop, An Education (starring Carey "Sally Sparrow" Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard sans his recent egregious Trigorin beard that he had cultivated for his run in The Seagull), Grant Heslov's directorial debut Men Who Stare At Goats, the Churchill-tastic Into The Storm, Bright Star (yes, a historical drama about literary figures, but it's by Jane Campion so I'm bound to be interested), Martin Campbell's remake of his rightly celebrated Edge of Darkness, and Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, which will hopefully be as good as her excellent feature debut Red Road. Fair to say things are looking up. Those first two movies, Loop and Education, have been shown at Sundance, and according to Storyville editor Nick Fraser and Indie journo Gaynor Flynn, they have been rapturously embraced by audiences. It's rare that I endorse UK culture on this blog, but when it's promising, or distinct, or truly wonderful, it needs to be praised to the highest of high heavens.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Happiness Is A Warm Gun
As I said on Tuesday, it's Anger Week here on the international network of computer people (abbr. InterNetComPeeps), and on that day I figured I should offer an alternate perspective by jumping up and down on the spot about yet another book about how the Republicans have spent the past eight years secretly carving chunks out of the planet so that it resembles a big Space Dollar Sign. Though these books are ten a penny, if they're written by Thomas Frank they are essential reading. His humour and intelligence set them apart from the rest.
However, seeing posters for Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky in almost every Tube station in London (that I have visited), it has now become too much effort to appear jolly or attempt to hold off the tidal wave of heated commentary and subsequent opprobrium that has replaced the internet's usual blend of celebrity schadenfreude, leaked pictures from Transformerators 2, and George W. Bush blooper updates.
Time to add a little drop of Grouch Juice to the ocean that is the internet. A couple of weeks ago we were unfortunate enough to watch Happy-Go-Lucky (which is coming to DVD in the UK next week and opening in the US soon), and though I will admit we were watching it on a flight that was running nearly two hours late, with the seats in front of us pulled so far back they were almost inside our heads, and the air conditioning drying my eyes out so much they squeaked when I blinked, I'd like to think that I was still able to objectively assess Leigh's experiment in testing audience patience to destruction.
I may have said in my overlong Dark Knight post that seeing it in such uplifting conditions may have influenced my feelings towards it, but I've enjoyed several movies in similarly cramped and unpleasant circumstances, such as Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence, Breach, Kung Fu Hustle, and, on the last two transatlantic flights I've taken, The Brave One and The Spiderwick Chronicles. Chronicles in particular is a beautiful movie, with autumnal colours lovingly captured by Godlike Genius Caleb Deschanel, and the intricate detailing on Phil Tippett's character designs apparent even on a tiny screen, so Dick Pope's bright photography was going to be perfectly fine.
I've sat through some stinkers on planes too, but nothing of the magnitude of Happy-Go-Lucky. I can sit through real dreck, really dire films made by people with no understanding of how to tell a story or approach a subject from a new and interesting perspective, and merely shrug. Happy-Go-Lucky, on the other hand, might not be as bad as Cassandra's Dream or the flabbergasting 21 (a film that is 100% recycled and utterly dishonest), but it made me angrier than any movie I've seen in a long time. Yes, even angrier than Southland Tales.
It seems pointless to give a rundown of the minimal plot, which is summed up with pith at IMDb, but it's worth looking at several key scenes. The movie follows the adventures of a primary school teacher called Poppy, whose relentless upbeat twitterings are exhibited in the first few minutes as she parks her bike outside a bookshop, wanders in, makes insipid, content-free comments to the shop owner (who is either rude and dismissive or probably busy doing something and unhappy to have someone come in and ruin his concentration, depending on your interpretation of the scene), and finally walks out to find her bike gone. Her response? "Oh, I never got to say goodbye!" This, my friends, is not the reaction of a sane person.
I'm not saying looking on the bright side of life is not a healthy way of approaching this setback. I'm saying that the human being, built as it is, would react to the theft with a mixture of emotions, the majority of which would be negative, and not a sentimental anthropomorphisation of the lost object. To react like that instead of being flushed with anger that someone had made a conscious decision to steal an object that belonged to you, with all of the feelings of frustration, disappointment, and violation that go along with that anger, would take a conscious effort to suppress those negative emotions which, as I'm sure anyone who reads this post will have experienced, flash up instantly with no cognitive effort involved. If Leigh is saying we should replace those feelings with acceptance, then I agree, it almost certainly is healthier than stewing over it indefinitely, but if he is saying we should never feel like the nasty feelings and must suppress them immediately, he doesn't understand human beings, and is touting a pure fantasy, and a cloying one at that. In fact, he does say that explicitly.
Thankfully he then follows that up by admitting he also shares character traits with Scott, the furious driving instructor, otherwise I would have to think of him as some kind of saint. In a revealing Guardian Q&A that I shall be going back to later in this post which has expanded way out of control like a big blob of Oobleck, host Sarfraz Manzoor asks:
Beyond his snippiness (yes, the audience laughed, but the rest of the interview features other instances of him losing his patience with his adoring fans), and his ignorance of those hateful columnist scum mentioned by Manzoor, which must be a joke, the fact that he says there is nothing you can do about having your bike stolen startles me. You could report it to the police, obviously. Will that get results? Almost certainly not. Will it be a waste of your time? Very probably. However, we're talking about the loss of property, the violation of your space by some ne'er-do-well, and you're just supposed to shrug it off? Though I understand that forgiveness is far healthier than seething over a slight and becoming a bitter jerk (I speak from experience), doing nothing is a dereliction of your duties to yourself and those around you. Though the odds are against the return of your property, there is still some chance your actions following the theft will generate some chain of events that might be beneficial to many, not just yourself. Perhaps Leigh thinks this because, oh well, it's just a bike. If you can afford to just lose one, congratulations. How about if your car was stolen? Or your house broken into and an item of personal significance was taken? What about if Leigh finished a movie and the only print of it got stolen? Would he shrug then?
As for the later points he makes after fronting on Manzoor, he admits to making Poppy hard to like in those opening scenes. In this interview he reiterates the point that Poppy is meant to be irritating at first, and he succeeded at that by making her seem like a parody of a human whose personality is one step away from some awful form of mental aberration, but finding her lovable by the end of the movie? I think not. Here is the trailer. If this annoys you, avoid avoid avoid.
We're not the only ones driven to distraction by Poppy, played, by Sally Hawkins, with an impressive method dedication that eradicates every vestige of actual humanity from the character. While the majority of press and user reviews appear to have fallen under her spell, there are still some, like us, who were of the totally opposite opinion. Many of Poppy's exploits drove us to paroxysms of fist-clenching fury, and if that wasn't bad enough, Leigh throws in a few more caricatures for good measure, my least favourite being her older sister Helen (played by Caroline Martin). Settled down and pregnant, lumbered with a mortgage and immature husband (this immaturity expressed as a wish to play on his Playstation, a machine that is demonised throughout as if responsible for the dreadful state of The Youth Of Today), Helen is quite obviously miserable, and takes this out on Poppy.
In one of the most poorly performed and written scenes of the year, the sister needles Poppy with talk of babies and mortgages and responsibility and growing up, talking of them as duties that all adults must face. When Poppy laughs that off and says she's perfectly happy as she is, her sister screeches, "You don't have to rub it in!" and storms out of the room. Thank you, Mike Leigh and his repertory of actors, for illuminating the malaise of those who follow the mandatory rules of life laid down by The Man in such elegant and eye-opening terms. It is truly a lesson I would have to have been in some kind of suspended animation to have not absorbed. This is the great British artist Mike Leigh at work? I could have sworn it was an amateur dramatics group run by pre-teens.
That angered me enough, but the final scene was the one that, in retrospect, irked me the most. As the anti-plot reaches its natural denouement, Poppy realises that her driving instructor Scott (an excellent performance from Eddie Marsan) has been stalking her, his addled, paranoid brain unable to see that her depthless chirpiness is an automatic and unthinking state of mind and not a come-on. He rails against her for "leading him on", Marsan's performance lending conviction to a pretty basic speech, not helped by his character seemingly being a lazily constructed (but brilliantly performed) hybrid of the unpleasant men played by David Thewlis in Naked and Mark Benton in Career Girls. Though I was glad something had finally happened, and was pleased to see what seemed to be some reflection in Poppy as she ponders his reaction to her personality. Sadly, after about 30 seconds of shots of Poppy looking ruminative, the film ends on her reverting to type, merrily rowing a boat with her equally silly flatmate and blithering on about her usual content-free nonsense, unchanged and determinedly jolly to the last oompah-oompah drenched frame.
Before I continue to discuss the movie in Shouty Mode, I have to address the opinion of its many fans. Lots of people have been warmed and uplifted by the film, and of course that's great for them, and it makes me happy to know others are happy. Obviously. However, critics of the movie have been painted as unduly negative and riven with fashionable cynicism, nothing more than cranky-pants who have forgotten the simple pleasures in life. Daring to suggest that the film is muddled, poorly made, vapid, cloying and pointless is considered evidence of a malfunction of the joy chips that Leigh and Hawkins have kickstarted in the rest of the audience. While I will admit to a mostly negative worldview, and a personality that just last night Canyon compared to Cartman (it was his rant against Family Guy that triggered the comparison, though I wish I had been able to articulate my feelings for that show so eloquently), I am capable of joy, and sometimes my critical faculties can be so overwhelmed by the experience of a work of art or popular culture that I turn into a leaping, gurning Poppy-esque parody of a human being.
Disliking Happy-Go-Lucky and the character of Poppy might well be a matter of personal taste and disposition, but that doesn't mean I can't have an objective, unemotional response to her and the movie as well. Though I'm a believer in a lot of what McKee says about story structure, I'm not so firmly wedded to it that I blindly think all stories have to follow some formula to be considered artistically valid. Happy-Go-Lucky might start with what could be seen as an inciting incident (the theft of her bike), and it might feature a showdown with an antagonist who exactly mirrors her, but otherwise the plot, such as it is, meanders back and forth, sometimes for little apparent reason. Again, though I could see little point in that other than the possibility that Leigh was being purposely obstreperous, it's certainly not a strike against the film.
However, Poppy's ultimate reaction to Scott's meltdown, to ponder it for a couple of minutes before blithely returning to her default position of chirpy simpleton, was a step too far. Once more, I'll stress that the antagonist doesn't necessarily have to learn a lesson at the end of a movie, or undergo much in the way of change, but it certainly helps, and doesn't have to be a big, "My God, this adventure has shown me how to love!" revelation either. What Poppy does is remain the same throughout, even when faced with evidence that her behaviour, innocent though it may seem, might have a negative impact on the world. Scott's psychosis is certainly not Poppy's fault, but a moment of reflection earlier on in the story might have shown her that purposely goading the man, making unfunny quips, and ignoring his instructions - the instructions of a very volatile man who is excessively anal about the following of said instructions and has shown a propensity for intemperate flashes of hostility - would eventually lead to a confrontation. She also upsets her sister, disrupts a flamenco class, and generally pesters people who are just trying to go about their day without being hassled by a hippy with a mouthful of witless, useless banalities.
Some fans of the film have commented on Poppy's wisdom, but I saw very little evidence of this. Again, I'll stress that Poppy doesn't have to learn. That said, surely an actual human being would finally realise upon being confronted by Scott that having a happy outlook is one thing, but having blundered along, oblivious to the consequences of a persona that might be negative as often as it is positive, is an entirely different matter, just as the expression of any other personality type would potentially have a range of consequences between positive and negative. That she laughs it all off as less than an inconvenience shows monstrous arrogance on the part of Leigh. We're being asked to side with someone who is oblivious to the feelings of those around her, other than to note that they are different from hers and must be altered immediately, preferably through the insistent and reflexive use of trivial, wit-free quips and cloying, unthinking platitudes. How is this laudable? I'm all for a bit of cheering up now and again, but if this half-wit tried to make me smile with her eye-rolling and intrusive questioning I would be calling the constabulary in a trice.
Such an confounding ending and ultimately impenetrable character reminds me of the far superior Morvern Callar, with Samantha Morton at the height of her power as the blank and amoral eponymous heroine. However, whereas Poppy is compelled to interact with everyone she meets, Morvern is utterly uninterested in the world, preferring to grab any advantage life gives her while hiding from almost all interaction, ears filled with headphones, becoming little more than a self-sufficient anonymous clubber on the continent. She's a perfect encapsulation of modern isolationist tendencies in some anti-social section of The Youth Of Today, and remains an enigma even after repeated viewings (or readings). Though I think Hawkins deserves praise for her total commitment to the role, on an aesthetic level I'd much rather watch Morton's icy, enigmatic performance than sit through the endurance test that is Happy-Go-Lucky. Morvern Callar is a true work of art by a true artist, one who is sadly undervalued.
Now that I think about it, Lynne Ramsay's movie is the perfect antidote to the forced chirpiness of Leigh's film, with its perplexing and compelling main character. Plus, that soundtrack, inspired by the tracklistings contained within Alan Warner's remarkable book, is a lot better than the upbeat comedy farty noises that pass for a score in Happy-Go-Lucky. Can + Boards of Canada + Lee Hazlewood > random cloying hurdy-gurdy any day of the week. I wish it had been on Virgin Atlantic's roster of films so that I could cleanse my mental palette.
Just as Morvern Callar appears to be a character study of a person whose motives and emotions are as mysterious to us at the end of the movie as they are at the start, Happy-Go-Lucky could be taken merely as a portrait of an alien being, the eternal optimist, a Pangloss wearing lipgloss, a hypothetical state of mind given form but no reason just to show what would happen if someone had a brain malfunction that made them perpetually chirpy.
There's even an argument that the movie is a study of psychosis. If I were to be uncharitable about her, which I intend to be, Poppy certainly seemed to be unhinged, being unable to comprehend the consequences of her actions or the ramifications of things that happen to her, like a sociopath overdosing on Prozac. Scott is paranoid, racist, and so socially stunted by his own self-loathing that he cannot understand what others are thinking. Leigh has had characters like this in his movies before, so there's a possibility he thinks all men (of a certain class and background, which I will charitably leave hanging in the air for fear of offending his fans) are prone to fantasising about women and/or the Illuminati, but I'm willing to grant that he does think this behaviour is evidence of mental health issues and not just what men are like (Neil LaBute, take note).
The tramp that Poppy meets midway through the movie, in a scene that many people thought was superfluous, is another broken human who cannot function in society. It's debatable that Poppy's attempts to communicate with the tramp are successful, which is a good thing. Having her even partially cure him would turn it from a character study into a weird Camden-based messiah tale. Poppy heals the sick and teaches man and woman to embrace happiness! I would have hated to see her Sermon on the Mount, filled as it would be with tic-like eye-rolling, reflexive chuckling, and exhortations to just cheer up, it might never 'appen, innit! We can be grateful for small mercies.
However, though that alternate interpretation is a potentially interesting take on what is otherwise a Sesame Street song about happiness dragged out to feature length, I'm unsure about whether Leigh really is trying to paint a picture of what a fractured, unfriendly society has done to us and the differing ways our brains have tried to cope with it, as only a handful of characters show any signs of mental malfunction. That is, unless you add Poppy's elder sister and husband, who have turned their back on pure anarchic, heedless joy for that most poisonous of mind afflictions, Leigh's pet peeve since Abigail's Party, class-jumping aspiration! Look at them in their grotty suburban home, with their grotty suburban mortgage, arguing about Playstations and resisting Poppy's stream of unconsciousness which would save them from their pit of misery! Burn the bastards at the stake!
These alternate explanations, giving Leigh the benefit of the doubt, might work if Leigh didn't insist on claiming that Poppy's manner was admirable. While I am not so desensitised by playing Grand Theft Automatic on my Gamebox and listening to that modern Gangster Ramp stuff with the witches and ho-bags that I can't see the benefit of maintaining a brighter outlook, Poppy's blinkered viewpoint is not an option anyone should consider. Being a flighty gurning happiness machine might work out okay if you're a primary school teacher, but I don't want a policeman or a doctor to be incapable of serious interaction.
And yes, I appreciate she does have the nous to recognise evidence of abuse in a bullying child, but whereas many critics have pointed this out as evidence of a greater wisdom and maturity in Poppy than we had previously assumed, it's not backed up by any other displays of seriousness anywhere else in the movie, and tends to suggest it was slotted in as a means to prove her capacity to be high-functioning and capable of constructive compassion, as a pre-emptive riposte to arguments that she's just a halfwit who doesn't understand the hardships and cruelties of the world. Even if I bite, and accept that, she's still reckless and thoughtless in other contexts, as I complained earlier, like the miserable life-hating bastard I am.
Plus, the other alternative explanation for that scene is that Leigh added it so that she could meet someone in a professional manner who she could have a cloying and sappy relationship with, the alternative being meeting someone at one of the nightclubs she goes to with her raucous friends, which Leigh would never have countenanced for fear of making Poppy seem like one of those tawdry working class hussies having a drunken shag like the Daily Mail says they do. And hey, Leigh surely wouldn't want to come across as someone making uncharitable comments about entire classes of people that are dissimilar to his own, now would he.
Of the many comments Leigh has made about the film, the one I find the most interesting is this, from that Telegraph article linked to earlier:
Ignoring the fact that I don't think the human race has become so suicidal and reckless that it has decided not to even bother teaching kids anymore, thus making anyone who decides to do it part of some dying breed, the movie does hint at some interest in exploring what education is, and Scott has some things to say about it that, when stripped of their crazy conspiracy trappings, might amount to a rare moment of insight, but I do think a lot of his grumbling about modern education concerns gaming and gadgetry, and how kids are reacting to them. There are numerous other problems with modern education beyond that, which is the sort of feeble argument trotted out by the handbag-clutching readers of the Mail who have no understanding of what the technological age can offer. There is a place for Leigh's Ye Olde Worlde thinking, and I would never argue it doesn't. However, saying "those games is bad for the kids" is not an intellectual position, at least as expressed in Happy-Go-Lucky. There are grave problems with education in England, but lumping the blame almost exclusively on gaming is a dead end, and is intellectually lazy.
Speaking of which, remember the obvious connection I made earlier between Scott and David Thewlis' character Johnny in Naked? As you can imagine, I was not the only one who thought there was a similarity between the biblical rants spouted by both misanthropic characters, and this poor chap tried to ask Leigh about it at a Guardian Q&A.
But how are we supposed to know that? One biblical rant sounds much like another, and never really seem to be connected or unconnected, sounding more like a series of shouty quotes from old books linked in with some contemporary references. Scott sounded no more or less connected than anyone else, and the movie gives no hint that Scott is having a "superficial experience". While many critics and Leigh fans are quick to praise him for his method of generating plot and character by getting his actors together and thrashing out ideas prior to writing a script (though only a few seem to think the actors should get more credit for their contribution, weirdly enough), that process is not available for us to view.
While Leigh can bat away criticisms by commenting on the true feelings of his characters, it seems to me he is not remembering the events of the movie, but remembering the inner life of the characters that he and the actors have constructed. Though I understand the movie is open for interpretation, I can see no evidence in the movie that would lead me to believe what he is saying is correct, and not just a way of avoiding critical comment (or a inaccurately retrieved memory). Even worse than that, his rude comment to this questioner beggars belief. [Italics mine]
There are two options: Leigh is lying and being a bit of a jerk about it, or Leigh and Hawkins really attributed these inner feelings to their creation during rehearsals. If it is the latter, that's perfectly fine, and I'm curious to see the DVD extra that shows them creating Poppy. However, in the film, there is no hint that she is going to mature. Saying that she is and treating his audience like fools for not reading his and Hawkins' minds and understanding that is sheer arrogance. If he wants us to interpret the movie any way we want, let us do that. If not, then don't be so rude about it. Cheer up Mike, it's all gonna be alright in the end, innit? Hur hur.
Still, it was not such a traumatic experience that I have not become immune to happiness in film form. Just yesterday I suddenly remembered my deep and abiding love for Theodore Flicker's satirical hodge-podge The President's Analyst, with James Coburn playing Dr. Sidney Schaefer, on the run from various evil-doers after giving up his job as the psychoanalyst of the President of the United States, and coming across a wide selection of 60s cultural icons, all of which are mercilessly lampooned. Coburn, who could portray joy with more enthusiasm than almost any other actor (and not just because he had an incredibly bright and wide smile) is the perfect person to play the doctor who tunes in and drops out, set free to just go crazy on stage with his beloved gong.
Now that's happiness I can get behind.
However, seeing posters for Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky in almost every Tube station in London (that I have visited), it has now become too much effort to appear jolly or attempt to hold off the tidal wave of heated commentary and subsequent opprobrium that has replaced the internet's usual blend of celebrity schadenfreude, leaked pictures from Transformerators 2, and George W. Bush blooper updates.
Time to add a little drop of Grouch Juice to the ocean that is the internet. A couple of weeks ago we were unfortunate enough to watch Happy-Go-Lucky (which is coming to DVD in the UK next week and opening in the US soon), and though I will admit we were watching it on a flight that was running nearly two hours late, with the seats in front of us pulled so far back they were almost inside our heads, and the air conditioning drying my eyes out so much they squeaked when I blinked, I'd like to think that I was still able to objectively assess Leigh's experiment in testing audience patience to destruction.
I may have said in my overlong Dark Knight post that seeing it in such uplifting conditions may have influenced my feelings towards it, but I've enjoyed several movies in similarly cramped and unpleasant circumstances, such as Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence, Breach, Kung Fu Hustle, and, on the last two transatlantic flights I've taken, The Brave One and The Spiderwick Chronicles. Chronicles in particular is a beautiful movie, with autumnal colours lovingly captured by Godlike Genius Caleb Deschanel, and the intricate detailing on Phil Tippett's character designs apparent even on a tiny screen, so Dick Pope's bright photography was going to be perfectly fine.
I've sat through some stinkers on planes too, but nothing of the magnitude of Happy-Go-Lucky. I can sit through real dreck, really dire films made by people with no understanding of how to tell a story or approach a subject from a new and interesting perspective, and merely shrug. Happy-Go-Lucky, on the other hand, might not be as bad as Cassandra's Dream or the flabbergasting 21 (a film that is 100% recycled and utterly dishonest), but it made me angrier than any movie I've seen in a long time. Yes, even angrier than Southland Tales.
It seems pointless to give a rundown of the minimal plot, which is summed up with pith at IMDb, but it's worth looking at several key scenes. The movie follows the adventures of a primary school teacher called Poppy, whose relentless upbeat twitterings are exhibited in the first few minutes as she parks her bike outside a bookshop, wanders in, makes insipid, content-free comments to the shop owner (who is either rude and dismissive or probably busy doing something and unhappy to have someone come in and ruin his concentration, depending on your interpretation of the scene), and finally walks out to find her bike gone. Her response? "Oh, I never got to say goodbye!" This, my friends, is not the reaction of a sane person.
I'm not saying looking on the bright side of life is not a healthy way of approaching this setback. I'm saying that the human being, built as it is, would react to the theft with a mixture of emotions, the majority of which would be negative, and not a sentimental anthropomorphisation of the lost object. To react like that instead of being flushed with anger that someone had made a conscious decision to steal an object that belonged to you, with all of the feelings of frustration, disappointment, and violation that go along with that anger, would take a conscious effort to suppress those negative emotions which, as I'm sure anyone who reads this post will have experienced, flash up instantly with no cognitive effort involved. If Leigh is saying we should replace those feelings with acceptance, then I agree, it almost certainly is healthier than stewing over it indefinitely, but if he is saying we should never feel like the nasty feelings and must suppress them immediately, he doesn't understand human beings, and is touting a pure fantasy, and a cloying one at that. In fact, he does say that explicitly.
Q. How much of Poppy’s happy-go-lucky philosophy do you take on yourself? If someone stole your bike, would you shrug your shoulders?
Mike Leigh: Oh, yeah actually I suppose I would if I’m honest. If they’ve nicked something, there you go basically. What are you going to do about it? But I wouldn’t want to make too much of that.
Thankfully he then follows that up by admitting he also shares character traits with Scott, the furious driving instructor, otherwise I would have to think of him as some kind of saint. In a revealing Guardian Q&A that I shall be going back to later in this post which has expanded way out of control like a big blob of Oobleck, host Sarfraz Manzoor asks:
SM: I found Poppy slightly annoying at the beginning - sort of unnecessarily and overly perky. Even when her bike gets stolen that doesn't faze her.
ML: Why is that "unnecessarily, overly perky"? She's cool, philosophical. The bike gets nicked, but what else can you do about it, life goes on. So defend your statement.
[Audience laughs]
SM: Initially, I thought she came across as a bit one-note - as in she's perky and nothing fazes her. But over the course of the film, she does become more complicated and reveals different levels.
ML: As far as I'm concerned, you could be forgiven, especially with the scene where they've gone clubbing and they're being silly having had a few drinks, you could be forgiven for thinking at that point, "Can I actually spend a couple of hours with this person?"
SM: You almost agree with me then?
ML: I am agreeing, but I'm saying that it's pretty much straight away that you start to get the hang of what she's actually about, and I don't think there's any real reason to go on thinking that [she's one-note]. When she gets into the car with Scott - I mean, he's so ludicrous that she just deals with it, her sense of humour takes over.
SM: He's a fascinating character - he comes across as somebody who's just a joke but ends up like the love-child of Richard Littlejohn and Melanie Phillips.
ML: I don't know them.
SM: Probably better off that way.
Beyond his snippiness (yes, the audience laughed, but the rest of the interview features other instances of him losing his patience with his adoring fans), and his ignorance of those hateful columnist scum mentioned by Manzoor, which must be a joke, the fact that he says there is nothing you can do about having your bike stolen startles me. You could report it to the police, obviously. Will that get results? Almost certainly not. Will it be a waste of your time? Very probably. However, we're talking about the loss of property, the violation of your space by some ne'er-do-well, and you're just supposed to shrug it off? Though I understand that forgiveness is far healthier than seething over a slight and becoming a bitter jerk (I speak from experience), doing nothing is a dereliction of your duties to yourself and those around you. Though the odds are against the return of your property, there is still some chance your actions following the theft will generate some chain of events that might be beneficial to many, not just yourself. Perhaps Leigh thinks this because, oh well, it's just a bike. If you can afford to just lose one, congratulations. How about if your car was stolen? Or your house broken into and an item of personal significance was taken? What about if Leigh finished a movie and the only print of it got stolen? Would he shrug then?
As for the later points he makes after fronting on Manzoor, he admits to making Poppy hard to like in those opening scenes. In this interview he reiterates the point that Poppy is meant to be irritating at first, and he succeeded at that by making her seem like a parody of a human whose personality is one step away from some awful form of mental aberration, but finding her lovable by the end of the movie? I think not. Here is the trailer. If this annoys you, avoid avoid avoid.
We're not the only ones driven to distraction by Poppy, played, by Sally Hawkins, with an impressive method dedication that eradicates every vestige of actual humanity from the character. While the majority of press and user reviews appear to have fallen under her spell, there are still some, like us, who were of the totally opposite opinion. Many of Poppy's exploits drove us to paroxysms of fist-clenching fury, and if that wasn't bad enough, Leigh throws in a few more caricatures for good measure, my least favourite being her older sister Helen (played by Caroline Martin). Settled down and pregnant, lumbered with a mortgage and immature husband (this immaturity expressed as a wish to play on his Playstation, a machine that is demonised throughout as if responsible for the dreadful state of The Youth Of Today), Helen is quite obviously miserable, and takes this out on Poppy.
In one of the most poorly performed and written scenes of the year, the sister needles Poppy with talk of babies and mortgages and responsibility and growing up, talking of them as duties that all adults must face. When Poppy laughs that off and says she's perfectly happy as she is, her sister screeches, "You don't have to rub it in!" and storms out of the room. Thank you, Mike Leigh and his repertory of actors, for illuminating the malaise of those who follow the mandatory rules of life laid down by The Man in such elegant and eye-opening terms. It is truly a lesson I would have to have been in some kind of suspended animation to have not absorbed. This is the great British artist Mike Leigh at work? I could have sworn it was an amateur dramatics group run by pre-teens.
That angered me enough, but the final scene was the one that, in retrospect, irked me the most. As the anti-plot reaches its natural denouement, Poppy realises that her driving instructor Scott (an excellent performance from Eddie Marsan) has been stalking her, his addled, paranoid brain unable to see that her depthless chirpiness is an automatic and unthinking state of mind and not a come-on. He rails against her for "leading him on", Marsan's performance lending conviction to a pretty basic speech, not helped by his character seemingly being a lazily constructed (but brilliantly performed) hybrid of the unpleasant men played by David Thewlis in Naked and Mark Benton in Career Girls. Though I was glad something had finally happened, and was pleased to see what seemed to be some reflection in Poppy as she ponders his reaction to her personality. Sadly, after about 30 seconds of shots of Poppy looking ruminative, the film ends on her reverting to type, merrily rowing a boat with her equally silly flatmate and blithering on about her usual content-free nonsense, unchanged and determinedly jolly to the last oompah-oompah drenched frame.
Before I continue to discuss the movie in Shouty Mode, I have to address the opinion of its many fans. Lots of people have been warmed and uplifted by the film, and of course that's great for them, and it makes me happy to know others are happy. Obviously. However, critics of the movie have been painted as unduly negative and riven with fashionable cynicism, nothing more than cranky-pants who have forgotten the simple pleasures in life. Daring to suggest that the film is muddled, poorly made, vapid, cloying and pointless is considered evidence of a malfunction of the joy chips that Leigh and Hawkins have kickstarted in the rest of the audience. While I will admit to a mostly negative worldview, and a personality that just last night Canyon compared to Cartman (it was his rant against Family Guy that triggered the comparison, though I wish I had been able to articulate my feelings for that show so eloquently), I am capable of joy, and sometimes my critical faculties can be so overwhelmed by the experience of a work of art or popular culture that I turn into a leaping, gurning Poppy-esque parody of a human being.
Disliking Happy-Go-Lucky and the character of Poppy might well be a matter of personal taste and disposition, but that doesn't mean I can't have an objective, unemotional response to her and the movie as well. Though I'm a believer in a lot of what McKee says about story structure, I'm not so firmly wedded to it that I blindly think all stories have to follow some formula to be considered artistically valid. Happy-Go-Lucky might start with what could be seen as an inciting incident (the theft of her bike), and it might feature a showdown with an antagonist who exactly mirrors her, but otherwise the plot, such as it is, meanders back and forth, sometimes for little apparent reason. Again, though I could see little point in that other than the possibility that Leigh was being purposely obstreperous, it's certainly not a strike against the film.
However, Poppy's ultimate reaction to Scott's meltdown, to ponder it for a couple of minutes before blithely returning to her default position of chirpy simpleton, was a step too far. Once more, I'll stress that the antagonist doesn't necessarily have to learn a lesson at the end of a movie, or undergo much in the way of change, but it certainly helps, and doesn't have to be a big, "My God, this adventure has shown me how to love!" revelation either. What Poppy does is remain the same throughout, even when faced with evidence that her behaviour, innocent though it may seem, might have a negative impact on the world. Scott's psychosis is certainly not Poppy's fault, but a moment of reflection earlier on in the story might have shown her that purposely goading the man, making unfunny quips, and ignoring his instructions - the instructions of a very volatile man who is excessively anal about the following of said instructions and has shown a propensity for intemperate flashes of hostility - would eventually lead to a confrontation. She also upsets her sister, disrupts a flamenco class, and generally pesters people who are just trying to go about their day without being hassled by a hippy with a mouthful of witless, useless banalities.
Some fans of the film have commented on Poppy's wisdom, but I saw very little evidence of this. Again, I'll stress that Poppy doesn't have to learn. That said, surely an actual human being would finally realise upon being confronted by Scott that having a happy outlook is one thing, but having blundered along, oblivious to the consequences of a persona that might be negative as often as it is positive, is an entirely different matter, just as the expression of any other personality type would potentially have a range of consequences between positive and negative. That she laughs it all off as less than an inconvenience shows monstrous arrogance on the part of Leigh. We're being asked to side with someone who is oblivious to the feelings of those around her, other than to note that they are different from hers and must be altered immediately, preferably through the insistent and reflexive use of trivial, wit-free quips and cloying, unthinking platitudes. How is this laudable? I'm all for a bit of cheering up now and again, but if this half-wit tried to make me smile with her eye-rolling and intrusive questioning I would be calling the constabulary in a trice.
Such an confounding ending and ultimately impenetrable character reminds me of the far superior Morvern Callar, with Samantha Morton at the height of her power as the blank and amoral eponymous heroine. However, whereas Poppy is compelled to interact with everyone she meets, Morvern is utterly uninterested in the world, preferring to grab any advantage life gives her while hiding from almost all interaction, ears filled with headphones, becoming little more than a self-sufficient anonymous clubber on the continent. She's a perfect encapsulation of modern isolationist tendencies in some anti-social section of The Youth Of Today, and remains an enigma even after repeated viewings (or readings). Though I think Hawkins deserves praise for her total commitment to the role, on an aesthetic level I'd much rather watch Morton's icy, enigmatic performance than sit through the endurance test that is Happy-Go-Lucky. Morvern Callar is a true work of art by a true artist, one who is sadly undervalued.
Now that I think about it, Lynne Ramsay's movie is the perfect antidote to the forced chirpiness of Leigh's film, with its perplexing and compelling main character. Plus, that soundtrack, inspired by the tracklistings contained within Alan Warner's remarkable book, is a lot better than the upbeat comedy farty noises that pass for a score in Happy-Go-Lucky. Can + Boards of Canada + Lee Hazlewood > random cloying hurdy-gurdy any day of the week. I wish it had been on Virgin Atlantic's roster of films so that I could cleanse my mental palette.
Just as Morvern Callar appears to be a character study of a person whose motives and emotions are as mysterious to us at the end of the movie as they are at the start, Happy-Go-Lucky could be taken merely as a portrait of an alien being, the eternal optimist, a Pangloss wearing lipgloss, a hypothetical state of mind given form but no reason just to show what would happen if someone had a brain malfunction that made them perpetually chirpy.
There's even an argument that the movie is a study of psychosis. If I were to be uncharitable about her, which I intend to be, Poppy certainly seemed to be unhinged, being unable to comprehend the consequences of her actions or the ramifications of things that happen to her, like a sociopath overdosing on Prozac. Scott is paranoid, racist, and so socially stunted by his own self-loathing that he cannot understand what others are thinking. Leigh has had characters like this in his movies before, so there's a possibility he thinks all men (of a certain class and background, which I will charitably leave hanging in the air for fear of offending his fans) are prone to fantasising about women and/or the Illuminati, but I'm willing to grant that he does think this behaviour is evidence of mental health issues and not just what men are like (Neil LaBute, take note).
The tramp that Poppy meets midway through the movie, in a scene that many people thought was superfluous, is another broken human who cannot function in society. It's debatable that Poppy's attempts to communicate with the tramp are successful, which is a good thing. Having her even partially cure him would turn it from a character study into a weird Camden-based messiah tale. Poppy heals the sick and teaches man and woman to embrace happiness! I would have hated to see her Sermon on the Mount, filled as it would be with tic-like eye-rolling, reflexive chuckling, and exhortations to just cheer up, it might never 'appen, innit! We can be grateful for small mercies.
However, though that alternate interpretation is a potentially interesting take on what is otherwise a Sesame Street song about happiness dragged out to feature length, I'm unsure about whether Leigh really is trying to paint a picture of what a fractured, unfriendly society has done to us and the differing ways our brains have tried to cope with it, as only a handful of characters show any signs of mental malfunction. That is, unless you add Poppy's elder sister and husband, who have turned their back on pure anarchic, heedless joy for that most poisonous of mind afflictions, Leigh's pet peeve since Abigail's Party, class-jumping aspiration! Look at them in their grotty suburban home, with their grotty suburban mortgage, arguing about Playstations and resisting Poppy's stream of unconsciousness which would save them from their pit of misery! Burn the bastards at the stake!
These alternate explanations, giving Leigh the benefit of the doubt, might work if Leigh didn't insist on claiming that Poppy's manner was admirable. While I am not so desensitised by playing Grand Theft Automatic on my Gamebox and listening to that modern Gangster Ramp stuff with the witches and ho-bags that I can't see the benefit of maintaining a brighter outlook, Poppy's blinkered viewpoint is not an option anyone should consider. Being a flighty gurning happiness machine might work out okay if you're a primary school teacher, but I don't want a policeman or a doctor to be incapable of serious interaction.
::rolls eyes:: I dunno, getting mugged for your phone? Who needs 'em anyway? More trouble than they're worth, eh? Hur hur! All that money you'll save, not paying for calls, save up and buy yourself a nice sweater, innit! Hur hur! Or a wheelchair, seeing as how you've been terribly injured by your attacker. Still, mustn't grumble! You can still play basketball in one. I seen it on the telly! Ooooh, it was dead exciting! Hur hur!
::rolls eyes:: Yeah, we got your x-rays back, and look, it's your bones! The left bone's connected to the right bone! Hur hur! Look at 'em! Look at how many there are! Millions of bones! Wow! Bloody brilliant, innit. So yeah, that smashed-up one there, that's called a vertebra. Ooh! Big word! Hur hur!
And yes, I appreciate she does have the nous to recognise evidence of abuse in a bullying child, but whereas many critics have pointed this out as evidence of a greater wisdom and maturity in Poppy than we had previously assumed, it's not backed up by any other displays of seriousness anywhere else in the movie, and tends to suggest it was slotted in as a means to prove her capacity to be high-functioning and capable of constructive compassion, as a pre-emptive riposte to arguments that she's just a halfwit who doesn't understand the hardships and cruelties of the world. Even if I bite, and accept that, she's still reckless and thoughtless in other contexts, as I complained earlier, like the miserable life-hating bastard I am.
Plus, the other alternative explanation for that scene is that Leigh added it so that she could meet someone in a professional manner who she could have a cloying and sappy relationship with, the alternative being meeting someone at one of the nightclubs she goes to with her raucous friends, which Leigh would never have countenanced for fear of making Poppy seem like one of those tawdry working class hussies having a drunken shag like the Daily Mail says they do. And hey, Leigh surely wouldn't want to come across as someone making uncharitable comments about entire classes of people that are dissimilar to his own, now would he.
Of the many comments Leigh has made about the film, the one I find the most interesting is this, from that Telegraph article linked to earlier:
It's about education: how we learn and how we teach. It's about responsibility. About trust, about men and women, and about commitment. I felt it would be a good time to make a film that would be, in some way, anti-miserabilist. These are tough times we're in; we are destroying ourselves and the planet, but there are some people who care enough about the future to be teaching kids.
Ignoring the fact that I don't think the human race has become so suicidal and reckless that it has decided not to even bother teaching kids anymore, thus making anyone who decides to do it part of some dying breed, the movie does hint at some interest in exploring what education is, and Scott has some things to say about it that, when stripped of their crazy conspiracy trappings, might amount to a rare moment of insight, but I do think a lot of his grumbling about modern education concerns gaming and gadgetry, and how kids are reacting to them. There are numerous other problems with modern education beyond that, which is the sort of feeble argument trotted out by the handbag-clutching readers of the Mail who have no understanding of what the technological age can offer. There is a place for Leigh's Ye Olde Worlde thinking, and I would never argue it doesn't. However, saying "those games is bad for the kids" is not an intellectual position, at least as expressed in Happy-Go-Lucky. There are grave problems with education in England, but lumping the blame almost exclusively on gaming is a dead end, and is intellectually lazy.
Speaking of which, remember the obvious connection I made earlier between Scott and David Thewlis' character Johnny in Naked? As you can imagine, I was not the only one who thought there was a similarity between the biblical rants spouted by both misanthropic characters, and this poor chap tried to ask Leigh about it at a Guardian Q&A.
Question 10: The taxi driver, Scott ...
ML: He's not a taxi driver, he's a driving instructor. Loads of people keep calling him a taxi driver, but there's nothing that suggests he is that. It's a very strange thing. You're about the 70th or 75th person who's said that. However, please continue.
Q10 add: Well, the way Scott made reference to 666 conspiracy theories, it just made me think of Johnny in Naked talking about a similar thing. Just wondering if there was a connection at all.
ML: There is, only in so far as they're talking about the same thing. But the huge difference between Scott and Johnny and Brian, the night security guard in Naked, is about as massive a difference as between Poppy and Beverly in Abigail's Party, I would say. Johnny, and indeed Brian, understand what they're talking about. They've made connections, they've got ideas on the go, and they're perceptive. Scott is none of those things. He doesn't understand anything that's in his head at all. It's all this stuff slopping around in the tank of his brain but he hasn't added it up at all. It's a very superficial experience for him, which isn't the case at all for Johnny.
But how are we supposed to know that? One biblical rant sounds much like another, and never really seem to be connected or unconnected, sounding more like a series of shouty quotes from old books linked in with some contemporary references. Scott sounded no more or less connected than anyone else, and the movie gives no hint that Scott is having a "superficial experience". While many critics and Leigh fans are quick to praise him for his method of generating plot and character by getting his actors together and thrashing out ideas prior to writing a script (though only a few seem to think the actors should get more credit for their contribution, weirdly enough), that process is not available for us to view.
While Leigh can bat away criticisms by commenting on the true feelings of his characters, it seems to me he is not remembering the events of the movie, but remembering the inner life of the characters that he and the actors have constructed. Though I understand the movie is open for interpretation, I can see no evidence in the movie that would lead me to believe what he is saying is correct, and not just a way of avoiding critical comment (or a inaccurately retrieved memory). Even worse than that, his rude comment to this questioner beggars belief. [Italics mine]
Question 5: I was looking at Poppy's character in that scene with her sister and brother-in-law. Should she have gone down the path of being a proper adult, having a family and so forth, do you think she would have any similarity to Beverly in Abigail's Party?
ML: I think Poppy's extremely grown-up, but she's being measured about it. There's no way, as I read her, or indeed as Sally Hawkins read her, that she's somebody that's going to stay juvenile forever. She's not. She's simply a mature but measured person who's taking life steadily and enjoying it and being fulfilled. It's only her sister Helen's perception of her that she's not being responsible, that she's not being sensible. I hate to say this, and don't take it personally, but it's really a silly question, and I say it with the greatest respect. [Translation: "You're an idiot. I say it with all due respect, and please don't take it personally, but you're a drooling imbecile who can never understand my art."] She won't stop being an intelligent, sensible person with a sense of humour, politics, life and a sense of values and a love of children - none of which is Beverly. Beverly hates children, and hasn't got any of the perception or applied intelligence or education or the ability to care that Poppy has. They're absolutely chalk and cheese.
There are two options: Leigh is lying and being a bit of a jerk about it, or Leigh and Hawkins really attributed these inner feelings to their creation during rehearsals. If it is the latter, that's perfectly fine, and I'm curious to see the DVD extra that shows them creating Poppy. However, in the film, there is no hint that she is going to mature. Saying that she is and treating his audience like fools for not reading his and Hawkins' minds and understanding that is sheer arrogance. If he wants us to interpret the movie any way we want, let us do that. If not, then don't be so rude about it. Cheer up Mike, it's all gonna be alright in the end, innit? Hur hur.
Still, it was not such a traumatic experience that I have not become immune to happiness in film form. Just yesterday I suddenly remembered my deep and abiding love for Theodore Flicker's satirical hodge-podge The President's Analyst, with James Coburn playing Dr. Sidney Schaefer, on the run from various evil-doers after giving up his job as the psychoanalyst of the President of the United States, and coming across a wide selection of 60s cultural icons, all of which are mercilessly lampooned. Coburn, who could portray joy with more enthusiasm than almost any other actor (and not just because he had an incredibly bright and wide smile) is the perfect person to play the doctor who tunes in and drops out, set free to just go crazy on stage with his beloved gong.
Now that's happiness I can get behind.
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