Triangle of Sadness

Cannes Palme d’Or winner for this year by Swedish director Ruben Ostlund.  Yes, I tend to agree that it was somewhat lucky to win but I disagree with the legions of critics damning it.  What it is, is a somewhat different and provocative film taking a sledgehammer to modern phenomena like instagrammers and social influencers, the excessively wealthy and the individualistic culture.  It is meant to be blunt and broadbrushed and I think it has an allegorical quality reflecting the state of the planet that few critics mention.  

They tend to focus on the satire alone but the middle section dissolves into a scatological farce that I thoroughly enjoyed (how dozens left cinemas at the sight of this harmless, if albeit tasteless, fun beats me).  So, I believe the film, whatever its various faults and shortcomings, achieves what it set out to do.  Make you think and entertain you at the same time.  The story is plausible and implausible and it has its ups and downs but there are also many seminal scenes that reflect the messiness of modern life.

Harris Dickinson and the sadly deceased Charlbi Dean are the centre of the movie.  Models and influencers with their own vapid existential conflicts (very influencer-like), they go on a Mediterranean cruise on board the Christina O, Onassis’s old luxury yacht an presumably major product placement.  

On board are a hodgepodge of the rich and hangers-on with the Russian fertilizer mogul or King of Shit (Zlatko Buric) being among the most picturesque as is his mad wife and his mistress,

a German stroke victim who is unable to speak, and an elderly British couple Clemmie and Winston (after Churchill) who have made their fortune from landmines and hand grenades.  

Woody Harrelson plays the drunk Commie captain and Vicki Berlin, the chief purser is the dictatorial boss on board.  The engine room staff are largely black and the cleaners Filipino.  

This second section is the most humorous with various amusing or awkward scenes leading to the Captain’s dinner which coincides with rough seas and results in the aforementioned gala of vomit and shit.

After a pirate raid, the ship sinks and part 3 follows the fate of a handful of the survivors: the models, the Russian, the German woman, the purser, an engine room worker, a wealthy Swiss coder and a Filipino maid.  This last character Abigail (Dolly de Leon) soon proves to be the only one who can fish, make a fire, cook and perform the duties needed for survival but is discriminated against on class grounds.  She starts to turn the tables on all this and the offers of money or trade-offs begin.  

This last part has a Lord of the Flies feel to it and completes Ostlund’s exposure of who we are as a society today.  Interestingly different critics had different favourites as actors but I liked Harris Dickinson best as in his ´innocence´ he struggles with old and new paradigms.  Charlbi Dean shows what a loss she is – potentially a successful career awaited.  

A satisfying and enjoyable watch.

4 stars plus

The Beatles: Get Back (Mini-series)

This much heralded compilation of important moments from the Beatles last concert in 1969 (on a rooftop in London) and the month leading up to that as the Fab 4 worked on a new album together came out about a year ago in 3 episodes totaling about 8 hours.  

It has been directed by Peter Jackson and is a sort of reality show documentary as we see the day to day work, arguments and creative processes involved.  As a historical archive it is worth 5 stars.  It is a super important document which Jackson has made more manageable as the source material, that of a film being made at the same time, totaled 60 hours.

That said and done, I have to admit that it was quite a slog to get through.  There is quite a lot of time spent watching the musical equivalent of paint drying and while some it is interesting to see how tunes we know and love evolved into the final product sometimes it seemed repetitive.  

Likewise, the debates and discussions between the members of the band which show that they lack a project in common going forward and are moving towards a break up.  In this aspect we get to see the personalities of each one and the talents that I think ended up being fairly obvious in their solo careers with McCartney and Lennon being at a higher level of sheer talent.  

The last part which features some of the concert and vox populi with the public in the street below both for and against brings some relief, especially the heavy-handed efforts of the police to bring it to an early close.  

Other gems include seeing the work of pianist Billy Preston coopted into the band for this album and some moments with the wives. 

 Mind you, Yoko Ono with her caterwauling and almost feline presence constantly throughout the sessions remains an enigma.

In a way, Get Back is for the aficionados.  I think most younger viewers today would appreciate an even more potted version and I have to admit that even being very appreciative of the band I did find watching this hard work at times.  Jackson has probably done what he can and gives us a potted bio at the beginning and lots of signposting throughout but it’s not enough.

3 stars

The Gulf (Series 2)

Dubbed the NZ Scandi Noir series, featuring troubled cop Jess Savage (Kate Elliott) and her police partner Justin Harding (Ido Drent) and their beat which happens to be the picturesque island in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland, New Zealand.  

The series has 8 episodes and 4 main stories with another story underlying the whole series.

It is a watchable show but not exactly memorable nor up to the best of the Scandinavian shows.  This is understandable perhaps as the budget is surely smaller and Kiwis are probably less likely to throw up the gamut of nutters and eccentrics that make some international shows work.

I think the show is tighter this series than the last one, so tight that some stories are wrapped up a little too quickly or could have had the mystery teased out more.  

This is also perhaps a ploy to make a series that could easily appeal overseas.  I still love the scenery and photography, the stories and script lack a bit of intrigue and finesse and while most of the acting is fair enough few rise above the mundane.  

Alison Bruce is a case in point and her protagonism in the last story is welcome.

I can’t say the lead characters interest me much – Jess just seems a workaholic without much charm or mystery and while Justin is getting a backstory it is coming in a bit late.

It’s all presentable enough but a bit like a glossy magazine you are happy to leave on the table in reception when you get called for your appointment.

2 stars plus

Here Before

This small film set in Northern Ireland is Stacey Gregg’s first film and at times it seems over careful, over concerned to plant certain clues in the narrative and keep the mystery at the same time.  In all, she achieves a very good first work with an unsettling degree of mystery until a rather rapid and less than satisfying or convincing denouement – in fact it’s all left a bit open.

Laura is a mother who has a new family move in next door.  She soon finds herself drawn to the young daughter Megan who has an age similar to that of her own daughter Josie, when she passed away.  

What is more, Megan (Niamh Dornan) starts to make comments about things she shouldn’t know as if she had been ´here before´.  Laura starts to imagine she is some sort of reincarnation of her dead daughter.  Husband Brendan takes a calm pragmatic approach but for some reason son Tadhg  (Lewis McAskie) takes an instant dislike to the girl.  Megan’s parents are also strange folk.  As the film moves along we get the feeling that Laura is projecting her own images on Megan and it is part of her mourning but then one or two more events provide a significant twist.  Which you may or may not be convinced by.

The film is well paced and has nice autumnal photography from Adam Janota Bzowski but it would be far less captivating were it not for Andrea Riseborough in the lead role.  

This chameleonic actress often flies under the radar and here again she gives a complete and subtle performance of a woman who is torn apart but trying to hold things together.

3 stars

Athena

From France comes one of the most powerful films of the year in which Romain Gavras puts us into the middle of scenes of violence and anarchy in a Parisian banlieue with its high-rise immigrant housing.  The film starts with a press conference about the death of a 13 year-old boy from an Algerian family.  The assassins are supposedly members of the police. Abdel, his older brother and a member of France’s peace-keeping troops recently returned from abroad is trying to keep things calm but another brother Karim sees red and tosses a Molotov cocktail into the meeting.  Karim and his band then leave the police station stealing weapons ammunition and a paddy wagon before hightailing it back to the barrio.  

There more local “troops” greet them and the buildings are basically barricaded off so the police can’t get in.  Both Karim and Abdel want to find the killers but Karim now feels there is no going back – it’s war.  

After an amazing ten-minute opening scene, the film continues much in the same way – a relentless pace, fireworks and violence, the mass evacuation of residents who seem reluctant to understand that a sort of civil war or uprising has begun.  TV news tells us that similar uprisings are occurring all over France.  Gavras (son of Costa Gavras of Z and Missing fame) doesn’t dwell too much on who’s right or the merits of each case.  

He is showing us what is and says follow me for a tour through all this.  Karim and Abdel meet up to try to resolve things but Karim feels Abdel is a traitor and the latter is caught up in his duty to his family and kin and to his country.

There is another brother who is a drug dealer and he is seen as only concerned with his business while Rome burns around him.  We also get the view of a young policeman (Anthony Bajon) who is taken hostage at one point and in the background there is a strange man tending a garden and seemingly simple but whose real identity and intentions become tragically clear later.

Great pacing, very realistic photography (Matias Boucard) and a keen sensation of being caught in the middle of a nightmare that could easily occur in France or other countries with migratory issues.

Dali Benssalah as Abdel gives a strong performance as the brother in the middle, Sami Slimane in his first role is a charismatic idealistic Karim with leadership skills.

Perhaps people would have liked a bit less action and a bit more debate on how things have got to this stage but I think that Gavras was less interested in that than in showing what happens when all trust breaks down and the institutions can no longer protect citizens from anarchy.  

Cinematically, this is a very confident convincing piece of work which makes the viewer work to follow the action.

4 stars plus

I Came By

This thriller has some points in its favour. It’s directed by Iranian Babak Anvari who made Under the Shadow in Teheran some years back.  

It has Hugh Bonneville playing a really evil villain which is a nice change.  

Kelly MacDonald a Scottish actress who appears in films from time to time plays a good foil. And despite some massive issues it is quite a well-paced intriguing experience for the moviegoer.

The title is a tag of some graffiti artists who break into rich people’s homes and leave their calling card as a sort of protest against the rich bourgeoisie.  

Toby, one of the taggers here breaks into the house of a retired judge Sir Hector Blake (Bonneville) and discovers that this supposed pillar of the establishment and champion of liberal causes has a huge secret hidden in his house.  

Although the police are called, nothing concrete is found and his contacts in high places bring the investigation to a close.  Nevertheless Lizzie, a psychologist and mother of Toby, now disappeared, continues to try to get to the bottom of the things, putting her life and others in danger.

One of her son’s friends J, played by Percelle Ascott ends up taking the baton to fight the evil of Sir Hector leading to a fairly predictable end.

The problem is that despite all the attempts by director and writer to account for the behaviour of the characters and the reasons why X person did not report Y, etc, the film ends up being one where you want to shout at the screen and say “Don’t do that!” or “Get some other type of help!”  There are just too many slip ups and not very logical plot items for comfort.  

Bonneville, MacDonald and Ascott do a good job, Varada Sethu has a rather one-tone role and George Mackay overacts as Toby.

Somewhere in Anvari there is an excellent thriller but it is not this one despite efforts to include commentaries on migrants and on the establishment in Britain which considers that it deserves everything as of right.

2 stars

Lynn + Lucy

In contrast to Crawdads, here is a film that is clearly rooted in authenticity.  Along the lines of Ken Loach’s work, Lynn + Lucy is the story of two women who are best friends in an Essex town.  

Lynn got pregnant at 16 and 11 years later is married with a daughter and making a decent go of being a housewife and mother though with issues of self-esteem and a fairly stale marriage.  

Lucy lives opposite her and has recently given birth to a son and is living with a younger disinterested man.  We see the two women in and out of their lives constantly, going out together, organising the christening for the boy, etc. They are so close they have identical tattoos and schoolmates labelled them as lesbians.  

Then a tragic event happens which changes the relationship for good.  The film follows the unravelling of their friendship, especially as other locals such as the women in the salon where Lynn has a job, start to drive a wedge between them, supposedly in the name of kindness and solidarity.  We get to see how gossip and entrenched beliefs can have a major effect on people.  In this way, the film has a similar message to Where Crawdads sing but is so much more real and messy. Newcomer Fyzal Boulifa, a British director of Moroccan origin barely puts a foot wrong in this quiet thoughtful movie.  His actors are impressive.  

Roxanne Scrimshaw as Lynn is a star – this is her first acting role and she conveys the inner turmoil and transformations very well.  

Nichola Burley as Lucy is equally convincing in her journey through this experience and the two of them beautifully portray what happens when a friendship changes.  Minor cast members also do well, especially Jennifer Lee Moon as salon owner Janelle.

4 stars

Where the Crawdads Sing

The film version of a recent best seller set in the marshlands of North Carolina in the 1950´s and 60’s.  

I read that the book has a lot more interesting detail than the film contains but clearly the box office success is more related to the blend of romance and courtroom thriller (both weak stories) than to facts about the time.  Consequently, critic reviews in Rotten Tomatoes are pretty damning while public approval ranks highly.  I fall into the first group.

Where to start?  

Though the story seems to have an element of autobiography, the tale of a young girl (Kya) abandoned by her family to live alone on the marshes and that she successfully manages to evade social services, hunger, illness, etc over the years begs disbelief.  

Once she gets older, she is courted by the two hunkiest young men in town, one who teaches her to read before both ditch her.  

She becomes a best-selling naturalist author and illustrator before beau number 2, one aptly named Chase (Harris Dickinson) dies in a fall from a local tower.  Did he fall or was he pushed?  The local society decide Kya is to blame and had a motive as the spurned woman.  

This is despite a paucity of evidence and the fact that she was at a book signing some considerable distance away.  A late plot twist adds to our disbelief.  So, many plot holes which apparently are handled more convincingly in the book, rather jerky flashbacks and editing and a general sense of inauthenticity rule the day.  

Daisy Edgar Jones channeling a young Anne Hathaway is all right but far too clean and tidy most of the time and her marsh shack comes straight out of House and Garden.

Harris Dickinson is marginally the best of the men with a fairly shallow part and David Strathairn as the lawyer has to deliver speech after speech about judging on the facts and not on rumour.   

We have a token black couple who do good and some mean southern racists – all very odd because Kya is white.

It´s not terrible and the photography of the marsh is attractive – shot in Louisiana but overall this is not a satisfying film by Olivia Newman.  

It pretends to be something it’s not is my feeling and only Taylor Swift’s original song stands out.  Almost as if the film is the vehicle for the song.

2 stars

Nitram

To make a film about a mass murderer who killed 35 people and injured 23 more in a shooting spree is either a courageous or a tasteless venture.  Or both.

Amazingly, Justin Kurzel manages to come out of this with an excellent movie that is handled very sensitively and focuses on a very troubled character and how we got to this horrific situation that occurred in Tasmania in 1996.

Nitram is the cruel nickname other kids gave Martin Bryant who is a misfit.  Prone to violence, fascinated with guns and an awkwardness in public (Asperger’s?) we get to see the strain he puts on his parents and the constant rejection he receives from society.  We also see the strange relationship he establishes with a lonely and eccentric millionaire heiress, Helen Harvey who ends up leaving him her estate.  

Inexorably, the story leads up to the moment in which Bryant commits the massacre which mercifully happens off-screen.  There are some chilling scenes – some physical and psychological violence and a notable one in the gun store where Bryant is given free rein to buy what he wants basically because he’s got the money.  The result of all this was an amnesty of illegal guns and a change in the law which has not been totally adhered to and leaves a situation in which today the same scenario could occur.  I think the film succeeds as a warning about this and about the woeful inaction of medical and psychological services who knew that Bryant was a serious problem and yet left him to his parents to cope with.

As a film, it is first rate. Kurzel shows a steady hand at quietly revealing the story and focusing on small and meaningful details.  This also means that he gives plenty of space to the actors who turn in some outstanding work.  

Caleb Landry Jones won Best Actor at Cannes for this and turns in a multi-layered performance making a future monster actually quite fascinating to watch and even someone to feel sorry for in parts.  

Judy Davis is his mother Carleen and shows why she is one of Australia’s greats despite not working in film much of late.  As a tense, tired, cynical woman who refuses to shirk her responsibilities Davis gives us a whole gamut of emotions often with minimal speech.  

Essie Davis is a revelation as Helen.  Known for very different roles, here she gives us a measured and credible performance as an eccentric spinster.  Finally, Anthony LaPaglia packing on some serious weight is spot on as the pathetic father.  It is a joy to watch these great actors at work. 

 Other aspects such as photography and music work well, making Nitram one of the most complete and unexpected successes of the year critically even if it may not be everyone’s favourite box-office topic.

4 stars plus plus

The Road Dance

This is a fairly conventional romantic melodrama that gains credit for the setting more than anything else.  This movie by Richie Adams from a best-selling novel takes place in 1916 in a remote Hebridean island village in Scotland.  

Kirsty (Hermione Corfield) is a young girl with a desire to see the world, hard to imagine in her primitive village but as a girl she watched the ships heading for the US.  She falls in love with a local lad Murdo (Will Fletcher), who has a sensitive literary bent but just as they confirm their love he and a number of local lads are called up to fight in France.  

The village heads hold a “road dance” or dance in the open air to distract them before they leave and on that night Kirsty is assaulted.  Murdo leaves without knowing and Kirsty is left to deal with this and other issues such as casualties that occur in the war and the baby she is now carrying as a result of the attack.  

All this in a small village where secrets are hard to keep. 

There are lots of tears and trials and a few plot twists in the last twenty minutes that make the film a bit of a refined potboiler.  The wild local landscape filmed by Petra Korner compensates for the slightly clichéd story.  

Acting by the leads, Morven Christie as Kirsty’s mother and Mark Gatiss as the doctor is good and as you’d expect in a British film there are plenty of great character actors in minor parts.  It’s a bit of a Sunday afternoon movie but it is competently made and a solid addition to the genre.

3 stars