Author: Alistair Nunn

Fight Club (1999)

Hugely popular, I find it widely misunderstood but also a little too in love with its own cleverness

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Edward Norton (The Narrator), Brad Pitt (Tyler Durden), Helena Bonham Carter (Marla Singer), Meat Loaf (Robert Paulson), Jared Leto (Angel Face), Holt McCallany (Mechanic), Zach Grenier (Richard Chessler), Eion Bailey (Ricky), Peter Lacangelo (Lou), Thom Gossom Jnr (Detective Stern)

When Fight Club was made, the studio didn’t get it. You can’t blame them. Studio suits sat down and just couldn’t understand what on earth this primal cry of anger, giving voice to the disillusioned and dispossessed, was going on about. Fight Club was categorically not for them. I’d managed to miss it for decades, so it’s an odd experience watching this angry millennial film for the first time when I’m now exactly the sort of punch-clock office drone its characters despised. I think I missed the boat.

Our narrator (Edward Norton) is cynical, bored and feels his life is going nowhere. Suffering from crippling insomnia, he takes to attending support groups for various terminal illness survivors, releasing his own ennui among the pain there. It’s where he meets fellow ‘suffering tourist’, Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), whom he’s attracted to while resenting her intrusion on his own private therapy. Shortly after he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a charismatic rebel with whom he founds an underground bare-knuckle fight group for men who can’t express themselves in the modern world. But Durden’s charismatic, anti-corporatist rhetoric tips more and more into radicalism and he starts an affair with Marla. What will our Narrator do?

Sometimes I think Fight Club might be one of the most misunderstood films ever. So many people who have fallen in love with it talk about it being an attack on conformity in our cold modern world. Of its celebration of people leaving the oppressive, mindless 9-5 grind to find something true and real that makes them feel alive. To be fair, Fight Club is partly this. But how do our heroes do this? By starting a cult where the bitter, resentful and inadequate search for meaning through violence and becoming part of a monolithic organisation that bans independent thought. Essentially, it’s a cult movie, exploring what makes people who can’t relate to the monotony of the “real life”, embrace an oppressive set of rules simply because those rules make them feel important.

This misreading by many is a tribute to the brilliance of Fincher’s direction. Fincher’s film is radical, sexy, pulsating and exciting. It’s shot like a mix of music video and experimental feature and crammed with cutting, witty lines that skewer and puncture the ”grown up” ideas that so many find weary and tiresome. It’s a modern Catcher in the Rye and it pours all its functional, dynamically written anti-establishment rhetoric into the mouth of one of the world’s most charismatic stars in Brad Pitt and allows him to let rip.

Fincher’s Fight Club is really, to me, about the intoxicating excitement of anger, of how easy it is to pour your frustrations into actions that are destructive and selfish but which you can invest with a higher meaning. School shooters, incels – many of them see themselves as stars in their own Fight Clubs, as cool anti-establishment rebels who see some higher truth beyond the rest of us. Fight Club is a brilliantly staged exposure of how this mindset is created and how damn attractive it can be.

Because when Pitt lets rip with this mantra on finding truth and purpose, turning your back on Ikea and Starbucks and all the other soulless “stuff” people find important, you want to stand up and cheer with him. You can see that the attraction of forming a secret brotherhood with a series of other similarly frustrated men, who feel emasculated and purposeless in a world where they can’t do something meaningful like fight Nazis or hunt deer. How they could find satisfaction and a sense of masculine validation in punching seven shades of shit out of each other. Because, as the adrenalin and the blood flows, and the teeth go flying, you feel alive.

It’s certainly a lot more fun than trying to actually deal with your problems. Fight Club is really about this sort of toxic, masculine anger and bitterness leads us to fail to deal with our problems. The Narrator needs Durden, because he can’t manage to process his own feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. He can’t deal with ennui – except through a constant stream of cynical, privately spoken, bitter remarks – and when he meets a girl he likes, he can’t cope with that either.

Durden comes into his life straight after Marla does, and Durden does everything with Marla the Narrator can’t. He flirts with, impresses and fucks her. That’s the sort of thing the Narrator (literally) can only dream about doing. The film builds towards the Narrator realising that, by embracing Durden, he is denying himself the possibility of something real with an actual kindred spirit (screwed up as Marla is, she has decency and empathy). Fight Club – much as many of its fans who find the final act “disappointing” don’t want to admit it – is about putting away childish resentments and growing up. Even if the Narrator is culpable for the things Durden does – and only threats to Marla awaken his acknowledgement that he should do something – he recognises the aimless, irresponsible and dangerous anger of Durden is not healthy.

Because Fight Club centralises a group of terrorists who tell themselves they are plucky anarchists who don’t want to hurt anyone – but we know it never stops there. Especially when you have a mesmeric, Hitlerish figure like Durden driving people on. Pitt is superb as this raving id monster, a hypnotic natural leader who delivers rhetorical flourishes with such intense and utter belief he essentially brainwashes a legion of men into following his orders without question – acid burns, bombs and death don’t even make them blink, just even more willing to follow his orders.

Fincher works so hard to make us understand the attraction of all this that sometimes Fight Club – with its flash filtered look set in a nearly perpetual night – is more than a little pleased with its impish menace. It also takes a little too much delight in teasing its infamous twist – it’s a little too delighted with the “ah but when you watch it back” ingeniousness with which it presents a melange of scenes (the twist also makes you realise later just how brainwashed and dangerous the men in this cult must be, once we realise what they saw and how little they reacted to it). Fight Club also, for all its cool lines and winning gags, has an air of pop psychology to it. (I am very willing to overlook its cheap anarcho-socialism as we are very clearly invited to see this as empty nonsense – for all many people watching the film don’t.)

Edward Norton is extremely good in a challenging role, a stunted and bitter dweeb who dreams of being a player and barrels along with ever more dangerous events. He walks a fine line between a sheltered follower and true acolyte, in several moments showing more than a flash of Durden’s ballsy, take-no-chances, sadism-tinged determination when you least expect it. It’s the sort of performance designed to make sense in the whole, not in the moment – and on that score it’s exquisite. He also makes a wonderful pairing with Helena Bonham Carter, exploding her bonnet reputation with a part that’s rough-edged, unpredictable but surprisingly humane and vulnerable.

Is Fight Club a masterpiece? I’m not sure. It’s a very clever, sharp and dynamic piece of film-making designed to pull the wool over your eyes (in more ways than one). But it can also be overly pleased with itself and does such a superb job of getting you to empathise with the deluded and violent that when it gear changes in the final act it never quite lands as it should. It feels like an angry teenager’s idea of the greatest film ever made (and you can’t deny it digs into the same “loner who sees the deeper truth” vibe that helped make The Matrix a phenomenon later that year). It’s Fincher at his young, punk best – and maybe Fight Club got all this out of his system (you can’t believe the same man made this and Curious Case of Benjamin Button), but for me it lives in the shadow of Fincher’s dark and dangerous Seven, a film which explores similar themes but with more humanity and greater depth than Fight Club.

The Red Shoes (1948)

Ballet and obsession go hand-in-hand in this beautiful, triumphant film

Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Cast: Anton Walbrook (Boris Lermontov), Marius Goring (Julian Craster), Moria Shearer (Victoria Page), Robert Helpmann (Ivan Boleslawsky), Léonide Massine (Grischa Ljubov), Albert Bassermann (Sergei Ratov), Ludmilla Tchérine (Irina Boronskaya), Esmond Knight (Livingstone Montague), Austin Trevor (Professor Palmer), Jean Short (Terry), Gordon Litmann (Ike), Eric Berry (Dimitri)

If there was a moment when “ballet” and “obsession” became synonymous in people’s minds, it might just have been the premiere of Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. The founding text in the cult of en pointe, The Red Shoes mixes technicolour beauty and fairy-tale darkness with an elaborate meditation on the struggle to balance life and art. For many it’s the peak of The Archer’s cinematic artistry. While I don’t place it that high – I have too much fondness for the beauty of A Matter of Life and Death, enjoyment for the bonkers madness of Black Narcissus and too much respect for the pleasures of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp – there is no arguing that this is vibrant, beautiful filmmaking, two masters firing on all cylinders.

The Red Shoes is the ballet battleground for the conflicting demands of three people. Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) is a Diaghilevish impresario for whom everything is secondary to art, demanding complete obedience from his protégés. Julian Craster (Marius Goring) is a gifted young composer who values life and love over art. Between them is Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), graceful once-in-a-generation ballerina talent who wants to both dedicate herself to Julian but also dance herself into legend with Boris. These three will make and break alliances on and off tour, touring Craster’s Red Shoes about ballet shoes with a mind (and dance) of their own.

On its release The Red Shoes became the most successful British film ever released in America (it even topped the end-of-year box office chart). Its popularity added even greater momentum to the wave of Hollywood musicals that turned into a tsunami. Would Gene Kelly have had the guts to end An American in Paris with a fifteen-minute ballet if Powell and Pressburger hadn’t stuck a 17 minute one in the middle of The Red Shoes first? Where The Red Shoes differs from Hollywood musicals that pirouetted in its footsteps, was it darkness and surprising bleakness, it’s clear, cold-eyed look at the limits of opportunity and the dangers of following your dream.

Because Victoria Page – played with a great deal of honesty and affecting vulnerability by professional ballet dancer Moira Shearer – is severely damaged by doing so. Inveigling her way into Lermontov’s company (despite Lermontov’s distaste at her mother’s forceful pushiness) she proves her spurs by a sensational performance in a small-scale Swan Lake at the Mercury Theatre (dancing to a recording rather than a live band) and is parachuted into a leading role in Lermontov’s productions. Vicky dreams of leaving the sort of mark few do – but she’s also human, unsuited at heart to the fierce, all-consuming obsession Lermontov expects from his stars. Shearer makes her vulnerable, gentle, lacking the force of personality to resist peer pressure.

Pressure is what Lermontov trades in. Played with a vampiric intensity by Walbrook, Lermontov is pale, Germanic and frequently retreats behind sunglasses. He commands there is no God but art and that he alone is its unquestionable high priest. He holds court in his office, where his staff come and go, rotating around his every whim and opinion. He lurks in the shadows at the rear of the theatre during rehearsals, quietly passing judgement. Vicky’s predecessor is dismissed for daring to get married. And there is the constant expectation that should he ask you for a sacrifice, it should be made in seconds.

He doesn’t care for conflict. In fact, any disagreement is met with summary dismissal. It doesn’t matter how much he’s invested in you. As Julian Craster discovers to his cost. Goring does fine work as the enthusiastic young composer (even if he is clearly a little old for the role) who we are introduced to excitedly watching his professor’s new composition for Lermontov only to discover all the melodies are his. While Lermontov is reluctant to do anything to ensure Craster gains the credit for his work (a sign of his own need to control all patronage and praise) he takes Craster on, who proves himself no flash in the plan. But no amount of time invested in Craster matters when the young composer dares to fall in love with Vicky. And even worse, she dares to love him back.

Because love and a life outside of the dance isn’t part of the plan. These ideas are all captured in The Ballet of the Red Shoes, the piece Craster composes for Vicky (the preparation for which is the catalyst for their burgeoning love affair). Based on the Hans Christian Anderson tale of the dancing shoes that had a life of their own, it neatly encapsulates Vicky’s problem. As Lermontov says summing up the story, it’s the tale of shoes that at first delight a young woman and then literally dance her to death. The entire ballet, like the film, is a grim reminder of the horrific price all-sacrificing excellence in the arts can lead to.

It’s fitting that this story is placed at the heart of such a hugely beautiful and fascinating film. Powell and Pressburger’s film are virtually a by-word for technicolour beauty. Jack Cardiff excels himself here as a photographer (only a reluctance to give this Brit outsider an Oscar two years running surely prevented even his nomination). The Red Shoes is crammed with exquisite imagery, gorgeous photography and striking, unforgettable colours. Hein Heckroth’s sets are magisterial (and Oscar winning), not least in the staging of the ballot that dominates the centre of the film.

The ballet is filmed quite unlike any other dance sequences in films. Powell in many ways breaks the cardinal rules of shooting dances. The ballet is a combination of quick edits and intricate camera moves. It is defiantly non-realistic: despite the setting, it is clearly (with its use of slow motion, super-imposed images and effects like the red shoes lacing themselves onto Vicky’s feet) not a faithful theatrical staging but highly cinematic. It beautifully, subtly suggests that we are at a tipping point between reality and imagination, that Vicky’s identification with the lead role has partially shifted her perception of the whole piece into a fairy tale turned real.

Is that partly why the whole film feels like we are walking in her own personal Hans Christian Anderson story? With Julian as the romantic prince, the theatre as a mix of enchanted forest and mysterious castle – and Lermontov as the beast who may be a prince in disguise or the wolf dressed as granny. It leads into the finales tragic ending, which blurs the line between reality, imagination and trauma into an undefinable mass. Do those red shoes exert a terrible, profound power of Vicky she hardly understands? Or are they just physical representations of her own ability to choose between the demands placed on her?

The Red Shoes is in some ways a traditional melodrama, not to mention another fable of a woman being unable to have both career and family (in the way, of course, that a man can). It is also a slim story, and the ballet – impressive as it is – depends on your relationship to that artform to work or not (I confess I find it drags slightly). But it’s also full of delightful behind the scenes sequences, from rehearsals to design meetings with Albert Bassermann’s Germanic designer to Craster’s coaching of the orchestra.

Visually rapturous, its directed with a great deal of flair and sympathy from Powell who draws some superb performances from his cast of mostly professional dancers. Although Shearer has no real chemistry with Goring, her performance as Vicky is beautifully observed and highly sympathetic and The Red Shoes is blessed with a definitive performance from Walbrook who is powerfully, imposingly domineering as Lermontov. The Red Shoes may at time dress its melodramatic heart in a little too much on-the-nose artiness, but it is also a sensational, ravishing film that lingers as long in the memories as Vicky’s prodigious dance steps.

Jean de Florette & Manon des Sources (1986)

Luscious scenery and combines with fine acting to produce a sort of French Merchant Ivory

Director: Claude Berri

Cast: Yves Montard (César Soubeyrnan), Daniel Auteuil (Ugolin), Gérard Depardieu (Jean Cadoret), Emmanuelle Béart (Manon Cadoret), Elizabeth Depardieu (Aimée Cadoret), Ernestine Mazurowana (Young Manon), Hippolyte Girardot (Bernard Olivier), Margarita Lozano (Baptistine), Yvonne Gamy (Delphine)

At the time this double bill (which I’ll refer to as Jean de Florette unless specifically referring to the sequel only) were the most successful foreign language films ever released. Shot over seven months, they were also the most expensive French films ever made and garlanded with awards, including a BAFTA for best film. Jean de Florette turned Verdi into the soundtrack for France, while its photography transformed the rural idyll of Provence into a major tourist destination and the dream location for holiday homeowners. The films themselves remain rich, rural tragedies, gorgeous French heritage films, a sort of French Gone with the Wind replayed as Greek tragedy.

Told in two parts – although designed as one complete movie – they tell a story of how greed destroys lives in 1920s rural Provence. César (Yves Montard) is the childless landowner whose only hope of a legacy is his hard-working but dense nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil). Ugolin dreams of growing carnations but the perfect land is frustratingly not for sale. When an argument with the owner leads to his accidental death, the land falls to Jean Cadoret (Gérard Depardieu) hunch-backed former tax collector from the city and son of Florette, the girl who broke César’s heart decades ago when she left the village while he impulsively served in the foreign legion.

César and Ugolin resent Jean – Jean of Florette as they call him – and hatch a plan to see his dream of a rabbit farm fail. They secretly block up the spring on Jean’s land and keep his connection to Florette a secret from the rest of the village, encouraging them to see him as an outsider and hunchbacked bad-luck charm. Ugolin befriends the decent, optimistic and hard-working Jean and watches the farm disintegrate. A decade later, in Manon des Sources, Jean’s daughter Manon (Emmanuele Béart) plots revenge for her father on Ugolin and César.

Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources were adapted from Marcel Pagnol’s novel – written, ironically, after Pagnol’s film Manon des Sources was butchered down by the studio in 1952 from four hours into an abbreviated two. It’s a richly filmed, luscious picture crammed with gorgeous locations, sweeping camerawork and marvellous score that riffs on Verdi. It’s an entertaining story of injustice and comeuppances. It’s first half (Jean de Florette) is an, at-times painful, unfolding of Jean’s inevitable failure. The second (Manon des Sources) sees all those chickens come home to roost as Manon’s suspicions about César and Ugolin’s duplicitousness are confirmed.

But what perhaps made Jean de Florette as successful as it was, is its mix of Merchant Ivory and BBC costume-drama. Many outside of France essentially took it as art because the characters spoke French. But Jean de Florette is a tasteful, classy, very well-made prestige package designed to be easily digestible. Claude Berri marshals events with the skill of a natural producer – he’s effectively a sort of French Richard Attenborough with a great deal of natural talent with actors, but without the true inspiration of the greats. You couldn’t mistake Jean de Florette as something made by Carné let alone Godard or Truffaut. It’s decidedly too carefully, tastefully made for that.

Which is not to say it isn’t in many ways a very fine film. Its construction is well-executed across its two parts. Berri makes clear that – for all the film showed a picture post-card view of France, encouraged to promote tourism and ‘traditional values’ by the government – the village our film is centred around is rife with prejudice and underlying hostility. It’s all too easy to for them to take against Jean: not only he is an outsider, he’s a tax-collector and a hunchback to boot. Prejudice naturally sets them against him (the villagers gleefully watch this “city man” destroy himself vainly trying to turn his dry land fertile). Manon des Sources makes clear the whole village at the very least suspected the spring had been deliberately dammed but effectively couldn’t be bothered to help.

It’s not a surprise as Jean’s techniques are totally alien to the traditionalists. Played by Depardieu with a wide-eyed enthusiasm, guileless honesty and trust, Jean takes on farming as if its another mathematical problem. He has books full of calculations and productivity rates he expects to hit, covering everything from rabbit breeding to the daily amount of soil and water needed for crops. He is prepared for anything except the cruelty of humans and the weather (Berri makes clear that, even with one arm tied around his back by the spring being blocked, he nearly manages to pull it off).

Instead, his super-human efforts come to naught. Forced to walk miles a day to carry gallons of water back to his farm to irrigate his land, he starts to resemble the weighted down donkey he drags with him. Rubicons are crossed one by one: even his wife’s necklace is eventually called on to be pawned, for all his promises that it would never come to that (fitting the Zolaish tragedy here, the necklace turns out to be worth sod all). Ugolin does everything he can to befriend and support Jean without helping him, even ploughing the land for him when Jean comes close to finding the hidden water supply. The events beat down Depardieu, here in one of his finest “man of the soil” peasant roles, until he is literally left shouting at the heavens, imploring God to give him a break.

This makes is all the easier to despise César and Ugolin, especially as Berri cuts frequently to these hypocrites giggling at their own deviousness and Jean’s suffering. It makes Manon des Sources – arguably the even more rewarding part – all the more satisfying as we watch the two of them slowly destroyed, events replaying themselves from the other direction. Manon des Sources features a performance of Artemis-like grace from Emmanuelle Béart as the older version of Jean’s daughter (the younger noticeably never trusted Ugolin), whose beauty enraptures Ugolin and who in turn dams the source of the village’s water to expose the crimes against her father.

It leads to a series of shattering reveals that break César and Ugolin from their satisfaction and complacency. These two villains are portrayed in masterful performances by Yves Montard and Daniel Auteuil. Under buck teeth and a foolish grin, Auteuil is sublime as a man who has it in him to be decent but is all too easily led by his forceful uncle. He regrets his actions, while never making an effort to reform and reverts all too easily into a love-struck Gollum, spying on Manon and literally sewing her lost ribbon into his skin. He’s a pathetic figure.

Montard has the juiciest part, which flowers into one of true tragic force in Manon des Sources. César is a man whose life of regret and loneliness has turned him into a bitter old man, grasping, greedy and hungry for a legacy. He treasures the few possessions he has of Florette – faded letters and a single hair comb – like relics and subconsciously can’t bring himself to actually meet her son. Suppressed sadness makes him every more tyrannical and foreboding. But Manon explodes this exterior, as events and revelations strip away all he holds dear. It culminates in a breath-taking sequence of raw grief from Montard – which depends on the magnetic power of his eyes – as his last delusions are stripped away and the true horror of his actions exposed to him.

It’s this emotional power that gives the two parts of Jean de Florette its force and impact and lift it the higher plain of its costume drama roots. It may be a very self-consciously prestige picture, designed to appeal to the masses, but Berri’s conservative style is matched with a great skill of drawing powerful performances from the actors. He does this in spades with his four leads and events eventually gain, through their performances, some of the force of a Provence Greek Tragedy. Jean de Florette manages to avoid melodrama and provides real dramatic meat and, while it is not high art, it’s certainly very high drama.

Atlantic City (1981)

A never-was romances a dreamer in Malle’s low-key film, full of neat observations

Director: Louis Malle

Cast: Burt Lancaster (Lou), Susan Sarandon (Sally), Kate Reid (Grace), Michel Piccoli (Joseph), Hollis McLaren (Chrissie), Robert Joy (Dave), Al Waxman (Alfie), Moses Znaimer (Felix)

Lou trundles around Atlantic City taking a few cents for bets and wanting anyone who listens to know that back in the glory days of the Boardwalk Empire he was a big shot. Bugsy Siegel roomed with him in the slammer. Meyer Lansky asked his opinions on the latest scores. When he killed someone, he dove into the sea to wash the exhilaration from his body. Not his fault the glory days are gone, and his life has crumbled as much as the worn out city around him. He’s still a player.

Only of course he’s not. Played in a fine autumnal performance by Burt Lancaster, Lou has the front of an ageing star, but is a dyed-in-the-wool loser. He trades on a past that never happened, full of tall stories that only the dimmest and most impressionable would consider believing. He’s essentially a kept servant of Grace (Kate Reid), a former local beauty queen (third place) and spends his nights spying on his neighbour Sally (Susan Sarandon), while she washes away the stench of the hotel fish counter she works in.

When the chance comes to spin a fantasy that means Lou could actually impress and seduce this women, he jumps at it. That chance is Dave (Robert Joy), Sally’s pathetic dweeb of an ex-husband who believes Lou is the perfect to peddle his stolen cocaine around town. Dave winds up dead, Lou pockets the money, impresses the naïve but determined Sally (training to be a croupier) and very firmly considers letting her take the rap when the cocaine’s owners turn up looking for the money.

Both Lou and Sally are dreamers – or fantasists – at the opposite end of life’s scale. Lou dreams big about a past that never was. Sally is dreaming of an impossible future – one of French class, Monaco high-rollers and earning a future as a flash croupier. Really, we know both of their dreams are fantasies. After all it should be clear only losers wind up in Atlantic City. The casinos are dumps and even the criminals are pathetic, easily out-matched by Philadelphia hoods. Louis Malle’s film captures this perfectly in a crumpling city that looks like mouldy leftovers.

Malle’s film is a marvellously structured, low-key but highly effective character study, very well acted and shot with an intelligent, detailed eye. It’s a showcase for Malle’s subtle but intelligent camera work and composition. As Lou serves Grace early in the film, he is kept constantly in the centre of the frame, the camera jerking up and down to match his movements as he fetches and carries for the bed-bound Grace. Dave is frequently shot from above, looking even more pathetic and irrelevant with every shot. This is framing that speaks volume for status and character. The camera fluidly shifts across large spaces – the boardwalk, a casino – to show different interactions in different plains, characters either unaware of each other or using events elsewhere to escape notice.

Grimy and fabulously capturing the collapsing grandeur of a city fallen on very hard times, the setting is the perfect metaphor for the disaster of the character’s lives. None more so than Lou. You can argue Malle’s film may be too sympathetic to Lou – and, indeed, contemporary reviews discussed Lancaster’s inherent dignity mistaking it for the character. Lancaster however is smarter. Lou is a pathetic, sad figure. Look how he delights in puffing himself up as a big shot for the feeble Dave. Watch the childish excitement he takes in the notoriety he collects late in the film. Lancaster perfectly understands the desperate need to dress the part, longing to be something you are not: the grand, well-dressed sugar daddy who solves problems for his moll by unwrapping the elastic band from a roll of dollar bills.

Lancaster never allows this fantasy to be mistaken for reality. When danger comes, Lou almost always freezes or looks to keep himself safe. When he spins his stories of daring or classy confidence, Lancaster shows us a Lou who is replicating behaviours he has seen elsewhere. After completing his first cocaine deal, he has to wash his face in fear in a bathroom – then instantly condescends to an old friend who has been reduced to toilet attendant.

Sally is fooled for a while. But then we know she has a weakness for glamour. After all we’ve seen her indulge the pervy whims of casino trainer Joseph, a lecherous Michel Piccoli. In a clever performance by Sarandon, Sally is naïve enough to be sucked in but guileful enough to just about keep afloat. She tends to trust anyone who oozes confidence. She’s a little star-struck by the idea of Lou perving at her across the window (as if happy that she’s sexy enough to win the attentions of this seemingly classy old guy). But, turned, Sarandon makes clear she’s righteously furious when cheated and far more adept at confidence-tricksterism than the increasingly hapless Lou.

Because when crime comes Lou is out of his depth. But what would you expect from a man who is a live-in cook, dog-walker and sometime-stud for Grace, entombed in her kitsch-nightmare room. Kate Reid is very good as this clear-eyed bully who needs but also despises Lou, who knows all about what an unreliable and cowardly fellow he is deep-down but jealously guards his attentions.

Malle’s film plays out like a sort of noir short story, an adept study of its characters more focused on their damage and flaws than on the crimes at its nominal heart. This is about fantasy and the lies we tell ourselves. Just like Atlantic City kids itself it’s still a gambling mecca, so Lou and Sally believe they still have chances in life. It makes for an intriguing, engrossing film as they lie to themselves and each other, denying the truth until it hits them squarely and unavoidably in their face.

Atlantic City muses on familiar themes, but does so with freshness and intelligence. Perhaps Malle is a little too sympathetic to its characters (Lou in particular), but he is very clear-eyed about the Dennis Potterish fantasy world they are clinging onto and the shabby decline and disrepair that clutters their existence. It makes for a very fine, well-made and fascinating little film, full of sharp observations and wonderfully played beats.

Tender Mercies (1983)

Quiet, contemplative and almost wilfully undramatic, Duvall wins an Oscar in this gently moving soul-searching film

Director: Bruce Beresford

Cast: Robert Duvall (Mac Sledge), Tess Harper (Rosa Lee), Betty Buckley (Dixie), Wilford Brimley (Harry), Ellen Barkin (Sue Anne), Allan Hubbard (Sonny), Lenny Von Dohlen (Robert), Paul Gleason (Reporter)

The music industry can be cruel. It’s bought out the self-destructive traits in Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall), a Country and Western singer whose career collapsed into alcoholism. Estranged from his wife Dixie (Betty Buckley) and a stranger to his daughter Sue Anne (Ellen Barkin), Mac finds himself crashing, penniless, in a rundown motel in Texas. Paying for his bed and board with labour, Mac falls in love with and marries the motel owner, widow Rosa Lee (Tess Harper) and becomes stepfather to her young son Sonny (Allan Hubbard). Mac quits the bottle and turns his life around, living quietly and determined to become a new man.

Tender Mercies is a slice-of-life film. It aims to present an ordinary man, facing challenges and struggling with demons. But in many ways, it’s quite remarkable. There can be few dramas that so consciously avoid drama. In Tender Mercies the expected fireworks and dramatic tentpole moments never happen. Events that in other films would have been “for your consideration” scenes or so underplayed they almost pass you by, or don’t even feature in the film. Mac and Rosa Lee’s courtship is made up of small, quiet conversations on the sofa. The proposal is a polite, softy spoken request. The wedding isn’t even shown.

This is a film that lets events play out with the random disconnectedness of real life. Characters from Mac’s past life drift in and drift out of the story with the unpredictability of reality rather than the construct of scriptwriters. Horton Foote’s Oscar-winning script is written in soft, quiet moments of silence, tenderness and quiet decency. It’s a film that wants to embrace classic, Southern values. Where religion, modesty and keeping your word are pivotal. Kindness, reserve and a lack of exhibition are traits widely praised. It’s a celebration of letting the ‘tender mercies’ of faith into your life and letting them define how you respond to the world and events around you.

It can feel like very little happens. But this is largely the point. That’s what life is like. Mac decides to change his life and knuckles down and does it. Rosa Lee trusts him to keep his word. Temptations and moments of anger are rare, and events are usually met with a suppressed acceptance. You could argue that Mac is emotionally repressed – that perhaps he associates emotional expression with the wildness that clearly plagued his early life of drink and violence – but also perhaps it is intrinsic in his stoic character. In the broader scheme of life – and in this faith-tinged world – accepting the rough with the smooth is a duty.

Robert Duvall won an Oscar for this, and he is at the heart of the film’s quietness, gentleness and lack of demonstrance. Duvall is so quietly restrained he masters the technique of doing a lot while seeming to do very little. He is softly spoken and carries much of his emotion behind his eyes. Mac does little that is conventionally dramatic, but constantly Duvall lets his face, body and the careful soulfulness of those majestic eyes convey great regret, guilt and tragedy. Duvall’s Mac is gentle, but with the careful determination of a man determined to keep his second chance alive. There is a weary sadness at him, a longing for emotional connection that he struggles to express. And few actors would be willing to embrace a part so low on emotional fireworks. Even when tragedy strikes, Duvall remains quietly restrained.

He’s the perfect lead for this Chekovian conversation piece, well filmed by Bruce Beresford. Beresford brings a marvellous visual sense for the wide-open spaces of Texas and a perfect empathy for the observational, careful balance of the film’s narrative. It’s a film made up of events taking place in long and medium shot, filmed with natural lighting. Beresford encourages all the actors to gently underplay and lets his camera observe without flash and flair, letting the deceptively simple set-ups focus on the emotions.

It’s a film about a quiet quest for happiness – but also a wary suspicion of the pain and guilt life can bring. The fear that happiness can lead to loss and pain. Its why Mac has placed such a premium on stoicism. It’s an attempt by a fragile man to emotionally protect himself. He silently longs for a bond with his daughter, played with a wonderful little-girl-lost quality by Ellen Barkin, and struggles with the responsibility for the unhappiness he has caused his ex-wife Dixie (a more overtly fragile Betty Buckley). Happiness might not be what you expect – jubilant music and an explosion of joy – but quietly finding a contentment.

And contentment is embodied here by Rosa Lee, played with dignity and rectitude by Tess Harper. Rosa Lee is gentle, understanding and in many ways defined by her faith of forgiveness and second chances. She represents the rebirth that starts the film – which opens with a drunk Mac crashing to the floor – and is the lodestone around which the plot rotates, the fixed-point Mac needs in his life. Duvall and Harper have a fabulous chemistry and fully commit to the honesty at the film’s heart.

Tender Mercies is a honest short story expanded into a thoughtful and (in its way) brave film. It veers towards silence where other films would hit noise. It presents inaction and acceptance where other films would pick melodrama. It centres a still, calm continuation of events over fireworks. Duvall is central to this, an affecting performance of immense complexity under a stoic exterior, all framed around Beresford’s reflective shooting style.

It’s lazy to say this is “old fashioned” – no 40s film would be as uneventful and restrained as this – instead this feels like a final flourish of 70s filmmaking, a late burst of Malick-style American romanticism and poetry. Perhaps that’s why it was surprisingly nominated for multiple Oscars. And why it carries a quietly hypnotic power.

The Quiet Girl (2022)

Stunning, low-key deeply-moving drama as a child flourishes with love in this Irish drama

Director: Colm Bairéad

Cast: Catherine Clinch (Cáit), Carrie Crowley (Eibhlín Kinsella), Andrew Bennett (Seán Kinsella), Michael Patric (Da), Kate Nic Chonaonaigh (Mam)

Childhood can be difficult. Even more so when the child knows they are an unwanted daughter, in an overlarge family overseen by an uncaring father (Michael Patric) more interested in the horses and the bottle than those his family. Cáit (Catherine Clinch) is a quiet child in early 1980s Ireland who has learned quietness because she knows no one cares what she has to say. When her Ma (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) is expecting another child, Cáit is sent to stay with her Ma’s middle-aged cousin Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley) and husband Seán (Andrew Bennett) on their farm. There she finds a warmth, care and love she never knew at her home. But, though this is a house with warmth and “no secrets”, it is also a home where a painful loss is never spoken of.

Adapted from one of the finest short stories from Claire Keegan, one of Ireland’s leading novelists, The Quiet Girl became the most successful Irish film of all time and the first nominated for an Oscar. It’s no wonder: this is a beautifully made, carefully crafted and immensely moving film, overflowing with humanity and empathy that left me dapping my eyes.

Perfectly scripted and directed with a quiet controlled restraint by Bairéad, The Quiet Girl is a film that throbs with emotion, a collection of small events and everyday moments of kindness that bloom into moments of great resonance by the skilful empathy built up for this child. Throughout the film, shot in a Academy ratio 4:3, Cáit is frequently positioned in the centre of the frame. At first, in her home and school, this superbly stresses her isolation. Events bustle around her, family members casting shadows over her. She stares down and away from us and feels like the single fixed point in a world of motion. She sits unnoticed in the backseats of cars and watching her father drink in pubs. She is at the centre of our perception, but adrift in a sea of activity around her.

Bairéad superbly uses this device throughout to slowly bring characters and interactions to curve inwards and focus on Cáit much as we do. When she arrives at her aunt’s farm, for the first time the attention of others in the frame settles on her. Their eyes are on her, they speak to her, move to connect with her. The Quiet Girl is intensely moving as it shows the difference a change of scene can make, the warmth and love can make to a child who has known nothing like it.

This is in many ways a simple story, but the low-key tenderness which Bairéad tells it gives it immense power. Cáit – played with quiet gentleness by Catherine Clinch – is a sensitive, intelligent and caring girl who has never been allowed to flourish. It’s striking after the film’s first fifteen minutes showcasing the indifference she faces, how much your heart glows as Eibhlín talks to her, makes her feel comfortable, washes her and tucks her up in bed. It’s a world away from the neglect we’ve seen Cáit suffer.

This is a film where small acts of kindness bring tears to the viewers eyes. When Cáit wets the bed on her first night – too scared to use the toilet – Eibhlín immediately notes her fear (she expected punishment) and apologises for giving her “a mattress that weeps”. Eibhlín separates her from her uncomfortable clothes, teaches her basic household tasks, brushes her hair, encourages her to feel a part of their home. For the first time Cáit is treated not as a burden – or worse – but as a human being. This is brilliantly conveyed by Carrie Crowley as Eibhlín, who delivers a performance of immense emotional depth, both tender and kind but with a deeper layer of sadness underneath, the cause of which is slowly revealed.

Bairéad is sensitive about the home environment Cáit has emerged from. There are dark hints: her Da is, at best, a potentially violent drunk with a temper and Cáit is introduced first hiding in a field, then under her bed. Arriving at her foster home she has a fear of “secrets”. Eibhlín is quick to pick up on this, reassuing her there are no secrets here.

No secrets perhaps, but a pain never spoken of. Cáit’s room is decorated in train wallpaper and she sleeps in a child’s bed. She is dressed in boy’s clothes (“our old things”) only a few sizes too big for her. Seán finds her hard to look at, at first – but when, under her care, she wanders off he becomes panicked and distressed. The loss this sad couple suffered is clear to us and The Quiet Girl becomes a film of mutual healing. There is pain on both sides: a child with parents and parents without a child.

Seán’s growing bond with Cáit is wonderfully paced and deeply affecting. Gruff but kindly, Andrew Bennett’s performance melts the heart. From a biscuit placed without comment on a table to a run to the post-box that turns into a repeated game, their slowly flourishing love is simply beautiful. As he buttons her coat or the two of them race to sweep clean the cow shed, you’ll find it impossible not to be moved. Seán is slower to bond with the child than Eibhlín, but both of them find the pain in their heart slowly eased by allowing theirs to open to this quiet, caring child.

Of course, it is only a holiday that must end. Bairéad’s film ends with Keegan’s own, tinged with a slight ambiguity. But it’s a beautiful one for all that, a heart-rending tribute to emotional connection between people. Bairéad’s film has this empathy running through it like a pulse. Shot with an immense visual beauty that turns everyday objects into items of intense beauty – from tables to drains – The Quiet Girl is a deeply moving quiet masterpiece, which carries a low-key emotional impact that is hard to beat and impossible to forget.

The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

Delightful but surprisingly subversive Ealing comedy, one of my all-time personal favourites

Director: Charles Crichton

Cast: Alec Guinness (Henry “Dutch” Holland), Stanley Holloway (Alfred Pendlebury), Sid James (Lackery Wood), Alfie Bass (Shorty Fisher), Marjorie Fielding (Mrs Chalk), Edie Martin (Miss Evesham), John Salew (Parkin), Ronald Adam (Turner), Arthur Hambling (Wallis), John Gregson (Inspector Farrow), Clive Morton (Station Sergeant), Sydney Talfer (Clayton)

It’s my personal favourite of all the Ealing comedies. It’s always surprised me it has been so warmly endorsed by the Vatican. Sure, it ends with a cursory “crime doesn’t pay” message – and it’s got a great deal of lightness, affection and wit. You want our seemingly mousey underdog to successfully take on the big banks. But this is a surprisingly dark and subversive film under its cuddly exterior. Much like its lead character, appearances can be deceptive and The Lavender Hill Mob lulls you into a false sense of security to hide its surprisingly darker heart.

Set in post-War London, Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) is a timid bank clerk, paid pocket money to monitor the delivery of hundreds of thousands in gold bullion to his bank. And he’s had enough. Holland plans a heist – he’ll steal the money, escape unsuspected and live the life of Reilly he feels he deserves on the proceeds. The inspiration for how to smuggle the money out presents itself when he befriends artist turned tacky gift manufacturer Alfred Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) – they’ll melt down the gold and smuggle it as Eiffel Tower models. What could go wrong?

The Lavender Hill Mob fits very neatly into the classic Ealing set-up. The plucky underdog takes on the establishment, in this case the heartless bank run by public-school poshos and the police with their new-fangled technologies. It plays these cards extremely well, poking fun at the set order and building a great deal of empathy with Holland and Pendelbury, the two most unlikely criminal masterminds you can imagine. Middle-aged, middle-class professionals who have led lives of quiet, dutiful anonymity, its huge fun to see them cut loose and embrace the chance to be bad-boys. Who hasn’t wanted to say “to hell with it” and grab the opportunities you want in life?

But TEB Clarke’s superb script, matched with Charles Crichton’s dynamic direction, has a darker heart under the surface charm. Set in a bombed-out post-war London, the film’s design never lets us forget this is an upturned Britain, reeling from years of unimaginable upheaval. A country going through social and political change leaving old, deferential ideas in the past and old principles of morality might not apply. After all, when death was a nightly visitor to the capital, why should you continue to play by the rules? Holland is actually a man who has simmered with quiet, unspoken resentment for decades, who crafts the perfect heist and sees it through with obsessive, almost cold-hearted fanaticism.

Sure, he seems sweet and, yes, he doesn’t half get swept-up in childish excitement in the glamour of crime – who can forget his bashful desire to take on the criminal nom de plume Dutch. But the genius of Guinness’ performance is that he never lets us overlook the ambition, greed and willingness to go to any lengths under Holland’s meek exterior. Watch how Guinness stares with unblinking acquisitiveness at the gold as it melts down. The authoritative command he takes over Pendlebury when a small batch of gold Eiffel towers are accidentally purchased by a group of school children. The demanding perfection he insists on in every step of the heist.

This is Guinness at his absolute best and perhaps only he could combine such a criminal heart with light-comedy. Holland is an immensely endearing character because his success remains so unlikely. His scheme is low-tech and clever so it’s impossible not to end up rooting for it – especially when the resources and technology of the police and the bank are so well sign-posted. Guinness is giddy with excitement at the scheme – but also look at how quickly and coldly he lies, how smug and satisfied he can be in success and how ruthless when the situation calls for it. But yet we love him. This is dramatic and light comic acting distilled in one. He’s superb.

If anyone is a corrupted innocent, it’s Alfred Pendelbury. Played wonderfully by Stanley Holloway as a poetry-quoting dreamer, Pendlebury is the real unlikely criminal here. Holloway and Guinness have a wonderful chemistry, both enjoying the naughtiness of theft, but with Holloway’s star-struck eyes, Pendlebury is the follower, in awe of Holland’s cleverness and determination. Poor Pendlebury almost blows the heist by absent-mindedly wandering away from a newspaper stand still clutching an (unpaid for) newspaper, blithely suggests they let lost Eiffel towers go and bundles around the crime with an optimistic amateurism.

Clarke’s script has a lot of fun with questions of class. The pompous bank managers are exactly the sort of arrogant posh-boys who look down on everyone else with paternal disregard. They are blank, unthinking automatons. Class works both ways. Holland is unsuspected of the crime as he’s the sort of middle-class person who wouldn’t do this sort of thing. Holland and Pendlebury are quietly resentful of those above them – but they assume the same authority over the criminal classes they recruit for the scheme. Sid James (cementing his persona as a cheeky spiv) and Alfie Bass are natural cap-doffers who quickly accept their place in the gang’s hierarchy and even (rather sweetly) trust Holland and Pendelbury to deliver their share from Paris (naturally, as working-class lads, they are suspicious of travelling to France anyway to collect the loot).

The Lavender Hill Mob exposes the assumptions and traps of the class system in this country, and does so with a gentle, sly, subversive wit. Holland is basically the forerunner of the sort of bitter middle and lower middle class ambitious types who would drive change in Britain in the next few decades.

The film also gets a lot of comic mileage out of the smug ineffectiveness of most of the official forces. The police have a raft of technologies – radios, cars, scientific techniques – all of which do very little to help. In a late car chase through London, the radios actively work against them – Holland easily uses the radio in their stolen police car to spread disinformation, the central radio director guides several cars into a collision and eventually scrambled signals lead to “Old MacDonald” being played on all receivers. Optimistic but hopelessly inaccurate bulletins are constantly posted on their progress and only personal inspiration of the lead detective (a colourless John Gregson) and chance leads to the crime being unmasked. As well as looking at the dark bitterness of its lead character, The Lavender Hill Mob is strikingly cynical about officialdom.

Crichton’s direction is visually inventive and at times almost Hitchcockian – Holland and Pendlebury’s dizzying stairway descent from the Eiffel Tower arguably inspired Vertigo. And the film is supremely funny. The heist is planned with perfect comic timing, chase scenes are brilliantly done and there is a superb farcical set-piece as Holland and Pendlebury hurriedly try to negotiate French customs in a rush to catch a boat. Every scene has a funny line or inspired piece of comic business and Clarke’s script perfectly balances this with gentle but intelligent social commentary.

The Lavender Hill Mob is a triumph. From start to finish a delight, insightful and funny, it has superb performances from a faultlessly brilliant Guinness and a bombastically huggable Holloway. It wraps up comedy, social commentary and a surprising cynicism into a complete package. It’s a tour-de-force of charm, shrewdness and grace. It remains my best loved Ealing comedy, and possibly one of my favourite comedies ever made.

Back to the Future Part III (1990)

The franchise closes on a high with a fun, romantic and exciting finale, tonnes better than Part II

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Michael J. Fox (Marty McFly/Seamus McFly), Christopher Lloyd (Emmett “Doc” Brown), Mary Steenburgen (Clara Clayton), Thomas F. Wilson (Biff Tannen/Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen), Lea Thompson (Lorraine McFly/Maggie McFly), James Tolkan (Marshal James Strickland), Elizabeth Shue (Jennifer), Matt Clark (Chester), Richard Dysart (Salesman), Flea (Needles)

And we’re back. After the frankly awful Back to the Future Part II – an onslaught of bad gags, terrible performances, clumsy call-backs and a lot of sound and fury – the trilogy ended on a high with Back to the Future Part III which, by going back to the past, managed to find more heart and originality than Part II ever had. Strangely, by looking backwards in time, the series managed to look forward to new ideas. Part III is, by many degrees, a huge improvement.

We left Part II with Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) stranded in 1885 and Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) equally stranded in1855. How are they going to get back to 1985? Well Doc is happy where he is, and has left the Delorean buried in 1885 for Marty to dig it up in 1955 and get back to the future with the help of the 1955 Doc. But, digging the Delorean up, Marty discovers Doc’s 1885 grave: turns out he will be murdered by gunslinger Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen (Thomas F Wilson). So, Marty travels back to 1885 to save him. But with the Delorean damaged on the way, how will they get back to 1985? Will Doc or Marty be killed in a fatal gunfight with Tannen? And what about the Doc and schoolteacher Clara Clayton (Mary Steenburgen) falling in love?

Back to the Future Part III juggles all these plot themes with real expertise, all based in a hugely affectionate portrait of the Old West that drips with Zemeckis and Gale’s childhood love for the genre. I’m going to guess that Part III is inexplicably not held in the same regard as Part II because my generation and onward simply has far less of a connection to the Western than they do crudely cheesy views of an 80s tinged future.

But the sense of fun here is on point. Galloping horses, street fights, open air dances, trains, cameos from old-school Western supporting actors, the majestic score… it’s all an on-point reconstruction of the tone and style of Ford. (In particular, the entire film feels like a fun recreation of many elements of My Darling Clementine). The film also has fun with later perceptions. Marty is dressed up for his journey back to 1885 in the sort of brightly coloured, skin-tight costumes 1950s TV and B-movie western stars wore. He adopts the alias “Clint Eastwood” (and doesn’t the film have fun with that). He even (eventually) dresses not dissimilarly from the Man with No Name himself.

It doesn’t stop with the Western re-build. Back to the Future Part III has the inevitable call-back gags to events we have seen throughout the last two movies. But here they are delivered with a far more freshness. Not least because Doc and Marty largely reverse roles here (leaning into this, they even swop their catchphrases at one point). While in the previous films Marty was the impulsive one, flying by the seat of his pants with instant decisions and being assisted by the eccentric Doc, here they settle into new roles.

Because Doc here is the one being rescued and the one tempted by an impulsive decision. Namely, staying in the past because he has fallen in love. Christopher Lloyd, a much better actor than he gets credit for, is allowed to broaden out and enrich his eccentric performance as Doc with a real emotional depth in a very sweetly drawn romance. Mary Steenburgen is equally good as the kindred spirit he falls in love with. Both actors play the romance dead straight and it allows Lloyd to show an emotional depth and shade his performance has lacked elsewhere. Steenburgen’s casting is also a nice tip-of-the-hat to Time After Time (where she also played a woman who inadvertently falls in love with a time traveller). Clara is also a neatly written character, integrated far more into the plot than poor Jennifer in Part II and another welcome shake-up the buddy formula.

As Doc takes on the romantic and paradox creating role, Marty becomes the driver, urging Doc to stop getting mixed up in influencing past events and focus instead on fixing the Delorean and getting back home. Fox embraces playing (largely) the secondary role in the film. He still gets moments of fun as an actor (not least playing Marty’s Irish great-grandfather – a performance immeasurably better than all his latex covered efforts in Part II) but he’s largely the voice of sense here.

Except of course concerning his fatal character flaw: don’t call him chicken. There is nowhere more dangerous to allow someone to pick a fight with you than the Wild West. And Marty swiftly inherits the clash with Tannen (played with gruff comic gusto and impenetrably density by Thomas F Wilson). This culminates – but of course – in a face-off in a dustbowl street, with a solution to the gunfight inspired by the real Eastwood and nicely signposted in Part II.

That leads into a genuinely edge-of-the-seat exciting race to hijack a train to push the Delorean up to the desired 88 miles an hour. Zemeckis shoots and cuts this sequence to perfection – and Alan Silvestri’s score does a lot of build and sustain the tension and excitement – and it seems appropriate that the only real opponent Marty, Doc and Clara have to deal with in this sequence is time itself. Crammed with sight gags, orchestrated to perfection and perfectly paced it’s a great way to cap the series.

Much as the film itself is a perfect ending to the franchise. Its imaginative and playful, riffing on the previous events without slavishly imitating them, approaching both its characters from new angles that helps us discover new things about them and crammed with great jokes, exciting set-pieces and genuine emotion. It’s easily the second-best film in the franchise. If you want to revisit a sequel for Back to the Future do yourself a favour and pick the one in the past.

The Lost King (2022)

Bizarre, grudge-settling comedy-drama that celebrates amateurism and hates experts

Director: Stephen Frears

Cast: Sally Hawkins (Philippa Langley), Steve Coogan (John Langley), Harry Lloyd (Richard III), Mark Addy (Richard Buckley), Lee Ingleby (Richard Taylor), James Fleet (John Ashdown-Hill), Bruce Fummey (Hamish), Amanda Abbington (Shelia Lock)

In 2012 the world’s media descended on Leicester after the body of King Richard III was discovered in priory turned car park. Richard III had long had passionate supporters – Ricardians – who rejected the idea that the man Shakespeare turned into Britain’s most hated monarch was anything of the sort. It was one of those fans, Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins), who researched for 20 years to find evidence for where he was buried and became the public face of the search through ratings-winning television documentaries and writing a best-selling book.

All of this is rejigged in a silly, sentimental, bizarre film that repositions Langley as an inspired amateur butting heads with the self-promoting professionals of Leicester University. I suppose there is something ironic in a film which insists someone had their reputation sullied in the name of drama, itself sullies peoples names in the name of drama. (Richard Taylor, the deputy registrar of Leicester, here portrayed as a sexist, elitest self-promoter who mocks the disabled, has openly declared his intention to sue). The Lost King wants to be an affectionate Ealingesque comedy of the triumph of the little guy. It’s actually got an uncomfortable feeling of grudges being settled and a stench of Brexity anti-intellectualism.

Fascinatingly the anti-intellectualism even extends to Langley herself. Remember that 20 years of research? All deleted in this film. Here Langley is a working mum, suffering from ME (the film draws vague parallels between this and Richard’s scoliosis) who one day stumbles into a performance of Richard III and basically falls in love with the dead king. She pops down to a second-hand bookshop, buys eight books on Richard and in a few months is digging up the car park. It’s as if the idea she spent time in archives, triple checking sources, studying maps etc. would somehow have been “cheating” – that we could only root for her if she was an amateur, “one of us” who makes her (always correct) decisions purely on gut instinct.

But it fits with a film that portrays Leicester University as a sort of scheming club of middle-managers and moustachio-curling villains. No one from the university can so much as draw breath without disparaging “that woman” as an obsessive weirdo. They batter everyone with their expertise, arrogantly dismiss any ideas they don’t have themselves and stand around growling so Langley can puncture their pretention with her common-sense wisdom. Case in point: she suggests they overlay a modern map of Leicester over a medieval map to check locations. First they object, then look at her like she’s split the atom. Of course, they are right to object: medieval maps are hand-drawn approximations often more based on aesthetics than accuracy. But that doesn’t matter to the film, which of course immediately shows the two maps lining up in microscopic detail. If only 500 years’ worth of scholars could have thought of that, eh?

Embodied by Lee Ingleby’s Richard Taylor as a number-crunching obstructive bureaucrat who does everything he can to steal the credit (honestly, if you are going to take this kind of pop at a regular person at least change his name), Leicester University are unilaterally baddies. All this score-settling seems to have come from Langley’s resentment at not being invited to speak at a couple of press conferences. No matter that TV documentaries and books made her name synonymous with Richard III to anyone who really cares (even the film can’t pretend it’s telling “an untold true story”). This is a film with an axe to grind – so much so that the eventual discovery of Richard becomes secondary to this mud-slinging as Langley rebukes Taylor publicly (inevitably shaming him into silence) for equating disability with wickedness and cutting her out of meetings.

What’s particularly odd about The Lost King is that the film ends up painting Langley as exactly the kind of un-credible crank its villains (villainously) see her as. Having removed all her rigorous research, it replaces it with Having A Feeling. This is communicated visually with Langley communing regularly with a vision of Richard III, personified by the actor from the play she saw. Langley chats to this vision with the breathless excitement of a giddy teenager, and he helps her discover reams of facts, not least a bizarre moment of ecstasy when she spots an “R” in the car park and just knows Richard is under there.

Harry Lloyd is all adrift in this bizarre part and its main impact is to raise unfortunate giggles and make Langley look exactly like the sort of person you wouldn’t invest tens of thousands of pounds in. Mind you, Langley here is way more competent than any other Ricardian society member, all of whom are portrayed as cranks and pub bores, talking as if they only discovered famous primary sources this week, and utterly unable to even tie their own shoelaces until Langley sails in and discovers the king’s body in about ten minutes.

Hawkins plays a part firmly in her wheel-house, as an eccentric but determined woman in love with a ghost, while co-scriptwriter Steve Coogan generously writes himself a “stop reading Holinshed and look after the kids” role as her supportive ex-husband. Langley, like other characters, bends and changes according to the needs of the scene but is always the hero. When the script needs her to be a determined leader, she won’t take no for an answer. When it needs her to be oppressed by those nasty Leicester professionals, she won’t say boo to a goose. (Similarly, Mark Addy’s archaeologist yo-yos between dismissive of Langley to affectionately supportive almost scene-to-scene.)

The Lost King wants to be a triumphal little-guy film, but actually it has an unpleasant air to it. It feels like a massive grudge being publicly settled. It belittles and ignores expertise, patience and research in favour of gut instinct and amateurism. It bizarrely paints its lead character as a mixture of oddball weirdo, genius and saintly crusader. It’s also neither dramatic nor funny (except accidentally). It’s a bad film.

Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

Faith, family and femininity are put to the test in Bergman’s bleak meditation on religion and love

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Harriet Andersson (Karin), Gunnar Björnstrand (David), Max von Sydow (Martin), Lars Passgård (Minus)

Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly marks a new era in the Master’s filmography. It was the first of three thematically connected films about faith and religion (although you could argue The Virgin Spring really makes this a quartet). It saw Bergman make a firm commitment to seemingly theatrical chamber pieces, with small, focused casts of trusted collaborators handling complex (joke-free) and searching themes. It was also first of his films set on Fårö, a place that would become so associated with him it would effectively be rechristened Bergman Island.

Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman’s second consecutive Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Picture) is a brooding, intense chamber piece set entirely in a house and beachside jetty on Fårö. It’s a family reunion. Author David (Gunnar Björnstrand) returns to Sweden from Switzerland to see his children. They are 17-year old son and aspiring writer Minus (Lars Passgård) and Karin (Harriet Andersson), now married to respected older doctor Martin (Max von Sydow). The real purpose of the gathering is to monitor the recovery of Karin, a schizophrenic whose condition has (without her knowledge) been declared inoperable. Karin is drawn to obey the commands of voices only she hears which she believes emanate from an abandoned bedroom, covered in cracked wallpaper. There she believes God calls for her to join him on the other side of the wall.

There is much to admire about Through a Glass Darkly, not least the striking, haunting, cinematography of Sven Nykvist. In a film that takes place on an almost silent island – there is no music, other than a few bars of Bach on the soundtrack, and barely any natural sound, so much so that a late arrival of a helicopter seems (deliberately) like an almost demonic visitor – light becomes the main force. It beats down from the sun, wraps across rooms, seems to transform spaces in front of an eye (there is a beautiful stationary shot of it flooding an abandoned boat where Minus and Karin sit in shocked horror). It picks out every feature of the scarred wallpaper in Karin’s room and casts searching shadows and stark, interrogative beams across the character’s faces.

It greatly expands both the intensity and claustrophobia of a challenging chamber piece, exquisitely directed by Bergman. The acting of the four leads – three trusted collaborators and a newcomer – is faultless. Andersson, in particular, tackles an almost impossibly difficult character who we first meet as a carefree young woman and leave as a huddled, shattered figure hiding from the light behind sunglasses. Andersson’s raw and searching performance avoids all overblown histrionics, becoming a detailed and compassionate study of a woman losing control over her actions. Bergman holds the camera on her for long takes, while Andersson lets a multitude of emotions play across her face.

Björnstrand is equally impressive as a (disparaging) Bergman stand-in, an artist neglecting his children in a quest for perfection, coldly distant to others, guilty at his selfishness (at one point he excuses himself to privately weep at his inadequacy as a father, then returns unchanged) but quite happy to take what he can from his family to use in novels. von Sydow takes a quietly restrained role as a sombre, somewhat dour man, hopelessly in love with his wife but clearly little more to her (and he accepts this) than a surrogate father. Passgård more than matches them as a depressed teenager, yearning for approval and frustrated at learning how difficult life is.

Bergman’s family follows this complex and challenging family, which becomes a filter for understanding if love is where God is in our world. The family is distant and uncommunicative with each other – the opening scene sees them laughingly return from a swim, but the second any of them split into pairs for conversations, resentments about the others come bubbling out. Is any love here real or performative? And if it’s performative, where is love and therefore where is God?

In this world, has Karin’s schizophrenia may have emerged as an attempt to insert an acceptable love that is otherwise missing from her life. Her father is a cold-fish, who immediately announces at their reunion dinner he will soon leave for Yugoslavia, then produces a series of gifts “from Switzerland” all too obviously purchased at an airport and unsuitable for the recipient (such as gloves that don’t fit Karin). Her husband overflows with desire for her, but she can hardly raise a flicker of interest in him sexually and behaves him with more like an affectionate daughter.

The most affection filled relationship she has is also the most inappropriate. She and Minus have a relationship of physical intimacy, and she kisses and strokes him with an affection that from the start feels uncomfortably close. They confide in each other emotionally in a way they never would do with others, and Minus is the first witness of one of her schizophrenic breaks, invited by her to view the room she believes is a passageway to God. This unhealthy intensity builds, through confidences and whispered confessions into a terrible encounter in a ruined boat, where Karin is commanded by her voices to seduce Minus into crossing a terrible line.

Perhaps this is a search for love and meaning “to see but through a glass darkly” as St Paul wrote. Karin is searching endlessly for love – and therefore God – but her search seems fruitless. Her family only slowly adjust, she shatters her closest relationship and eventually even her visions in her wallpapered room tip into nightmares. Bergman never lets us see the visions Karin witnesses or hear the voices she does (this places more pressure on Andersson whose controlled and measured performance is more than capable of delivering on) but we see all the traumatic impact on her as they prove as incapable of delivering confirmation of love in her world as anything else.

It’s surprising, for a film which starts as a family drama and becomes a quietly nihilistic drama, that Bergman ends on a moment of hope as David and Minus share a moment of closeness. Bergman later said he regretted this, and the moment does feel forced at the end of a downbeat drama. It may be a reflection of the fact that Through a Glass Darkly, intriguing as it is, is perhaps a little too serious and leans a little too heavily into artistic intensity. It lacks the touches of warmth, hope and humanity that makes Wild Strawberries a masterpiece and at times hits its notes of intense brooding a little too hard (its more or less from here that the Gloomy Swede label stuck).

It’s frequently an artistic triumph, but in some ways I find it less complete than other Bergmans. It’s exploration of its themes of faith and love don’t always coalesce quite as sharply as I would wish. It strains a little too much for profound importance at the cost of some of its humanity and the characters – brilliantly performed as they are – feel a little too much like puppets in the hands of God-like Bergman, going as and when according to his needs. But then, a Bergman film that doesn’t quite make it, would be the crowning achievement of other directors – and Through a Glass Darkly haunts the mind, turning over and over again in your thoughts, for days after you’ve seen it.