Category: Directors

The Sweet Hereafter (1997)


Sarah Polley and Ian Holm are outstanding in this heartfelt story of grief The Sweet Hereafter

Director: Atom Egoyan

Cast: Ian Holm (Mitchell Stephens), Sarah Polley (Nicole Burnell), Bruce Greenwood (Billy Ansel), Tom McCamus (Sam Burnell), Alberta Watson (Risa Walker), Maury Chaykin (Wendell Walker), Gabrielle Rose (Dolores Driscoll), Stepheanie Morgenstern (Allison O’Donnell), Caethan Banks (Zoe Stephens), Arsinée Khanjian (Wanda Otto), Earl Pastko (Hartley Otto)

Atom Egoyan’s melancholic, wintery The Sweet Hereafter is a small-scale masterpiece about grief and mourning and the impact a calamitous accident has on a community. Told across three delicately interwoven timelines, it explores how the loss of a child can affect us and how a community can be broken apart by trauma. 

In a remote Canadian town, an accident to a school bus leaves most of the town’s children killed. The only survivors are bus driver Dolores (Gabrielle Rose) and 15-year-old Nicole Burnell (Sarah Polley) who has been left paralysed from the waist. Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm), is a lawyer looking to start a case against the bus company or the local authority or anyone else he can think of who might be to blame. Stephens himself suffers from the “loss” of his daughter, a hopeless drug addict who contacts him intermittently for money.

Egoyan’s film has a beautiful elegiac quality, the camera mixing intimate close-ups of tormented actors with sweeping vistas of snowy wilderness. The film has a medieval-style pipe score, suggesting an old medieval morality tale. Egoyan builds on this by introducing the recurring theme of the Pied Piper throughout the film – just like Hamelin, the town has lost all its children (bar one child). Nicole seems obviously the one remaining child – but is she more than that? Is Dolores or the bus the pied piper? Is it fate itself? Is Mitchell Stephens another Pied Piper, promising to solve all the town’s problems?

Either way it’s a beautifully heartfelt look at grief, loss and the impact it has on small communities. Everyone is aware of each other’s business, but this town still has secrets, from affairs to suggestions of dark family issues. But the overwhelming feeling is how grief affects us in different ways – how it turns some to depression, some to anger, some to melancholy and some to isolation. It also show how suspicion and resentment can start to bubble up and rend the community – and how finger-pointing and blame can be an inevitable consequence.

This theme is helped by the immaculate acting. There is not a false step in the entire cast. Bruce Greenwood is wonderfully bitter and deeply pained as the father who has lost both his children and his wife in quick succession and wants nothing more than to forget. Alberta Watson is lifeless and going through the motions as a mother who has lost her sole reason for living. Arsinée Khanjian burns with undirected fury at losing her beloved adopted son. The interplay between these and other characters is sublime, Egoyan asking profound questions of love and trust.

Into all this appears our lawyer. In a simply superb performance by Ian Holm, Stephens is both an ambulance chaser and also a man who seems to need this court case to fill a void within himself. Stephens skilfully adjusts his pitch for each member of the town he meets, adroitly recognising and playing on the different emotions he sees to sign them up for a group lawsuit. But how much does his daughter’s own disastrous life tie into his mantra that “someone” is always to blame, that someone has cut corners to save a buck? Does this same mantra help him to deal with his daughter’s failures – that they are not his or hers but some external force? 

Stephens is the classic interloper in the town – it’s easy to see why Greenwood’s Ansell sees him as feeding off the tragedy. Holm leaves the question brilliantly open in a wonderfully subtle performance: how much does he care and how much does he want the money? He talks to the Ottos with real empathy and concern, but then runs to his car in haste to get an agreement for them to sign. Egoyan’s film asks throughout whether Stephen’s presence is, in its way, equally damaging to the town: this Pied Piper offers to take away their pain, but at what price? Will this crusade stop the town from putting the dreadful event behind them?

Interweaving timelines here work very effectively – it’s a good hour into the film before the timeline following the day of the accident finally reaches the accident itself. By this point this accident has so dominated the film that we have become all too familiar with the painful mundanity of grief and the emptiness of carrying on. Egoyan shows us the accident: but not all of it. We see it largely from Ansell’s reaction – and while we see the bus tumbling towards the frozen lake, we never see what makes it swerve. The point perhaps is to put us in the same position as the rest of the town: we can never know if it was an accident, act of God, or if someone was certainly to blame.It’s the balance between blame and moving on that this film dwells on.

The Sweet Hereafter of the film is that netherworld after loss, that “living death” of carrying on after a loved one has left forever. Any doubt that Stephens himself isn’t stuck in the same condition is dispelled in the film’s third contrasting plotline. Two years later, Stephens is a on a plane journey to collect his daughter from another treatment clinic. On the plane he finds himself by chance sitting next to his daughter’s childhood friend. The conversation between them slowly reveals more and more the immense loss, emptiness and longing for family in Stephens. How much of this feeling did he recognise in the town: and how much did his own feelings allow him to exploit the feelings of the town?

Holm is again sublime in these sequences, his eyes little pin holes of sadness, his tight-lipped firmness holding back waves of emotion. In one stand-out sequence, he tells a heart-rendering monologue of a time when his daughter as a child was bitten by a black widow spider. Rushing her to the hospital, Stephens had to keep her calm to prevent her throat swelling up, while simultaneously standing by to perform an emergency tracheotomy. The point of the story for Stephens is his own fear, and the film asks: is this fear also linked to his own regret that this was the last time he could truly keep his daughter safe? And does he also look back on it and wonder why he saved his daughter then so she could die of drug addiction today?

The other daughter in the film is Nicole, played with a mature distance by Sarah Polley. Nicole, the last surviving child, slowly turns into a pivotal figure in the film, her decisions affected by both her relationship with her father (an unsettlingly hipsterish Tom McCamus) and perhaps her wish to do what is best for the town. McCamus is equally good as a loving father whose interest in his daughter is not healthy – and it’s one of many complex questions in the film as to how far Nicole is unsettled or enamoured with his attentions. 

The Sweet Hereafter is a beautifully made, wonderful film – perhaps one of the best you’ll see about small town grief and pity. It may also be one of the best acted films you’ll see – every performance is simply spot-on, heartfelt and true. It may well be Ian Holm’s finest hour, in the most complex leading role he ever got in his career. Egoyan’s emotional and heartfelt story has so much to tell you about grief and mourning that it can’t help but be a sad, melancholic, but thought-provoking and engrossing watch.

The Shape of Water (2017)


Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer work together to save a misunderstood creature in The Shape of Water

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Sally Hawkins (Elisa Esposito), Michael Shannon (Colonel Richard Strickland), Richard Jenkins (Giles), Doug Jones (The Creature), Michael Stuhlbarg (Dr Robert Hoffstetler), Octavia Spencer (Zelda Delilah Fuller), Nick Searcy (General Frank Hoyt), David Hewlett (Fleming), Lauren Lee Smith (Elaine Strickland)

Guillermo del Toro: part arthouse director, part thumping action director, who else could have made both Pan’s Labyrinth and Pacific Rim? The Shape of Water falls firmly into the former category, and continues the director’s long-standing interest in fairy-tales and fables, creating adult bedtime stories filled with romance and wonder, but laced with violence and human horror (and it’s always the humans who are the monsters). The Shape of Water has been garlanded with huge praise – but yet I’m not quite sure about it. Just not quite sure.

In 1962 in Baltimore, Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a mute cleaner working in a government facility with her colleague, friend and effective translator Zelda (Octavia Spencer). Her only other friend is her neighbour, a gay out-of-work advert artist Giles (Richard Jenkins). The research facility takes delivery of a strange amphibious creature (Doug Jones), captured in the wild by sinister CIA man Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon). While Strickland and lead scientist Dr Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) conduct tests on the creature, Elisa befriends it – the two of them drawn together by their isolation and inability to communicate verbally. When the decision comes from above to dissect the creature, Elisa decides to help it escape. 

The Shape of Wateris an adult fairy-tale that uses the structure, rules and heightened reality of the bedtime story. So we have Elisa as “the Princess without a voice”, the government facility as the evil castle, the creature as a mixture of damsel in distress and knight errant, and Michael Shannon’s vile government spook as a sort of perverted evil Queen. While the film is set in 1962, it’s aiming for a fantasy world feeling: Elisa and Giles even live above an old-school movie cinema, while the facility itself is a dank, subterranean concrete prison, part medieval dungeon, part industrial complex, dressed in a retro-1950s style. There’s no denying the film looks fantastically impressive.

The plot hinges on the growing bond between Elisa and the creature, which flourishes first into a mutual friendship, then semi-romance and finally into a full-blown relationship. If there is one part of the movie which I felt didn’t quite work, it was the build between friendship and love. While del Toro does some excellent work showing these two bonding over a common lack of language – she teaches him some basic sign language, they both share a love of music – I felt the jump between friendship and sexual attraction seemed a little big.

Del Toro films it all beautifully – and his empathy for both characters is very moving. But the film wants us to feel this deep connection for (and between) the two characters – and I’m just not sure I did. I’m not sure the film gives the time it needs for this development. Great as Michael Stuhlbarg’s (and excellent as his conflicted performance is) character is, could the film have removed his sub-plot and invested more time in the relationship? Yes it could – and I think this could have made a stronger movie. This is of course a personal reaction – I’m sure plenty of people will be bowled over by the romance of the film – but I didn’t quite buy it. For all the soulfulness of the film, I just didn’t find myself investing in this relationship as it built as much as I should.

This is despite Sally Hawkins’ expressive acting as Elisa. I find Hawkins a bit of an acquired taste: she is a little too twee, something about her eyes and vulnerable smile is a little too head-girlish. Of course that sprightly gentleness works perfectly here, but the character is more interesting when del Toro explores her depths, her desire and well-concealed resentfulness under a cheery exterior (practically the first thing we see her do is masturbate in the bath – a daily ritual timed to the second via egg timer, functionally getting these feelings out of the way before the day ahead). Hawkins mixes this gentle exterior and passionate interior extremely well throughout the film.

The principal supports are also excellent. It’s no coincidence that del Toro makes our heroes all outsiders: a mute, a black servant and an ageing gay man. As well as showing why these characters might be drawn together, it’s also a neat parallel commentary on attitudes of the time – Octavia Spencer in particular makes a huge amount out of a character that is effectively a voice for Elisa half the time, investing the part with a huge sisterly warmth.

Richard Jenkins is both very funny and rather sweet as a man scared of being alone and frightened about doing the right thing. Most of the film’s laughs come from him – but so does a large degree of its heart. Jenkins gets some fantastic material – from hints that he has been fired for social and sexual misdemeanors from his Mad Men-ish former job, to his growing realisation that his hand-drawn art is being left behind in a world embracing photography (“I think it’s my best work” has never sounded like a sadder mantra), and above all his hopelessly sad infatuation with the friendly barman at a local diner (the sort of hopeless crush you feel he must realise isn’t going to go anywhere good – but still manages to be endearing before it gets there).

Del Toro’s dreamy fable has plenty of potential monsters and obstacles in it – from government suits to Russian heavies – but the main antagonist is Shannon’s Strickland. Great as Shannon is in this role as a menacing heavy with a hinterland of insecurities and self-doubt, it’s a character that feels a little obvious. He’s the monster, you see! It’s a heavy-handedness the film sometimes uses – not least in its occasional references to the race politics of the era – that weights the deck, and tries to do a little too much of the work for the audience. Again, a film with one fewer sub-plot might have allowed this character greater depth. As it is, his vileness is established from the first second, which means the metaphor of his hand with its increasingly rotten, gangrenous fingers seems a little to on-the-nose.

But The Shape of Water is a labour of love, and a testament to love – and del Toro reminds us all what a luscious and romantic filmmaker he can be. The later romantic moments between Elisa and the Creature have a beauty to them – not least the moments when they immerse themselves together in water. Other moments are too obvious: an imagined song-and-dance routine is so signposted in advance that it carries little emotional impact. In fact, the film’s main fault may be it is too predictable: most of its plot developments I worked out within the first few minutes – but it sort of still works. After all, fairy-tales are predictable aren’t they?

Del Toro has made one from the heart here. It’s not a perfect film – it’s not a masterpiece, and I think it’s a less complex and affecting work than the brilliant Pan’s Labyrinth – but it’s made with a lot of love and a lot of lyrical romanticism. It looks absolutely astounding. It’s actually surprisingly funny and wonderfully acted: Richard Jenkins probably stands out, and my respect for Octavia Spencer continues to grow. Del Toro is gifted filmmaker, and he is working overtime here to make a romantic, sweeping, monster movie cum adult fairy-tale. All the ingredients are there: but somehow I didn’t fall in love. Did I miss it? Maybe I did. And I can’t think of much higher praise than I’m more than willing to go back and look again and see if I get more of a bond with it next time. But, for all its moments of genius, I found the delight was on the margins rather than the centre.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)


Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster have no scruples and no morals in the dark exploration of American culture, Sweet Smell of Success

Director: Alexander Mackendrick

Cast: Burt Lancaster (JJ Hunsecker), Tony Curtis (Sidney Falco), Susan Harrison (Susan Hunsucker), Martin Milner (Steve Dallas), Sam Levene (Frank D’Angelo), Barbara Nichols (Rita), David White (Elwell), Jeff Donnell (Sally), Joe Frisco (Herbie Temple), Emilie Meyer (Lt Harry Kello)

Is there a more cynical film in all the world than Sweet Smell of Success? Is it any wonder that the preview audiences, settling down to watch what they expected to be a Tony Curtis light comedy, went crazy? But Sweet Smell of Success is a film that captures the sweaty desperation of show-business, and the cut-throat ambitions of Manhattan. It’s a brutal, sharp, vicious black comedy, in which all our heroes are vile and everything can be bought and sold.

JJ Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) is a newspaper columnist, so influential that the slightest mention in his column can make or break careers. He rules the New York politics and arts scene with a ruthless fist – and press agents like Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) will do anything to get even the slightest sniff of a mention in the column. Hunsucker has a job for Falco: Hunsecker’s sister Susan (Susan Harrison) wants to marry jazz musician Steve Dallas (Martin Milner), and Hunsecker doesn’t approve – he wants the relationship finished. Falco may feel some qualms – but they don’t last long, and he’ll do anything he can to wreck the couple’s happiness.

Sweet Smell of Successis all about the grimy effort and lack of morals that sit under the surface of getting to that success. Because to achieve it in the big time you need to be as sinister, controlling and bullying as Hunsecker – and to try and get up there you need to be as conniving and weaselly as Falco. Both these characters are, in their own ways, almost totally reprehensible – and the film makes no attempt whatsoever to mitigate this. The film is appallingly ruthless and cynical, and its two lead characters are, to put it bluntly, complete shits and total bastards.

It’s a film that says the American Dream doesn’t even remotely exist in the way we like to think it can – that there is as much class and control in America as there ever was in the old world. And being decent and honest doesn’t get you anywhere – and sometimes even being conniving and doing whatever you’re told to do doesn’t either. It totally captures the bitter, cruel and imposing mood of New York high society at the time – unwelcoming, unfriendly, judgemental and brutal. For all its glamourous New York location, who on earth would look at this and say “I fancy a piece of that” – it’s the exact opposite of what American films often try to do.

This was Alexander Mackendrick’s first American film, and it’s perhaps his outsider’s eye that really helps the film to really go for it. Mackendrick’s Ealing films weren’t afraid to pull their punches – from the commentary on the corruption of big business in The Man in the White Suit to the dark comedy of The Ladykillers – and (working with genius cinematographer James Wong Howe) he creates one of the darkest (in every sense) film noirs ever. His camera prowls along the streets and he wonderfully captures both the bustle of New York clubs, and the menace of New York behind the glamour. He also shoots both Curtis and Lancaster in a way they never had been shot before – and both of them rise to the richness of the material to give possibly their finest performances.

Burt Lancaster’s Hunsecker is a total monster: a bully and a sadist, vicious and aloof. Lancaster’s stillness here really sells the part – he doesn’t move, everyone else does – and the film brilliantly uses his slightly patrician voice. Hunsecker’s cold, dead-eyed stare pierces through character and desperation, and the contempt he feels for Falco (and every other character) is there in every moment, from looks to subtle physical put-downs (even lighting a cigarette is a power play, laced with an almost sexual sense of control). He “loves this city” because he owns the place, lock stock and barrel. Hunsecker only has one weak point – his clearly incestuous love for his sister – but even that is just the excuse for more controlling, domineering behaviour in which people are only objects for his manipulation.

And no-one is more willing to be manipulated than Tony Curtis’ brilliantly sycophantic Sidney Falco. Hunsecker is vile, but Falco might be worse. Is there a less likeable lead in a movie? Falco has no principles, no morals, no conscious – he’s the worst sort of follower, the sort of kid who stands behind the bully and laughs loudest at every joke. On top of that, Curtis is incompetent and untrusted – the scene where he attempts to blackmail another columnist and is firmly smacked down is wonderful for its discomfort. Curtis is twitchy, desperate, always on the move and will do anything – from lying to planting evidence to openly pimping his secretary. Far from the “young man working his way up” that you might expect, he’s a ruthless, unprincipled opportunist, perhaps the best inverted presentation of American can-do ambition you’ll see on screen.

That’s where the film really works: the scenes between Hunsecker and Falco are simply marvellous: Hunsecker savouring every verbal blow and smooth smackdown – and Falco sitting, edgy and jittery, on the edge, laughing loudly to try and make sure he doesn’t become the target. The marvellous restaurant scenes – with Hunsecker barely able to bring himself to acknowledge Falco’s existence – are the film’s heartbeat: brutal battles where Hunsecker wins everything and lives are destroyed. “A man has just been sentenced to death” Falco gleefully points out – “You’re dead son. Get yourself buried” is Hunsecker’s smoother version.

Ah yes that dialogue. Written by Clifford Odets at incredibly short notice (pages were literally taken straight from the typewriter to the actors’ hands in front of the camera), this might be one of the sharpest, waspiest films ever written. So many quotable lines, with Curtis and Lancaster relishing every dynamic and scintillating one-liner that the script gives them (and there are many). “I’d hate to take a bite out of you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic” – who wouldn’t want dialogue like that? It’s a sensationally written film, and every scene offers a new delight.

It’s not perfect of course. Milton and Harrison are as lightweight and forgettable as Lancaster and Curtis are sensational, too strait-laced and conventional to really seize the interest. The second half of the movie is weaker than the first: the pay-off doesn’t quite match the build-up. Really a film that just followed Hunsecker and Falco about as they went about their daily work, without the sister plotline, might have been even more effective. But it’s probably a quibble on a film that works every time – and has such dense, wonderful dialogue you’ll want to wind back most of the scenes to watch them again. And those two lead performances: simply perfect.

Hugo (2011)


Martin Scorsese’s Hugo: a kids film in name only

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Asa Butterfield (Hugo Cabret), Chloë Grace Moretz (Isabelle), Ben Kingsley (Papa Georges), Sacha Baron Cohen (Inspector Gustave Dasté), Ray Winstone (Claude Cabret), Emily Mortimer (Lisette), Jude Law (Mr Cabret), Helen McCrory (Mama Jeanne), Michael Stuhlbarg (René Tabard), Christopher Lee (Monsieur Labisse), Frances de la Tour (Madame Emilie), Richard Griffiths (Monsieur Frick)

Martin Scorsese isn’t exactly the first name you think of when your mind turns to directors of children’s films. So perhaps it makes sense that, in Hugo, he directed a children’s film aimed at virtually anyone except children. A huge box-office flop, Hugo was garlanded with awards and critics’ acclaim – but I’d be amazed if you find any child with a DVD of it. It’s a film made by a passionate lover of cinema, aimed at lovers of cinema, which just happens to have a child at the centre of it. 

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan, living in the Paris train station fixing the clocks, and attempting to fix a curious automaton which his late father (Jude Law) had taken from the Paris museum to repair. After being caught by Monsieur Georges (Ben Kingsley) stealing parts from his toy shop in the station, Hugo must earn back his confiscated notebook on the workings of the automaton. Hugo starts a friendship with Georges’ god-daughter Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), and together they begin to investigate the mysterious past of Papa Georges – and his connection with the early days of cinema.

Any understanding of what makes a good film for children is missing here. It’s not exciting, it’s not engrossing, it’s not particularly fun, it doesn’t place the child (really) at the heart, and most importantly it doesn’t have a story children can relate to. The characters spend a lot of time talking about the glorious adventure they’re on – but none of the excitement translates to the screen. Instead the action creeps forward uncertainly, with the motivations of Hugo himself unclear. There are half hearted attempts to aim at a universal fear children can relate to – losing your parents and searching for new ones – but the film doesn’t run with it. 

Its real interest is the power of the movies. So Hugo’s story gets lost halfway through the film, as Scorsese focuses in on the redemption of famed cinema auteur and pioneer Georges Méliès. The children’s adventure is nothing more than visiting a library to find out who Méliès was – after that, they are effectively superfluous to the story. Details about Hugo’s relationship with his father, or with his distant uncle, are completely dropped – and the automaton that seemed like it held the key to Hugo’s purpose, becomes a MacGuffin. It’s a film about a giant of cinema, made by a giant of cinema.

So let’s put aside the marketing of this film as children’s film. The only element of the film that feels remotely like it is part of some sort of kids’ flick is Sacha Baron Cohen’s slapstick, funny-accented railway inspector – and as such Cohen’s hammy mugging sticks out like a tiresome sore thumb. The rest of the film is what you would expect from a cinema enthusiast making a film about the movies – a glorious, loving recreation of old silent movies and the methods of making them, shot and told with a sprinkling of movie magic. 

The film looks wonderful. The cinematography is gorgeous, the production design astounding. It’s beautifully made and has a light and enchanting score. Scorsese goes all out to homage the shots and set-ups of old silent movies. In fact the film only really comes to life in its second half, where flashbacks show the methods Méliès used to make his films. The recreation of scenes from these old classics is brilliantly done – and Scorsese’s designers delight in filling the screen with the sort of colour that you couldn’t find in the original. The photography also goes out of its way to give these scenes the sort of colour tinted look that the hand-painted prints of old movies had. Even the editing is designed as much as possible to replicate these old films.

Truly, these sequences are delightful – and Scorsese’s joy in making them is evident in the camerawork, and the emotional force he gives to Méliès’ story (helped as well by Ben Kingsley’s sensitive underplaying as the depressed genius). It’s just a shame that he couldn’t get as engaged with the first part of the film. Hugo’s story is largely dramatically inert – in fact the whole plotline around Hugo feels like a hook on which to hang the second half of the film. As if Scorsese couldn’t make the second part of the film without making the first. 

That’s why this film doesn’t work for children, but works better for film-loving adults. The ins and outs of Hugo’s early story just aren’t that interesting – and we aren’t given any real reason to relate to Hugo or to feel any empathy for his journey (whatever that might be). In fact the film stretches this plot line long past any actual content – already I’m struggling to remember exactly what happened in the first hour of the film. This is no comment on the performances of Butterfield or Moritz, who are both very good (even if Moritz is saddled with sub-Hermione Grainger character traits). While it always looks great, it never really finds the heart to get us engaged with Hugo.

So Hugo is a film for cinema-fanatics. Scorsese directs with great invention – but it’s all too clear where his heart is: and that’s why the film failed so spectacularly as a kids’ film. Compare this to Toy Story 3say, and it’s clear which one most children are going to want to watch. However, if you want to see Scorsese make a charming film about his passions, one that is overlong but looks gorgeous, that playfully recreates the silent cinema era, even while its narrative is basically pretty dramatically inert, you’ll love it. There are moments in this film to treasure – it’s just not really for kids. Just because Scorsese made a film without someone’s head in a vice or zipped into a bodybag, doesn’t suddenly mean he’s going to find a new audience.

Phantom Thread (2017)


Vicky Krieps and Daniel Day-Lewis play dangerous games in Paul Thomas Anderson’s fascinating film about control, Phantom Thread

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis (Reynolds Woodcock), Vicky Krieps (Alma Elson), Lelsey Manville (Cyril Woodcock), Camilla Rutherford (Johanna), Gina McKee (Countess Henrietta Harding), Brian Gleeson (Dr Robert Hardy), Harriet Sansom Harris (Barbara Rose), Lujza Richter (Princess Mona Braganza), Judy Davis (Lady Balitmore), Philip Franks (Peter Martin)

The last time Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis worked together, we got a true masterpiece in There Will Be Blood. Phantom Thread couldn’t be much more different. In place of rolling plains, oil, and Day-Lewis as a monstrously larger-than-life alpha male, we get confined rooms, handsome dresses and Day-Lewis as a pernickety, obsessive, creepy dressmaker. But Phantom Thread may also be just as intriguing, thought-provoking and memorable in its way as There Will Be Blood.

Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a leading couturier in 1950s London, whose fashions are highly sought after by the rich and famous. He lives and works with his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), who dominates his life – and dispatches his various muses as their use comes to an end. On a break near the coast, Reynolds meets Alma (Vicky Krieps), a hotel waitress whom he takes back to London as his latest muse. At first Alma seems to be merely the tool of this fashion Svengali – but Alma has her own desires that quickly spark conflict in the House of Woodcock.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s film has lashings of Daphne du Maurier, Powell and Pressburger (it’s more than a little reminiscent of The Red Shoes) and a slickly inverted Pygmalion. It’s a film that slowly emerges as being about control and the way power relationships can shift and transform. Reynolds at first seems a twisted Henry Higgins: his muses come and go (and, it’s implied, fail to live up to his mother) – he becomes tired of them, and his sister, business partner, factotum and part-time mother-figure Cyril dismisses them when they have served their purpose. 

Reynolds and Alma’s first meeting is one of creepy control. He asks her to memorise his order, wipes her lipstick away so he can “see her” and, in a late night “living mannequin” sequence, dresses her in a series of fabrics and clothes, and offers dispassionate comment about her body. What’s interesting in this sequence though, is that Alma only becomes uncomfortable when Cyril arrives and joins Reynolds in the process. It’s a hint of the developments that will emerge over the course of the film: Alma doesn’t want to share Reynolds.

That’s the tension the film explores from thereon: Reynolds seems to have all the power, but Alma pushes against this to forge her own position as something more than a muse. The film has an acute understanding of the psychology of power in human relationships, which is more than reminiscent of Rebecca: the exact motivations of the characters remain unclear (sometimes even to themselves) until late in the film. The film veers into My Cousin Rachel territory – while giving us a totally unexpected series of emotional developments that spin out of this, which shock but make perfect sense.

That’s because Paul Thomas Anderson has made a sharply observant film about human fallibility and our desire to understand our place in the hierarchies around us, and the unusual paths to contentment that we can find. Like The Red Shoes, it also feels like a film that really understands the psychology of Svengali figures, and adds a Freudian bent to it. Reynolds is looking for a mother to take the place of his own and he is drawn to muses who remind him of her, but who constantly fail to replace her. It’s in the weakness that Reynolds’ perfectionism drives him away from, that he is capable of finding love and happiness.

So the film becomes a series of wonderfully low-key power shifts, many of them revolving around meals. It’s established early that Reynolds demands very precise conditions for his breakfasts – most importantly silence; in every breakfast scene that follows, everything from the loudness of the crunching to the amount of scrapping of jam on toast tells you who is in control. 

Because just as Reynolds wants to craft Alma to take on the perfect muse position for his dressmaking – so Alma wants to craft Reynolds into the perfect combination of high-achieving genius whose success she can vicariously enjoy, and a man who needs her emotionally. Anderson’s brilliant, bitter and waspy screenplay shows the different steps both characters dance through to achieve this. Alma’s solution, and its psychological impact, is brilliantly du Maurier; it’s out there, but makes perfect sense.

Visually the film is beautifully crafted. Anderson shoots a lot of the film with a combination of slow prowling shots, and cameras held at close-up or medium shots that regularly place the actors close to the camera. It means that we always feel like we are right in the middle of the action – looking over the shoulders of actors, or seeing their faces loom into the camera. It obviously creates a claustrophobic feeling, but also one of real intimacy – it’s like the camera is dressing the characters, the same way Reynolds does. But Anderson’s choices pull you closer into the action, and get you really thinking about the psychology of the characters you are watching.

And Anderson wants you to get into the psychology here, because he has cast three actors at the top of their game in this tight-character study. Day-Lewis is of course superb, as a character unnervingly precise and cool – his voice is a perfect combination of icy preciseness, and trembling emotional confusion. Reynolds is in many ways a child – his every whim must be followed, he explodes in foul-mouthed (hilarious) fury at any deviation from his procedures. But he’s also an emotionally stunted man who has never got over the loss of his mother, capable of strong sexual feelings and a yearning for closeness. It’s a subtle, controlled, low-key performance.

But Day-Lewis’ retirement has stolen a lot of the attention from Vicky Krieps, who is sensational as Alma. In many ways, she is the real protagonist of the story. Alma is at first our entry into the story – but we quickly learn we know or understand very little about her. She comes from somewhere in Europe, she may well be Jewish, but Krieps makes her hard to define. Unusual and impossible to understand, Krieps makes her a fascinating character. She emerges as a determined, strong-willed, manipulative figure, looking to have a firm place in her partner’s life – she’s both a toy that bites back, and a woman who will settle for no compromise in what she wants. It’s a fascinating performance. 

Lesley Manville rounds out the cast as the waspish Cyril, deliciously spitting out some cruel lines. Manville is terrific, and Cyril sits in an unusual place in the Woodcock house, partly catering to Reynolds’ demands, partly controlling and positioning him. This makes a perfect foil both for Reynolds’ demanding requirements for a mother, and for Alma’s desire to bring Reynolds under her own influence.

Anderson’s film is a beautiful, fantastically scored, wonderfully acted, intriguing character study, and an insightful exploration of emotional and sexual control and the traps we built for ourselves and for others. It’s a film where every scene is open to interpretation, where both the past and the future seem to haunt events and every resolution leaves questions. It’s a brilliant psychological study that rewards endless thinking, analysis – and I’m sure repeat viewings. I think this one could run and run.

Excalibur (1981)


Nigel Terry gets a special gift in John Boorman’s crazily OTT Arthurian epic Excalibur

Director: John Boorman

Cast: Nigel Terry (King Arthur), Nicol Williamson (Merlin), Helen Mirren (Morgana Le Fay), Nicholas Clay (Sir Lancelot), Cherie Lunghi (Guenevere), Paul Geoffrey (Sir Perceval), Gabriel Byrne (King Uther Pendragon), Corin Redgrave (Duke of Cornwall), Patrick Stewart (King Leondegrance), Keith Buckley (Sir Uryens), Clive Swift (Sir Ector), Liam Neeson (Sir Gawain), Robert Addie (Mordred), Niall O’Brien (Sir Kay), Ciarán Hinds (King Lot), Charley Boorman (Young Mordred), Katrine Boorman (Igrayne)

John Boorman had wanted to make a film about King Arthur for over a decade, but it only came into being after his plans for an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings fell through (the suits were convinced the film couldn’t be a hit – good call). So, with a lot of prep work for Tolkien in place, Boorman moved a lot of his ideas for LOTR over to Excalibur. In doing so he created something probably truly unique – a bonkers version of the Arthurian legend, so consistently Wagnerian (often literally), high-falutin’ and overblown that it has a strange integrity in its operatic silliness.

The film begins with Arthur’s conception, a result of King Uther’s (Gabriel Byrne) lust for his ally’s wife, Igrayne (the director’s daughter Katrine). Merlin (Nicol Williamson) agrees to magically disguise Uther as Igrayne’s husband for one night, and in return spirits away the resulting child to be reared ignorant of his heritage. Years later, with a leaderless kingdom in chaos, Arthur (Nigel Terry) draws the magical sword Excalibur from the stone, and proves himself as king. He marries Guenevere (Cherie Lunghi) and brings Sir Lancelot (Nicholas Clay) to Camelot – oblivious of their love for each other. Slowly this love destroys the peace of the land – encouraged by the schemes of Arthur’s vengeful half-sister Morgana (Helen Mirren).

Excalibur is a film set in a completely heightened middle-ages dreamworld, as if it’s a series of drawings from an illustrated edition of King Arthur brought to life. The design of the film is dialled up to eleven: the armour the characters wear is ridiculously elaborate, shiny and eye catching. The characters never seem to take it off: Uther even has sex wearing it (poor Igrayne is completely naked – that can’t have been comfortable for her). Full armour is worn at meals, wedding, social events, everything: at the same time it’s brilliantly ineffective, punctured with ease by axes and spears.

The rest of the design of the film is equally overblown. Camelot seems to have been literally made from silver and gold. Lancelot kips in the forest and sleeps in the nude. Battle scenes are filmed on moody, misty nights, with horses and knights riding with insane riskiness at each other. Excalibur itself is almost impossibly shiny and unblemished and occasionally glows green. Everything has a high-artistic feel to it, like a Romantic painting. Nothing looks real – it uses a “rule of cool” aesthetic, anything that looks good from anything approaching medievalism is used.

The acting itself follows this operatic style. Half the dialogue is delivered shouting: Patrick Stewart in particular must have lost his voice while filming this one. Filmed in Ireland (it practically kickstarted the Irish film industry), many Irish actors got their first film break here, not least Gabriel Byrne (a furiously lusty Uther), Liam Neeson (a drunken oafish Gawain) and Ciarán Hinds (growling in the background). Each roars through their dialogue, perhaps none more so than Corin Redgrave who screams his with such flemmy passion it’s often hard to work out what exactly he’s saying. 

There are quieter moments from the three leads, even if all three of them don’t really have the charisma to impose themselves on sketchily drawn characters. Cherie Lunghi adopts an odd, part-time Irish accent as a bland Guenevere. Nicholas Clay is an upright Lancelot who simmers with guilt but is just a wee bit dull. Nigel Terry’s performance as Arthur (from young yokel to tortured king) gets better the more times I see it, but it lacks a certain star quality. But then in Boorman’s design, these three characters are just tools of fate rather than real characters – and the film has so much story to cover it often has very little time for character development.

The real stars of this film are Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren. The two actors had a long-standing animosity – Boorman deliberately cast them to get an extra spark out of their scenes. But both actors seize their colourful characters – and have the time to add some depth to their bombastic, larger-than-life moments. Mirren gets to express bitterness and fury under simmering sexuality, as well as a genuine love for her son. Williamson is fantastic: playful, half nutty professor, half vengeful force of mystic power, he turns Merlin into an eccentric but somehow sinister old man. Williamson finds bizarro and unique line readings of even the simplest lines, stretching the material in the way only a really great actor can. He’s such an electric and interesting character, that he makes a performance that’s basically well over the top, hugely enjoyable and also even rather sweet.

As such, Williamson is perfect for Boorman’s overblown, crazy film. The score uses Wagner and Carmina Burana to great effect, and the closing moments are shot before a giant blood red sky. Boorman’s shiny, colourful world effectively melts down in the second half of the film into musty, moody greys: his concept of Arthur losing his way and the kingdom disintegrating works extremely well, and means we get a real sense of things falling apart. The Grail Quest is like a creepy fever dream – with knights we have known dying in gruesome ways, freezing in chapels or hanging in a tree with their corpses picked clean by crows (of course one crow eats an eye!). 

In many ways Excalibur is a very silly film: it’s hard to believe it was made six years after Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as much of its design and action is more than a little reminiscent of that film (it’s probably the only parody you could argue was made before the film it best sends-up). You probably need to see it at a certain age or enter into it with the right mindset for something that walks a difficult line between fairy tale and earthy campness. But I still love it.

Because Boorman really goes for it here. You know from the early sequence of Uther and Igrayne having sex against a background of actual fire, in full plate armour, intercut with a lingering death of Cornwall impaled on a series of spears in Uther’s camp (his death and Uther’s climax are of course cut together) what sort of film you are going to get. Everything is OTT. The drama leaves nothing behind, and Boorman wisely removes any sense of restraint from this telling of the legend. It looks gorgeous – even if dated moments like the Lady of the Lake are more likely to raise sniggers than not – and it really, really goes for it. Not many other films could get away with something so over-the-top and bizarre: but this sort of does.

Silence (2016)


Andrew Garfield struggles with questions of faith in Martin Scorsese’s Silence

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Andrew Garfield (Father Sebastião Rodrigues), Adam Driver (Father Francisco Garupe), Shinya Tsukamoto (Mokichi), Liam Neeson (Father Cristóvão Ferreira), Tadanobu Asano (The Interpreter), Ciarán Hinds (Father Alessandro Valignano), Issey Ogata (Inoue Masashige), Yoshi Oida (Ichizo), Yōsuke Kubozuka (Kichijuri), Nana Komatsu (Monica/Haru), Ryo Kase (João/Chokichi)

Martin Scorsese is well known as the director of the finest gangster and crime films ever made. But interestingly, he also has quite the sideline in searching religious epics – and in fact many of his films, not least Mean Streets and The Departed, dwell on feelings of Catholic duty and guilt, questions of doubt and faith. Silence, a book published in 1971, zeroes in on these questions by placing priests in impossible situations and seeing how their faith is tested.

In the 1630s, Japan begins a campaign of persecution against Christian converts. Jesuit priest Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson) witnesses his flock undergoing torture for their faith. Word reaches the Catholic church that Ferreira has committed apostasy. A few years later, Fathers Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) volunteer to head to Japan to continue the mission of spreading the world, and to find out the truth about Ferreira, who had been their mentor. In Japan, they find a dangerous and violent world where Christians face gruelling persecution. Both men find their faith tested – and God’s silence deafening.

Silence is a film that received a slightly sniffy review on release – but what were people expecting? This is a quiet, meditative, beautifully made film that raises profound questions around faith, identity and Christianity – and is brave enough to let people develop their own answers. It’s a slow-paced, thoughtful and (for such a dynamic film-maker) very calmly filmed work, that feels like it carries a great deal of personal investment – Scorsese’s interests in the effort and struggle required by faith, and about how few clear-cut answers there are in our understanding of religion.

On those terms, I found myself both engrossed by it – much more than I was anticipating. Scorsese combines astounding visuals and use of sound (and silence) to create a hypnotic film. The mists of Japan have rarely looked so beautiful, and the film’s astounding cinematography uses it to maximum effect to create a series of stunning images. One marvellous shot of a crucified man removed from his cross and carried to his funeral pyre is very moving in its simplicity and echoes Caravaggio’s Deposition from the Cross. At other times, silence is skilfully introduced, just as moments of seeming quiet are never truly silent. It’s a marvellously made film.

Within this beautiful framework, Scorsese explores ideas of faith and apostasy. How does faith work? How much is our communication with God private and how much does it need to be made public? Would you renounce your calling to save others – even if it meant turning your back on God? How much of all this is God listening into? How much is the act of conversion a selfish one, spreading your own glory? How many sacrifices are worth the celebration of faith – and what is the ultimate aim and reward of martyrdom? How can we even define martyrdom – and does it always revolve around death, or a can it be a private death of the spirit? 

These are fascinating ideas, and the film presents a series of viewpoints on each of these, while never offering a definitive answer. While this is a film about men who question their faith, it is not a film asking the viewer to question theirs. If you hold faith, different solutions and answers will present themselves, and your own personal beliefs will guide what you feel is right and what is not. Some people you may find unforgiveable – others you may find foolish or even conceited in their faith, while others will find the same men brave and principled.

Scorsese directs all this with an astonishing sense of control and quiet reflection, letting the film breathe and never allowing melodrama to overwhelm reflection, or the character story. The film is unflinching in watching the matter-of-fact drowning, crucifiying and other killings of Christians, but it never feels like its making cheap points, strange as it is to see such visual beauty given to horror. It’s asking us how much of this we could sit and watch without agreeing to abandon something we believe passionately in as the ultimate truth.

Andrew Garfield performs with a passionate earnestness and absolute commitment. In many ways, as the reactive centre of the film, he has the least interesting part (and therefore fewer opportunities to shine than the rest of the cast) but he is very good in a difficult internalised role, and makes us invest in every step of Rodrigues’ tortured journey of increasing doubts and fears. 

Driver has a flashier part, but does very well as a priest who wears his heart on his sleeve – and voices doubts, but also flashes of anger. He provides a lot of the initial energy, and demonstrates again what an intelligent and instinctive actor he is. Neeson as the fallen priest is able to invert his own reputation for mentors, while leaving the question open of how much his placidity and co-operation with the authorities is brain-washing or hiding far different feelings.

Scorsese recruits some of the cream of Japanese acting, and they deliver uniformly strong performances. Shinya Tsukamoto is excellent as Rodrigues’ mirror image, a man quick to denounce to save his own skin, but carries a kernel of faith at his centre. Tadanobo Asano is wonderfully controlling as Rodrigues’ interpreter, while Issey Ogata is outstanding as the leading prosecutor of the Japanese government, a man who seems a harmless, wizened old man, but whose eyes (and chamelonic body) are able to rearrange itself swiftly into looks of contempt and loathing.

Silence is a serenely made film, one that really wants to speak to those with Christian faith. Like the works of Carl Dreyer, it engages intelligently with themes around faith. I’d be fascinated to see what those who hold a stronger faith than mine make of it. But I thought this posed a series of compelling, and searching, questions about the unknowability of God – of his silence, but that silence not necessarily being indifference. It charts how hope can be found from despair – and how sacrifices we sometimes make for the greater good can also lead to new ways we can understand ourselves. It’s a very mature, brave and compelling piece of film making.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)


Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely explore the mysteries of the Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: Robert Stephens (Sherlock Holmes), Colin Blakely (Dr John Watson), Geneviève Page (Gabrielle Valladon), Christopher Lee (Mycroft Holmes), Irene Handl (Mrs Hudson), Clive Revill (Rogozhin), Tamara Toumanova (Madame Petrova), Stanley Holloway (Gravedigger), Mollie Maureen (Queen Victoria), Catherine Lacey (Old Woman)

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes may just be the best Sherlock Holmes film you’ll see. It’s certainly one of the most original. Wilder’s semi-pastiche, described by Mark Gatiss as “both reverent and irreverent”, was a major box-office disaster at the time, but it’s a film that has grown richer and more enjoyable with age – particularly as we’ve caught up with its “fan fiction” style, its placing of the great detective in unusual emotional and social situations. 

Wilder’s film follows two “buried” cases of Sherlock Holmes, both suppressed by Watson. In the first (taking up the first quarter of the film), Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Dr Watson (Colin Blakely) are invited to a production of Swan Lakeby the Russian Royal Ballet, where a curious and unusual case is proposed to Holmes. In the second story, a mysterious woman suffering from amnesia (Geneviève Page) winds up on the doorstep of 221B Baker Street. Investigating who and what has brought her there leads into a case that covers continents, the upper echelons of the British government, and (possibly) the deeply hidden depths of Holmes’ own heart.

First off, it’s impossible to talk about Private Life without noting we only really have half the film. Not only did audiences not get it, nor did the studio. Both were expecting a traditional Holmes adaptation. Getting an amusing and wry exploration of Holmes’ psychology, built into a film where the great detective makes several errors, was categorically not that. So half the film was cut and chucked in the bin (including two whole cases). The footage no longer survives (there is an excellent recreation of what is left on Eureka’s new blu-ray) – but it’s a film that might have been.

It’s also a film that was apparently hell to make. Wilder had always been demanding – he demanded a completely faithful interpretation of his text, and often gave scrupulous line readings. It went to extremes here: epic rehearsals before every shot, with every line and movement dictated. For Stephens – a fragile alcoholic going through a divorce – it was too much, and part way through filming he attempted suicide. Shooting was delayed while he recovered, though Stephens’ pale, wan face needed to be overly made-up to compensate (in the opening scenes he genuinely looks like a drag act).

So you can’t forget the turmoil that brought it to the screen. But the end result (what remains) is largely a delight, even if it isn’t perfect. But it really is decades ahead of its time. Just like Sherlock (and it’s certainly the parent of that show), its main interest is not the case but the detective, his foibles and his emotional hinterland. Motored throughout by the wonderful chemistry between Stephens and Blakely (the two actors were good friends), it’s a wonderfully written film, full of wry humour and banter, mixed with moments of genuine heart and emotion. 

The film asks: who is Sherlock Holmes? Is he the cold fish he appears to be? While it doesn’t want to answer the enigma, it enjoys trying to unpeel those layers. Stephens’ Holmes is wry, witty, slightly fey, playful but also distant. He stands off from genuine intimacy and emotion – and why is that? As he spends time with Gabrielle Valadon, how much does he warm towards her – when he ruminates on his fears about trusting people, particularly women (in a marvellous late night conversation in an overnight train bunkbed), the film asks us to think: how damaged can this man who lives to investigate crimes but seems to have only one friend, be? It’s everything Sherlock took further: in fact the relationship between Holmes and Vardon has more than a few echoes in A Scandal in Belgravia.

The film’s real genius though is its opening short story, revolving around Holmes, a ballet company and a serious of unusual requests. This pastiche is very funny, very clever, beautifully played and crammed with invention and wit. The dialogue is beautiful, while both actors are perfect: Blakely is hilarious as a Watson full of joie de’vivre while Stephens’ drily amused Holmes works hard to never let surprise penetrate his raised eyebrow. The story goes down some mysterious alleyways – not least some curious questions around Holmes’ sexuality and experience with women. But it’s just about a perfect half hour of Holmesian pastiche: probably the best of its kind ever made.

The larger story doesn’t quite live up to it, but there are some beautiful moments in there, not least the growing bond between Holmes and Vardon in which nothing is ever said or done – and much is left open to interpretation – but where Holmes shows more of his humanity than he has perhaps ever done. The case itself is half humour, half expansion of Conan Doyle. By the end we are left asking ourselves how much on the back foot Holmes was for most of the case: and the case’s resolution eventually sniffs of satire. But the film itself ends on a bittersweet resolution, with Holmes facing the impact of emotions in a way he perhaps never has before.

Wilder’s film is sharp, witty and crammed with great scenes and jokes. It’s very well acted, particularly by Blakely as a hilarious Watson, full of good humour and bombast but with a sharp sense of cunning. He may not be as bright as Holmes, but he’s certainly bright enough to get the most out of life. Stephens is a little uncomfortable as Holmes (this film sparked a career nosedive that it took nearly 20 years for him to emerge from) but at certain moments he gives the part a really unique lightness masking an unknowable emotional hinterland.

It’s a film that’s easy to mistake for straight comedy, but it really isn’t. It’s a fascinating, entertaining and rewarding exploration of the leading character’s psyche, by writers who clearly know of what they speak. It throws in a case framework that smacks of the high-blown, Giant Rat of Sumatra-style cases Watson makes passing reference to in the stories. It’s a film that focuses on character and relationship – that captures a sense of friendship between Holmes and Watson that few other films have managed – and that spoofs the cannon while still feeling very true to it. 

It’s not perfect: it’s overlong and sometimes the pace drags or the sparkle fades. But Wilder and Diamond’s script has plenty of jokes and cannon knowledge (this was the first pastiche to explore Holmes’ cocaine use – and the psychological reasons for it) and has some terrific performances. Christopher Lee makes a wonderful urbane, whipper-thin Mycroft while Irene Handl is a wonderfully bumptious Mrs Hudson. Not only did it inspire Sherlock – it must also keep inspiring all fans of the great detective.

Youth (2015)


Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel try to embrace their past in Paolo Sorrentino’s mesmeric Youth

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Cast: Michael Caine (Fred Ballinger), Harvey Keitel (Mick Boyle), Rachel Weisz (Lena Ballinger), Paul Dano (Jimmy Tree), Jane Fonda (Brenda Morel), Roly Serrano (Argentinian Footballer), Alex MacQueen (Queen’s emissary), Robert Seethaler (Luca Moroder), Ed Stoppard (Julian Boyle), Paloma Faith (Herself), Tom Lipinski, Chloe Pirrie, Alex Beckett, Nate Dern, Mark Gessner (Screenwriters)

Well this is something different. Youth is a hard to categorise film from Paolo Sorrentino. Sorrentino often seems the definition of (admittedly beautifully filmed) style over substance. But he’s also able to suggest great, unseen depth, a hard to define quality. Sometimes these qualities result in an impressive but frustratingly empty work. And sometimes it results in something simply wonderful. Youth falls firmly into the second category. In fact, it fits so firmly into this that I think it might be the most wonderful film Sorrentino has made. Put frankly, I loved this film. I can’t quite put my finger on why somehow, but I loved it.

It’s set in a Swiss retreat, peopled by the rich and famous. There are film stars, Miss Universe, famous pop stars and an overweight former Argentinian footballer (who could be anyone right?). Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) is a world-famous composer, a man officially in retirement, uninterested in answering entreaties from the Royal Family to perform his famous “Simple Song #3” at Prince Philip’s birthday. He is accompanied by his daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz), who acts as his assistant, and struggles with her father’s difficult personality and her resentment towards him. Fred’s best friend Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), a famous director, is also staying at the resort with a gang of screenwriters, preparing his script for what he intends to be his final film (his “testament”).

Youth is a film that conveys great depth and emotional strength, while never falling into any category or offering up clear answers or spoon-fed themes. Instead it explores, in a gentle way, age, disappointment, hope, lost opportunities and warm memories. It’s nominally a film about old people reflecting on their youth, but it’s also full of moments that show these characters still have moments of vibrancy. In a beautiful moment, the footballer (barely able to get himself out of a pool without oxygen) carries out a series of beautifully skilful keepie-uppies with a tennis ball for over a minute, before he wheezes and has to stop. That’s kinda the whole film right there in an image: age and youth all in one go. It’s beautiful. I loved it.

Sorrentino loves the flashy shot, and carefully framed image. This film is full of them, and they work wonderfully well. It’s sprinkled throughout with gorgeous dream sequences and fantasy moments, from Boyle seeing a field full of his leading ladies past, to Lena dreaming of a hilariously overblown music video showing her unfaithful husband (a slimy Ed Stoppard) and Paloma Faith (a very good sport) undulating over a speeding car. We see Fred sitting in a field conducting a semi-imaginary orchestra of cows with bells. Imaginative shots are sprinkled throughout, everyday things seen from new and unique angles. 

And its so emotionally fulfilling, filled with both lump-in-the-throat moments and moments of searing, magical hope and joy. It explores what matters to us as we get old – and how what matters to us in our lives changes as we age. Sometimes these things remain the same, sometimes we move with the times. Sometimes we adjust, and sometimes we don’t. It’s a film where some characters struggle to recall events, others reinterpret their lives as they happen. You could criticise the film for not having a clear central theme, but its theme if anything is life – and life is not easy to categorise. It’s a mountain of different moments and attitudes: and that is what this film likes. It’s messy and hard to predict. And it’s strangely beautiful. 

So Sorrentino crafts a feast of a film here, crammed full of dialogue that should be almost too weighty and overtly “important”, but somehow never comes across like that. It’s partly because it’s delivered with such experienced, lightly worn skill, but also because Sorrentino pulls off the trick of positioning it as profound rather than overbearing. Shot with a gentle, elegiac expressiveness, it’s a film that brilliantly works, that conveys and carries great weight. It’s about the human condition, and it feels real and human at all times.

It also helps that it’s superbly acted. There isn’t a dud performance here – and some give some of the most beautiful work of their career. Michael Caine takes a few minutes to accept as a world famous composer (something about him just doesn’t quite work), but you quickly let it go because he is astonishingly good here. Caine’s Fred carries great reserves of regret and loss, but also many memories of joy. Caine is beautifully expressive – part observer, part driver of the action. He has the wonderful air of being young-old and an old-young-at-heart. He’s playful but also tired. He’s strangely unknowable but at times open. It’s a beautiful performance.

Just as good is Harvey Keitel. The film is full of these two guys – like Stadler and Waldorf – moaning about getting old. But Keitel brings a great tragic depth to Boyle, a great director fallen on hard times, a man whose best days may well be behind him but who refuses to let the light die. He’s both funny and (by the end) incredibly moving. Rachel Weisz is radiant as Lena – a scene where she finally lets years of anger out is wonderful – but another late scene as she quietly weeps with a sort of sad joy is simply superb. She has a gentle romance that builds with real sweetness. She’s impossible to look away from in this, she’s brilliant.

Youth also has moments where it explores the nature of art and its legacy. Ballinger feels he is probably a good-but-not-great composer. Boyle feels there are moments he touched greatness, but is never sure if it’s there or not. Paul Dano plays a great stage actor who is known worldwide for his role as a robot in a Star Wars style smash. What is art? The film doesn’t dare to answer the question, but it does ask what are artists? How do they question themselves? Why do they do what they do? Artists in this film are always watching – even the footballer – they are always looking to become a part of their world or comment on it. 

Sorrentino’s film is marvellous. I really loved it. It’s crammed full of brilliant moments. Even Jane Fonda’s overblown cameo as a film star works (I think just). It’s played with such brilliancy, structured with such light playfulness, that it is able to carry great depth and grace. It’s a film that rewards reviewing – I’m not sure I’ve worked out the implications of the final shot, or what it might mean for how we should interpret Ballinger’s final actions – and I can’t wait to see it again.

Get Out (2017)


Daniel Kaluuya finds himself well out of his depth in Get Out

Director: Jordan Peele

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya (Chris Washington), Allison Williams (Rose Armitage), Catherine Keener (Missy Armitage), Bradley Whitford (Dean Armitage), Caleb Landry Jones (Jeremy Armitage), Stephen Root (Jim Hudson), Lakeith Stanfield (Logan King), Lil Rel Howery (Rod Williams), Marcus Henderson (Walter), Betty Gabriel (Georgina)

Really great genre film-making transcends its genre, while demonstrating all its strengths. Get Out is nominally a horror film, but strangely it didn’t feel quite like that while I was watching it. It’s more of a horror-inflected social drama with lashings of satire and commentary on race in America. It’s a smart, deeply unsettling film, which really makes you think about how racism has subtly developed in America over the past 100 years. It also manages to feel very much like a film caught at the turning point between Obama and Trump.

Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is a young, black photographer dating wealthy white Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). He reluctantly agrees to spend the weekend with her family on their countryside estate. Rose’s parents, neurosurgeon Dean (Bradley Whitford) and hypnotherapist Missy (Catherine Keener) are almost overly welcoming and in expressing their liberal credentials. Chris is doubly unsettled that the Armitages’ house has two black workers, both of whom seem alarmingly compliant. The weekend coincides with an annual get-together the Armitage family hosts, where the guests (all rich and white) make comments to Chris admiring his physique, build, sporting ability and genetic advantages. Chris can sense something is wrong – but can’t even begin to guess the mystery at the heart of the Armitage house.

Get Out is, more than anything else, a film about racial politics in America. It trades in the unsettled discomfiture some liberal white people feel when they actually have to interact with a black male from a different background, and then inverts this into a horror. But it rings true: the father so keen to be seen as liberal he uses the phrase “my man” repeatedly, praises Obama, shows off his “multi-cultural art”, delightedly repeats stories about Jesse Owens; the guests at the party who pinch Chris’ muscles, and praise his physique. It feels like a situation where Chris is invited but not welcome. 

In turn, it also inverts the discomfort some black people feel in white middle-class society. Chris finds his hosts patronising and condescending in their desire to be seen as open-minded. He’s uncomfortable at the black staff. Every second in the house reminds him that he doesn’t belong there. But the genius of Peele is that this could be nothing to do with anything except seeing a black man being constantly made aware of his difference in an unfamiliar milieu. 

Chris though, being basically a decent guy, does what any polite person in a minority tends to do: he works overtime to put his hosts at ease. He keeps quiet, he smiles, he laughs at jokes,  he tries to gently drift away. As almost the sole black person, he’s lost and out-of-his-depth and comfort zone (he’s reluctant about even going). All the other black people he meets are strange – Peel brilliantly shows the mixed messages from the servants in particular. In one brilliant sequence Georgina, the maid, says everything is fine while smiling and simultaneously crying. A black party guest dresses and behaves like the rest of the white people around him: has he just completely assimilated or is there something sinister going on here? Chris might guess more – but until it’s too late he decides to batten down the hatches and ride out an awkward weekend.

The house has plenty of mystery – there is a throw-away reference to a locked off-limits basement. Early in the film the couple hit a deer with their car: the police demand to see Chris’ ID even though he wasn’t driving, to the outrage of Allison. It’s a brilliantly eerie opening that hints at danger to come, both in the corpse of the deer and the suspicion of the police. It’s a brilliant touch to explore the barely acknowledged underlying racism of some middle-class Americans – this liberal elite would be horrified to hear the suggestion that they are anything but open-minded, but in fact have deeply paternalistic, two-tier beliefs that have subtly developed since the end of segregation.

The film is played superbly by the whole cast. Bradley Whitford brilliantly inverts his Josh Lyman persona. Catherine Keener is a sort of warm Earth Mother figure, with darkness and control under the surface. Both characters seem suspicious and yet are both so open and direct in what they say, you think it’s almost too obvious to assume they are villains. Caleb Landry Jones as their son is both full of alpha-male welcome and strange, violent and scornful looks and yearnings. Allison Williams as Chris’ girlfriend seems a strange presence in this household, but her honest sympathy for Chris, and her growing realisation with him that something is wrong, is the one thread Chris has to hang onto.

The star-turn of the movie is of course though Daniel Kaluuya as Chris. A young British actor, he’s superb here in a reactive role, trying to persuade himself everything is fine. His unease and insecurity are brilliantly done, as are the surface humour and reserved politeness he uses to disguise this. In a paranoid film, he is going out of his way to not appear paranoid. His relief in seeing any other black people – and then confused discomfort at their behaviour – is endlessly brilliant. As the plot progresses, Kaluuya takes Chris to some dark and emotional places, conveying both despair, fury and pain brilliantly. 

Peele’s film is not perfect. Introduce a character as a hypnotist and you are probably tipping the hat a little too soon – though to be fair, Peele even lampshades this by having Chris’ friend Rod (a hilariously endearing Lil Rel Howery) immediately point this out. The explosion of violence when it comes at the end is gratifying, but a little too much almost for a film about lack of power. The DVD contains an alternative ending that is, in fact, far better and more appropriate, which continues this theme (and is what I expected the ending to be as the film entered its final act) but was replaced because Peele felt (he says on the commentary) it needed a more upbeat ending.

Get Out though is both an excellent paranoia thriller with lashings of horror, and also a brilliant satire on race in America. Trading on the comedy of embarrassment, it has genuine things to say about how the racial divide hasn’t really gone away at all. Both funny and also deeply terrifying, its final reveal of what is going on is brilliant and also rings very true – as well as casting new light on several scenes we have already seen. Peele is a first-time director – but based on this he certainly won’t be one and done.