Category: Directors

Charley Varrick (1973)

Walter Matthau schemes a caper in crime thriller Charley Varrick

Director: Don Siegel

Cast: Walter Matthau (Charley Varrick), Joe Don Baker (Molly), Andy Robinson (Harman Sullivan), John Vernon (Maynard Boyle), Sheree North (Jewell Everettt), Felicia Farr (Sybil Fort), Norman Fell (Garfinkle), Woodrow Parfrey (Harold Young), William Schallert (Sheriff Horton), Jacqueline Scott (Nadine), Tom Tully (Tom), Benson Fong (Honest John)

Don Siegel was perhaps the ultimate professional director, who took on any scripts that came his way, producing polished, professional films. In the later part of his career, he finally received some of the freedom to start shooting his quality B-movies on A-movie style budgets. Charley Varrick was the first film he made after his box-office smash Dirty Harry, and Siegel received more time and space to deliver a film that mixed action and drama with an elaborate, almost meditative, mystery.

Charley Varrick (Walter Matthau) is a former stunt pilot, whose small crop-dusting business is a front for carrying out small-scale robberies. A bank robbery in Tres Cruces, New Mexico goes horribly wrong – Varrick’s wife Nadine (Jacqueline Scott) is killed and he and his partner Harman Sullivan (Andy Robinson) find the small job they had anticipated is actually holding a huge amount of mafia money. Varrick knows the mafia won’t rest until they get the money back – and he is right, as bank president Maynard Boyle (John Vernon) has no choice but to call in ruthless hitman Molly (Joe Don Baker) to get the money back and kill those who stole it.

Charley Varrickwas also known by Don Siegel as The Last of the Independents – and that kinda fits its tone. Varrick is a small-scale operator who has chosen crime because he’s been squeezed out of the crop-dusting business by the corporations. He’s operating a crime gang that follows a series of carefully planned robberies, aimed at stealing humble amounts: enough to be a nuisance rather than cause a genuine scandal. He’s a small-time operator, proud of who is, who doesn’t want to hit the big time but to excel as the big fish in the small pond.

The whole film reflects this personality: the film is deliberately set in a quiet American town in the mid-West – the opening credits are played over everyday scenes of small-town life. Every location is slightly run-down and unimpressive. Those wrapped up in the crime are regular Joes – on both sides of the law – and the values and principles are those of mid-west America. Even Molly the hitman – while clearly ruthless and capable of extreme violence and full of disdain of those he meets – has a drawling, cowboy quality to him. 

Part of Siegel’s point is that into all this explodes a story of crime, murder and violence that all spins out of money (doesn’t it always?). The mystery element is the audience wondering how Varrick is going to get out of this with both cash and life intact. What Siegel does really well is effectively make Varrick an unreliable narrator. Despite the fact we follow him around in the film, we are never really told what he is thinking or why he does things. Only at the end of the film are all the threads of the actions he has carried out pulled together – a real lightbulb “ah ha!” moment – and the real purpose of what he has been doing is revealed.

To make a character who plays their cards so close to their chest work, you need an actor who is effortlessly charming. The film gets this in Walter Matthau. Matthau, with his hang-dog Droopy-face is hardly anyone’s first idea of a ruthless bank robber (surely part of the film’s point!) but his winning charm and kindly-Uncle quality, as well as the eye of assured cool that Matthau gives him, really make you root for him. In fact it works so well that you actually forget how ruthless Varrick in this film: from moving on swiftly from his wife’s death, to ruthlessly sacrificing several people in his quest for self-preservation. In other hands, Varrick wouldn’t half come across as a copper-bottomed shit. 

Instead, his plan of misdirection, clues pointing towards the wrong thing, and carefully juggled parallel attempts to escape (his unrevealed real plan, and the clumsy surface plan that the audience knows must be a bluff) really works to keep you engaged and entertained. Siegel is purposefully pulling the wool over your eyes in virtually every scene – and he has Varrick basically tell us he’s doing this – but there are few things that audiences like more than a magic trick. We want Varrick to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the end – to surprise us all with how clever he’s been (and to reward those who have worked out part of what he is doing).

Siegel mixes this with a surprising number of quiet, even soulful moments that mix the thoughtful with some black comedy. From Varrick’s tender kissing of his dead wife – right before he professionally carries on with their plan to burn the get-away car they escaped in (this time with his wife’s body inside it) – to a secret meeting/interrogation/intimidation of timid bank manager Harold Young (a twitchy Woodrow Parfey) by smooth big-city bank manager Boyle (a superbly cold John Vernon, nowhere near as assured and secure as he thinks he is) in a cow-filled field, these scenes are about character as much as they are about plot.

Siegel mixes this with moments of pure action and drama. The opening bank robbery is surprisingly violent, considering the gentle introduction to the film – and our “heroes” are amazingly ruthless towards those that stand in their way. Joe Don Baker’s chillingly amoral Molly hands out beatings as easily as he does slightly goofy Western smirks (a beat down of Harman is particularly brutal). Varrick is quietly ruthless and the film ends with a dynamic chase scene in a scrapyard, quite unlike anything you have ever seen.

Charley Varrick epitomises the sort of 1970s film that studios and Hollywood looked down on at the time, but inspired the filmmakers today far more than some of the Oscar winning gumph that got praised. Parts of it are dated – women in the film are either love interests or whores, and both Molly and Charley (Walter Matthau is no one’s idea of a lothario) bed compliant, impressed women in the film with an off-hand carelessness. But the core and heart of the film is in its cool, calculated confidence mixed with a sense of Western soul. With a terrific performance by Matthau, this is a fine example of independent film-making.

Ordinary People (1980)


Mary Taylor Moore, Timothy Hutton and Donald Sutherland pose for an awkward picture in family troubles drama Ordinary People

Director: Robert Redford

Cast: Donald Sutherland (Calvin Jarrett), Mary Taylor Moore (Beth Jarrett), Timothy Hutton (Conrad Jarrett), Judd Hirsch (Dr Tyrone Berger), Elizabeth McGovern (Jeannine Pratt), M. Emmet Walsh (Coash Salan), Dinah Manoff (Karen Aldrich), Fredric Lehne (Joe Lazenby), James B Sikking (Roy Hanley)

In 1980, Robert Redford became the first big Hollywood stars to parlay acting success into producing and directing small scale, independent films that otherwise might never have been made. Ordinary People was the first of these – with Redford focusing on staying behind the camera – and it was a big success. It even won four Oscars – best picture, screenplay, supporting actor for Timothy Hutton (despite the fact Hutton is really the lead) and best director for Redford himself (beating out David Lynch for The Elephant Man and Martin Scorsese for Raging Bull). It was a great story for 1980 – the matinee idol turned artist. But is Ordinary People that great a film?

The film covers the emotional collapse of a wealthy middle-class American family after the eldest son Bucky is killed in a boating accident. Younger son Conrad (Timothy Hutton) has had trouble coming to terms with the accident, which he survived, and has only just left an institution after a suicide attempt. His father Calvin (Donald Sutherland) is desperate to try and relate to his son again, while his mother Beth (Mary Taylor Moore) remains emotionally distant attempting to put the accident behind them. Conrad starts seeing psychiatrist Dr Berger (Judd Hirsch), to adjust – but the after effects of Bucky’s death continue to tear the family apart.

Nobody really talks about Ordinary People any more do they? Out of all the 1980s Best Picture winners it’s perhaps the most easy to overlook (except maybe for Terms of Endearment). Why is this? Well truth be told it’s just a pretty ordinary picture. There really isn’t much to it. The story it tells of a wealthy family (only a millionaire like Redford could consider these loaded people ordinary) suffering emotional trauma and psychiatry finding the answer has been told so many times before, and since, that there isn’t anything particularly unique or interesting about it. 

In fact Ordinary People is exactly the sort of small-scale, quiet, middle-brow independent film that awards ceremonies slather over and a few years later (never mind over 30!) people struggle to see what the fuss was about. Redford directs the film with a quiet professionalism – the sort of competent craftsmanship and skill with actors that dozens of other directors could have done just as well. His Oscar for best director is especially galling when you consider the artistry and imagination of Scorsese’s direction of Raging Bull, or the unbearable sadness and tragedy Lynch gave The Elephant Man. It’s the sort of direction a non-famous director wouldn’t even have been nominated for.

This film uses shot-reverse-shot like it’s going out of fashion, most of the scenes are conversations across tables that are weighted down so heavily with meaning you start to lose interest in them. The score uses Pachelbel’s music in such an overwhelming style, it makes that sound as anodyne as much of the rest of the movie. Maybe it’s just because this is such well-trodden ground, but the revelations towards the end of the movie are so blindingly obvious you wonder why it takes so long to get to them (the son blames himself, the mother blames the son and doesn’t love him as much as the dead son, the father wants the two to kiss and make-up). 

This rotates around a series of psychiatrist scenes which at least have the feeling of actual sessions, even if Judd Hirsch (good as he is here) basically plays the sort of revelation inspiring psychiatrist that only appears in movies. The film has a touching faith in the power of analysis being able to solve all problems, and spends so long luxuriating in scenes like this it virtually forgets to put actual living, breathing characters in the middle of them. With the possible exception of the father, none of these characters feel particularly real – they are just mouthpieces for the plot.

Not that it’s badly acted at all. Timothy Hutton made his film debut here and he brings a real fire and passion to the role, as well as a moving emotional vulnerability and anger directed only at himself. The supporting actor Oscar feels a bit of a cheat, as he’s clearly the lead, but he’s very good here as Conrad, struggling to express himself, bottling up his feelings and lashing out at those around him. It’s a part that feels drawn together from bits and pieces of plot requirement, but Hutton plays it to the hilt – it just doesn’t feel like a really real person, more a collection of sad traits.

Mary Taylor Moore is in a similar situation as a mother so cold and distant from her son, so repressed and controlling her distance starts damaging the entire family. She’s unable to process what has happened so almost wants to pretend nothing has (and blames her son for not doing that same), that it again feels like something from a psychiatric case-study rather than real person. Moore gained particular attention at the time as she was best known for comedy (much like Judd Hirsch, famous for the sitcom Taxi) – so the performance at the time might have looked stronger than it actually was.

The best performance might well come from Donald Sutherland in the least flashy role as the father trying to puzzle out what is going on – and trying to work out his own feelings. It’s the only character that feels less like a construct and more a genuine person, whose answers aren’t easily worked out by a bit of psychology study. Sutherland is low-key, tender, gentle and carries all his emotion on the inside – it’s a subtle and excellent performance, overlooked way too much. 

Redford essentially directed an actor’s film here (it’s all about the big moments of acting) so it’s not a surprise that it seized the attention of the Academy (largely made-up of actors) but really it’s not that far away from a well-made “movie of the week”,  with its obvious beats and not particularly surprising revelations. Perhaps it’s the point that the family’s problems seem a lot more apparent to the viewer than they do to the characters – and there is some interesting development of perceptions, not least from Sutherland’s father who starts to come to profound realisations about his wife and son. 

But Ordinary Peopleis an uninspiring and even rather tame drama, that today looks even more low-key and insubstantial. While it tries to break free from the confines of “social drama” it actually wants to tie everything up with a neat bow psychologically – and despite the fact it has an ending that suggests not everything is perfect, it really concludes with a safe full stop. There is a reason why it’s surely one of the best pictures which has been most forgotten about.

J. Edgar (2011)


Leonardo DiCaprio is excellent in Clint Eastwood’s decent J. Edgar

Director: Clint Eastwood

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (J. Edgar Hoover), Armie Hammer (Clyde Tolsen), Naomi Watts (Helen Gandy), Judi Dench (Anne Marie Hoover), Josh Lucas (Charles Lindbergh), Dermot Mulroney (Norman Schwarzkopf), Damon Herriman (Bruno Richard Hauptmann), Jeffrey Donovan (Robert F. Kennedy), Zach Grenier (John Condon), Ken Howard (General Harlan F Stone), Stephen Root (Arthur Koehler), Denis O’Hare (Albert S Osborn), Geoff Pierson (A Mitchell Palmer)

J. Edgar Hoover holds a unique place in American history. As the first ever director of the FBI he ruled it as his own personal fiefdom from 1935 to his death in 1972. A workaholic, he revolutionised the investigation of crime in the USA, centralising records, introducing and championing scientific techniques, and working to change the image of lawmen into heroes. On the other hand, Hoover frequently abused his position, used the FBI to investigate rivals and stamp out groups he judged as dissident, and put together secret files of unpleasant and damaging material on political opponents.

Eastwood’s film actually does a pretty good job of balancing these two J. Edgar Hoovers, and of presenting a fairly even-handed portrait of a man most people see now as the worst example of a power-abusing policeman. The film follows the career of Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio), focusing in particular on the Lindbergh kidnapping, clashes with Presidents, and his relationships with his deputy (and probably long-term lover) Clyde Tolsen (Armie Hammer) and with his domineering mother (Judi Dench). 

The film’s main advantage is a typically power-house performance from Leonardo DiCaprio. His Hoover blusters with insecurity, resentment and a monomaniacal obsession with his own sense of right and wrong. He’s the sort of guy who takes a woman on a date because he thinks it’s time to get married and then takes her to see his filing system. Hoover was a man whose life was work and power – but DiCaprio doesn’t forget that amidst the maniacal power grabbing, he had a confused personal sexuality.

The film suggests Hoover repressed his homosexuality due to the influence of his mother (“I’d rather have a dead son than a daffodil”), and contrasts this painful struggle with the preppy, tender, manly Clyde Tolsen, played with equal skill by Armie Hammer. Tolsen was Hoover’s long-term friend and companion, they holidayed together, ate meals together, lived opposite each other, and Tolsen even accepted the flag after Hoover was buried – neither man married. The film creates a fairly sweet love story of a man who couldn’t fully accept his own feelings falling in love with a man comfortable with who he was. 

The old-married feeling of this couple – whose physical contact never really goes much further than the occasional hand holding – is the emotional heart of the film. Although the repressed Hoover never admits his love openly (to the occasional hurt of Tolsen), it’s actually a fairly good expression of a normalised same-sex marriage, and Eastwood never succumbs to some of the odder gossip about Hoover’s cross-dressing (except in grief at the death of his mother) or sexual preferences.

His relationship with his mother (whom he lived with his whole life until her death) is more predictable: she is demanding and controlling, he is loving, placid and deferential to her. It’s what we’ve seen before several times – and Judi Dench can play this role standing on her head – but it gives us a nice context to get inside Hoover’s head and understand why he behaved the way he did. 

The film doesn’t lose track of Hoover’s ongoing political clashes. We get showpiece senate hearings as Hoover struggles to establish the FBI with the powers it needs to combat crime (DiCaprio is pretty electric in these scenes). Repeated shots show Hoover watching various inauguration parades, or stopping to stare at the same portrait of Washington as he heads in to meet with (and intimidate) various (unseen) presidents. The film hits these beats hard at times – did we need Hoover telling Robert Kennedy that he has information on “your brother, the President of the United States”? But it’s not afraid to show Hoover unsympathetically, particularly in his vindictive campaign against Martin Luther King.

What Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay, and Eastwood’s professional, smooth direction, do well is explain why Hoover may have hated these people so much. The film focuses on Hoover’s early days – full of anarchist bombings, wildfire communist strikes that led to clashes with the police, years of bank robbers and gangsters carrying on unrestricted in America – that makes you at least understand why he felt America was under threat. 

The film’s reconstruction of period detail is exquisite, and much of the photography has a brilliantly murky, sepia tone to it I really liked. The reconstruction of details from the Lindbergh kidnapping is very well done. All this is much better than some of the wonky “old age” make-up Di Caprio, Hammer and Watts (playing Hoover’s faithful secretary) have to labour under towards the end of the film (Hammer in particular looks slightly ridiculous under laboured liver patches). 

In structure, this is a fairly traditional biopic, and in trying to cover Hoover’s entire career it often skips over or misses key incidents. In an era where “modern” biopics tend to focus on dramatizing one key moment in their subject’s life (such as Selma or Lincoln), J. Edgar feels a bit more like a 1990s biopic. It crams so many events in, it sometimes feel like an “and then this happened” sort of film, rather than the more interesting thematic film under the surface.

It’s also struggling to bring more interesting depths out. It has a neat structure of Hoover dictating his biography to a string of indistinguishable “trusted” FBI agents (each scene has a different one, and there is neat visual gag as Eastwood cuts to a series of these guys in a row offering the “wrong” answer to Hoover’s question as to who was the most famous American of the 20th century – the answer being Lindbergh). Interestingly a final speech from Tolsen suggests much of what we have seen is Hoover’s vainglorious “legend building” rather than the “true story” – a theme that you feel could have been explored more.

It’s stuff like this that makes J. Edgar stand out a bit more. That and the wonderful performances from DiCaprio and Hammer, as the truly rather sweet married couple-who-weren’t. The film could make more of exploring the psychology of Hoover – the man who hated anyone different, including homosexuals – but who carried this open secret. But there isn’t time. It’s a film with good ideas and scenes, which could be more than it is. But it’s a decent film for all this. Many won’t like the fact that it takes a sympathetic angle on Hoover. But it shows every life has its right and wrongs.

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.