Category: Family drama

One Battle After Another (2025)

Fabulously made film, a brilliant merging of half-a-dozen genres is one Andersons’s finest

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Pat Calhoun/Bob Ferguson), Sean Penn (Colonel Steven J Lockjaw), Benicio del Toro (Sergio St Carlos), Regina Hall (Deandra), Teyana Taylor (Perfidia Beverly Hills), Chase Infiniti (Willa Ferguson), Wood Harris (Laredo), Alan Haima (Mae West), Paul Grimstad (Howard Sommerville), Shayna McHayle (Junglepussy), Tony Goldwyn (Virgil Throckmorton), John Hoogenakker (Tim Smith)

What is revolution – changing the world or just the relentless grind of One Battle After Another? It’s as hard to define as it is to define Paul Thomas Anderson’s incredibly striking Thomas Pynchon adaptation. Look at it one angle, and it’s a sharp political commentary on America; from another it’s a satire on the insular, self-defeating rules of secret societies; from a third it’s a pulpy chase-thriller; from a fourth a touching coming-of-age story of a daughter growing closer to her dad. Anderson’s skill here is that it’s basically all these and more at the same time, an electric, frequently laugh-out loud funny, hugely eccentric film that defies all categorisation.

Pynchon’s novel Vineland saw the radicals of the 1960s pulled, clumsily, back to life in the 90s. Anderson keeps the time skip, but moves the start to the late 00s and the destination to today. Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a dishevelled, but true-believing, junior member of The French 75, a radical Atifa-style organisation on a wave of armed anti-government action. He’s in love with Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), an adrenalin-fuelled militant whose radicalism is often secondary to the rush she gets from guns and bombs. She’s the source of perverted sexual obsession for bottled-up, socially-striving US army officer Stephen Lockjaw (Sean Penn). After Perfidia makes a terrible choice, 16-years later the disillusioned, frequently doped-out, Pat (now living under the alias of Bob Ferguson) is raising their teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) when Lockjaw explodes back into their life, desperate to clean up his past indiscretions in case they imperil his acceptance into a secretive Neo-Nazi organisation of wealthy American, ‘the Christmas Adventures Club’. Cue a wild and crazy chase.

Anderson’s film bowls along with a whipper-cracker pace, over-flowing with confidence that it doesn’t need to spoon-feed us timelines, details or locations but trusts us to go with narrative flow. Which I for one really did. It’s a film that throws you straight into the mix – a French 75 raid on an immigration detainment facility – and barely lets up from there. Within the first half an hour we’ve seen a wave of direct action events from blowing up campaign offices (after warning phone calls) to sabotaging a city’s electricity supply – alongside Pat and Perfidia overcome with giddy, sexual thrills at thumbing their nose at the system. It’s a great way of grasping what an addictive rush fighting the man can be, something that’s all too-clear in the excited whooping, cheering and bombastic speechifying of many of its members.

These good times can’t last, but Perfidia wants to enjoy them as long as she can. In a blistering, force-of-nature performance from Teyana Taylor, Perfidia acts completely on impulse, thrilled with her life of action, pulling the naïve Bob in her slipstream. Danger of all sorts is addictive, from bombs to risky liaisons. She’ll spontaneously attempt to sexually humiliate Lockjaw on their first encounter (essentially ordering him to ‘stand to attention’ for her), then throw herself into an off-the-books sexual relationship with him (after he obsessively tracks her down for more humiliation) seemingly for kicks. She embodies the risky, thrilling excitement of the revolutionary world.

She’s also what leads to its destruction (her fellow revolutionaries are reduced to frightened shadows of themselves when, during a bank raid. Perfidia actually uses the lethal force everyone else has just talked about). Anderson’s film, after its propulsive start (assembled like an extended montage across an entire act), jumps to a very different future, where the thrills and spills of the underworld are subtly undermined, firstly by the hilarious dark comedy of all communication being managed through obsessive codeword rules and then by comparison with a far more quiet, but far more effective, underground railroad for migrants run by Benecio del Toro’s (underplaying brilliantly, his natural charisma flowing off the screen) Latin community leader and Taekwondo-sensei.

It’s also clear how hard it is to keep the revolutionary fire-burning. One Battle After Another superbly exploits the vulnerability and anxiety that underpins many of DiCaprio’s best performances. For all his involvement with radical violence, Pat/Bob is a sensitive, true believer starry-eyed, but with an appreciation for every-day duties that his fellow revolutionaries lack. It’s him who believes family and their daughter should come first (Perfidia, in the midst of post-natal depression, even admits she’s jealous of her daughter for absorbing so much of Pat’s love and attention).

DiCaprio brilliantly finds in Bob a good heart, whose desire to do the right thing is undermined by his own incompetence. In disappointment, he’s become a paranoid grouch, grumbling about pronouns, like any other middle-aged man adrift in the modern world. DiCaprio burns through the desperate energy of the part, but mixes it with a rich vein of black comedy at Bob’s frequent inability to cope with his situation. It’s a perfectly judged performance of loyalty and love, mixed with exasperation, panic and frequent well-meaning poor judgement.

The second-act leans into the satirical comedy of these middle-aged revolutionaries, bought crashingly to life. In a neat comic touch, Bob spends most of the film on the run, desperately trying to find Willa, while dressed, Arthur Dent-style, in the same scuzzy dressing-gown he was wearing before Lockjaw’s raid. Time-and-time again, he’s reduced to swearing impotently down a phone-line like any other middle-aged consumer fed-up with unhelpful customer service, as he repeatedly fails to dredge vital codewords up from his stoned memory. During his escape, he’ll fall off a roof while evading the law, blanch at jumping from a moving car and spectacularly bungle a shoot-out. But what never waivers is his determination to help his daughter. One Battle After Another plays at times like a version of Taken where Neeson’s character had let himself get out of shape but still threw himself into the chase.

Anderson has fun with the bombastic self-importance of revolutionaries and the intricate insularity of their world. But he also has respect for their underlying desire to change the world for the better, even if the film suggests that the carefully, unflashy work being carried out by del Toro’s railroad is a better approach. Among the revolutionaries, there is a genuine warmth and feeling, embodied by Regina Hall’s loyal and humane Deandra (another superb performance in a film packed with them). There is a loyalty and protectiveness among the revolutionaries that bonds them together. And Sergio – del Toro outstanding as a never-fazed Sensei, a performance bubbling with dry wit – has built a community founded on mutual respect and looking out for each other.

And One Battle After Another has no respect at all for the alternative. The Christmas Adventures Club, the bizarre neo-Nazi group Lockjaw dreams of joining, shares the ridiculous language of secret knocks, handshakes and codewords. But it’s repellent in its instinctive racism and treats its members not as allies to be protected, but assets to be exploited and disposed of as needed. And their insidious extremism of its powerful white guys, with their hands on the gears of power, poses a far more dangerous threat.

Lockjaw is superbly played by Sean Penn as a ball of righteous, inadequate anger – from his ludicrous hair (which he frequently combs into an aggressive thrust), his tight t-shirts to accentuate his muscles to the lifts in his shoes to make him taller. Lockjaw is desperate to be a somebody, after a lifetime of social insecurity. Lacking any sense of imagination, with the emotional maturity of a disgruntled teen, Penn makes Lockjaw the embodiment of angry male entitlement trying to grab what power they can.

Anderson fuses all these elements into a film that takes us through several propulsive acts, from it’s French 75 prologue, to Bob’s desperate attempt to evade Lockjaw’s troops to a dusty road-chase that superbly carries an air of Mad Max. But Anderson does this, while never letting the film’s focus slip from the twisted family relationships at its centre: from Bob’s genuine, protective fatherly love, to Lockjaw’s incel jealousy and their twisted struggle for Willa (beautifully played by Chase Infiniti, in a star-making turn, as young woman finding a strength and idealism within herself that surprises her). It finds space for a genuinely moving series of personal relationships, just as it also skilfully shows Willa’s self-belief and social imagination flourishing under insane circumstances.

It’s part of a compelling, exciting, blackly comic and compelling film, which is not afraid to go to extreme, satirical lengths one moment and then pull you up with a scene that is gentle, earnest and heartfelt the next. It also avoids the trap of too directly preaching about America today, while asking several searching (and uncomfortable questions) about where we are now. Superbly acted across the board, it again shows Anderson is one of the finest directors working.

The Champ (1931)

Seminal father-and-son drama that largely avoids excessive melodrama while essentially inventing a genre

Director: King Vidor

Cast: Wallace Beery (Andy “Champ” Purcell), Jackie Cooper (Dink Purcell), Irene Rich (Linda Purcell), Roscoe Ates (Sponge), Edward Brophy (Tim), Hale Hamilton (Tony), Jesse Scott (Jonah), Marcia Mae Jones (Mary Lou)

The Champ is the grand-daddy of an entire genre of “Dad-and-lad” films. If it sometimes feels over-familiar today, then that’s because many of now familiar cliches of slightly washed-out Dads caring for (and being cared for) precocious-but-caring pre-teen sons were born here. Even at the time, plenty of people saw The Champ as drowning in more than a little sentimentality. But The Champ is mostly effectively underplayed and directed with a spry energy that stops it becoming too cloying.

Andy Purcell (Wallace Beery) is adored by his 8-year-old son Dink (Jackie Cooper) as “Champ”. Andy was a heavyweight champion once; but is now an over-the-hill fighter more likely to be found propping up a bar or shooting dice than throwing punches in the ring. Constantly guiding Champ away from temptation, Dink doesn’t waver in his devotion, even when presented with the possibility of a new life with his long-lost now-wealthy mother (Irene Rich). Champ wants to prove to his son he can be the man Dink believes he can be, taking to the ring one more time against the Mexican champion – with heart-tugging consequences.

It’s not just dad-and-lad cliches – there’s more than a few boxing cliches whose DNA is in The Champ – Vidor even directed here one of the first-ever training montages, as Champ gets ready to duke it out with the Mexican champ. But its heart is really in the unbreakable bond between father and son, their unwavering love which survives no end of testing the father applies to it. Champ is an unreliable wash-up who makes it a regular habit to piss away money, culminating in selling their treasured race-horse “Little Champ”. But Dink knows, for all is flaws, Champ truly loves his son.

A film like this relies on the chemistry between the two actors, so it’s just as well both Beery and Cooper genuinely feel like they’ve known each other all their lives. (Hopefully it doesn’t spoil the magic to discover the famously misanthropic Beery loathed Cooper, who in turn felt Beery was a scene-stealing bully). Their interplay, their easy, natural chatter and playful physicality is heart-warmingly believable. From sharing a bed in their rundown flat, to messing around with their hats or teasing each other during country jogs, Vidor’s film finds a natural ease in their relationship. There is a genuine feeling of parental love between the two, captured in little moments that feel real, such as Champ’s superstition about Dink spitting on things ‘for luck’ (from betting slips to boxing gloves).

Beery won one of the first Best Actor Oscars – a historic tie with Fredric March in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (ruled a draw despite Beery gaining one fewer votes) – and it’s a deserving one. Beery underplays a role that could billow over the top, from his woozy drunk acting which is convincingly low-key to the streak of guilty self-loathing Beery keeps clear is running through Champ. He’s a man who despises his weaknesses, who knows he is not the legend his son still believes him to be, deeply ashamed of his actions but yet time-after-time lets down and embarrasses his son, from getting arrested in drunken scuffles (in front of the whole town) to slurring nonsense in a bar.

The warmth of Vidor’s direction keeps us on-side with Champ, even as he needs to be sobered up with cold tomato soup and ice to make a meeting with a promoter (even so, he’s still late and screws it up in any case due to still being pissed) or as he is hauled out of a police van, scruffy and swinging misguided punches. It makes us hope for the best from Champ, even if it’s left subtly open whether he strikes Dink (from between the bars of his prison cell) from anger or in an attempt to drive the boy away from his self-destructive father. (Either way, in a touch that inspired Raging Bull, Champ is so ashamed of his perhaps- half-meant blow, he pummels the cell wall with his hand, his face contorted in lashings of shame and self-loathing.)

Beery’s performance is perfectly complemented by Cooper, one of the most natural child stars ever. Cooper’s Dink pulls off the difficult trick of feeling both charmingly wise before his years, but still like a naïve child. Vidor trusted Cooper’s instincts enough to just let be on the camera, notably during a largely improvised sequence where Cooper prattles to himself while climbing up onto the roof of his wealthy mother’s new home. But Cooper can also manage the emotion: when tears come, they feel real and genuinely distraught. In other hands, the final act emotional breakdown might have felt like the worst sort of stage-school tears but Cooper makes it genuinely feel like a child so torn up he can barely process the depth of his feelings.

Cooper’s performance largely sells the film’s heavily melodramatic ending, which could well have collapsed into a soapy mess. It’s the moment where Vidor’s film most insistently tugs on the heart-strings, desperate to get those tears pouring. But he also softens Beery’s self-destructive lunk who, nice-is-he-is, we care for partly because his son is so overwhelmingly devoted to him. And we believe Champ would be desperate to do anything to live up to the sort of hero-worship he has here.

Vidor’s film also gains from his smooth, visually engaging direction. The Champ opens with an impressive tracking shot of our heroes running, and makes excellent use of space and blocking throughout to ground the father-and-son constantly at the centre of a busy world bustling around them. It’s also a generous film: the Champ’s ex is no villain, but a wealthy, decent guy, neither is there racism in the depiction of Dink’s young Black friend Jonah. The decision to use sped-up film for the fight may look vaguely comic today, but adds energy while Vidor largely avoids the trap of hammering the emotional points home too strong.

The Champ is still an effective crowd-pleaser, sailing by in 80 swift minutes, so successfully taking many of the struggling-parent-conventions of ‘women’s pictures’ and applying them to men, that it’s been effectively re-made and re-invented dozens of times, in dozens of settings. And you can’t say more for its effectiveness than that.

An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

Ozu’s final film feels like a perfect summation of the rich sense of ordinary life in his work

Director: Yasujirō Ozu

Cast: Chishū Ryū (Shuhei Hirayama), Shima Iwashita (Michiko Hirayama), Keiji Sada (Koichi Hirayama), Mariko Okada (Akiko Hirayama), Teruo Yoshida (Yutaka Miura), Noriko Maki (Fusako Taguchi), Shinichiro Mikami (Kazuo Hirayama), Nobuo Nakamura (Shuzo Kawai), Eijirō Tōno (The Gourd), Kuniko Miyake (Nobuko Kawai), Ryuji Kita (Professor Horie)

Ozu’s final film feels like a luscious, beautifully filmed summation of a life’s work. Deceptively quiet, simple and gently paced, like the best of Ozu’s work it throbs with a deep understanding of the quiet joys, regrets and pains in ordinary life, where the march of time can relentlessly change and mould your world. An Autumn Afternoon returns to themes familiar from Ozu past work – you see it as almost a remake of Late Spring (with Chishū Ryū, effectively, in the same role) –with his subtly effective recognition of how each generation echoes and reimagines the one before. It’s a deeply humane film from a director who understood everyday life better than almost any other.

Once again, a man feels pressured to marry off a daughter. Shuhei Hirayama (Chishū Ryū) is a middle-ranking factory manager, whose home is tended to by 24-year-old daughter Michiko (Shima Iwashita). Hirayama’s old school-friend and colleague Kawai (Nobuo Nakamura) suggests an arranged marriage for her. Hirayama quietly lets the subject drift, little motived to shake up his home. His opinions slowly shift as he re-encounters his former teacher The Gourd (Eijirō Tōno), now a down-at-heel noodle restaurant owner, who lives with an unhappy spinster daughter. Does Hirayama sees parallels between himself, Michiko and this pair? Is Michiko bothered either way?

It’s a classic Ozu set-up: the different views and perceptions of the generations, contrasted against each other. In many ways, very little happens in An Autumn Afternoon, but in other ways a whole life-time plays out. Skilfully, with an observing, restrained (Ozu’s final film is stiller than ever) camera, Ozu observes people in the Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter of their lives. In doing so, he captures a particular moment of Japanese history, where pre-War, war and post-war generations confront the world with subtly different outlooks.

In the first darkening of the Autumn of his life, Hirayama is a quiet man with a rich vein of humour. He’s from a generation which sees itself on being more liberal than those before. He meets regularly with a bunch of former school friends, who pride themselves on holding their drink and frequently prank each other in dead-pan comic exchanges. There is a delighted ragging of their friend Professor Horie’s barely concealed sexual glee at his new (younger) wife. They have traditional values (Hirayama assumes marriage will lead to immediate resignation for his young secretary) but enjoy the post-war flourishing of Japan.

Hirayama is comfortable with Americanised Japanese culture, from bottled beers and baseball to American bars and their stools. He drinks too much, make generous offers to others and indulges his children. He’s perfectly happy with the way things are: perhaps because he already fears what his life may be like when his two youngest children flee the nest. It’s a beautifully judged performance from Ryu, genuine, relatable, quietly content but with a subtle sense of sadness and anxiety at change.

There is a sense Ryu’s Hirayama doesn’t want the world shaken, as he has already lived through enough shaking to last a lifetime. He’s a former career Naval officer, who captained a ship in the War. His late wife, it’s implied, died in the American bombing of Tokyo. (Of his children, only two can really remember her, talking about her only wearing trousers during air raids). Bumping into one of his former petty officers, the two men indulge in reminiscences and reflections of what life might have been like in victory (in an American themed bar of all places). Hirayama is drawn to return to the bar again and again, as the barmaid reminds him of his late wife (this small detail would be the entire plot of another film) – although Ryu’s quietly sombreness suggests the memory is to painful to dive into.

But this man contrasts sharply with his children. Hirayama never re-married, and his children have filled the companionship gap in his life. While Michiko matches neatly the traditional view of a Japanese woman as dutiful and guarding of the home (she wears a kimono more than any other female character), his youngest son Kazuo dresses like an American teenager and isn’t afraid to criticise his father. And even Michiko too wants to make her own choices about her life, regardless of the views of others.

The most intriguing contrast though is the marriage between his oldest son Koichi (Keiji Sada) and Akiko (Mariko Okada). Here power dynamics are strikingly different. Both partners work – indeed at one point, Akiko arrives home to find Koichi cleaning and cooking. Decisions are made between them, with Akiko frequently calling the shots. A dispute about Koichi’s plan to spend the excess of a loan from Hirayama on a second-hand set of golf clubs, sees Akiko take firm control of finances (Koichi seems to have inherited his father’s quiet desire not to rock the boat) and has the final say. It echoes, in a way, Professor Horie’s second marriage, where his wife has a level of control over his comings-and-goings that surprises Hirayama and Kawai.

Hirayama may also be quietly disturbed by a vision of what the winter of his life might be like, from ‘The Gourd’, a respected teacher of his childhood, played with a superb desperation and forced good humour by Eijirō Tōno. This once-respected man now works for customers who barely look at him and is totally reliant on a daughter miserable at her life (Ozu quietly watches her break down in tears dealing with her drunken father) and gets embarrassingly pissed at the slightest opportunity when someone else is paying. Considering Hirayama is also a heavy drinker (both men are prone to slumping forward, or swaying on the spot when under the influence) there is a lot that suggests his Winter might not be wildly dissimilar from the Gourd’s.

All of these multi-generational issues are superbly explored by Ozu, all without forced commentary, in a film that is a triumph of his distinctive style of low-angle static cameras, transitions that ground us in location, made even more striking by the film’s gorgeous use of colour (especially its reds). And the film leaves it all open to us to interpret. Because there is no right-or-wrong in Hirayama’s situation: should he let his daughter remain or help her move on and embrace her life?

An Autumn Afternoon concludes with one of the most quietly heart-breaking moments in Ozu’s cinema – under-played to utter perfection by Ryu – as Hirayama sits alone, drink swishing around his guts, singing songs of a martial Japan and facing an unknown future that might see him forced to confront the loneliness he has avoided since his wife died. As the final shots complete of Ozu’s final work – a series of cuts to parts of Hirayama’s home – it feels like a perfect final statement from an artist who looked at the small tragedies of life like no other.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Fun entry in the MCU, bright, pacey and entertaining – but never engages with its deeper issues

Director: Matt Shakman

Cast: Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards / Mister Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm / Invisible Woman), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm / The Thing), Joseph Quinn as (Johnny Storm / Human Torch), Julia Garner (Shalla-Bal / Silver Surfer), Ralph Ineson (Galactus), Sarah Niles (Lynne Nichols), Mark Gatiss (Ted Gilbert), Natasha Lyonne (Rachel Rozman), Paul Walter Hauser (Harvey Elder / Mole Man)

It’s taken almost seventeen years (can you believe the MCU has been going for so long?!) but ‘Marvel’s First Family’ finally make it to the party, escaping one of those legacy rights deals the comic giant signed before working out it could make films itself. Since, for those interested, there are already three Fantastic Four origins-films for you to seek out (they gained their powers from flying through a space storm), Fantastic Four throws us straight into the second Act of our heroes lives, communicating their origins in an in-universe TV show celebration of their achievements (including a montage of them defeating a parade of second tier villains, including Mole Man and an army of super-intelligent chimps) before throwing them up against their biggest challenge yet.

For their unofficial leaders, Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal – whose real life super-power seems to be that he appears in all movies) aka Mr Fantastic science super-genius and master strategist with limbs of rubber and Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) aka Invisible Woman, the world’s greatest diplomat, who can create forcefields and make herself (and others) invisible) there is the challenge of impending parenthood. And for the whole gang, also including scientist and wild-child Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) – he can set his body on fire – and Reed’s best friend, astronaut and Herculean powered made-of-stone Ben Grimm – it’s the threat of Galacticus (Ralph Ineson) a planet-eating giant whose herald (Julia Garner) arrives on a silver surfboard and announces Earth will be his next snack, unless the Four hand over Sue’s unborn child.

The Fantastic Four’s decision to skip the origins story throws us straight into a story that’s a lot of fun. A very enjoyable romp with some well-sketched out characters (played by engaging and charismatic actors), a few extremely well-made set-pieces, plenty of humour, just enough heart and a decent, city-crushing, smackdown at the end. It’s directed with a lot of bounce and joy by Matt Shakman and despite being about literally earth-shattering events manages to keep the focus tightly on the family at its core (perhaps a little too tightly, but more on that later).

It’s also a delightful triumph of design. Set in a sort of cyber-punk 1960s (the idea being that Richard’s intellect has super-powered mankind’s development), it’s a gorgeously realised world of 60s design, all curving surfaces and primary colours, intermixed with souped-up 60s technology like ingenious androids that run on cassette decks and flying cars, like The Jetsons made flesh (doubly engaging as the film so obviously committed to real sets rather than blue-screen invention). I also rather liked the implied joke that the world has progressed only in the areas Richards’ considered worthwhile: so this world has faster-than-light travel, flying cars and abundant energy sources, but totally lacks hi-def television or social media (and who can blame Richards for that).

There is also a certain charm in how the Four are universally beloved heroes. Everywhere they go, they are flooded by admirers and merchandise wearing children (it’s quietly never explored if the Four paid for their colossal, futuristic tower and private space base with a fortune in image deals). Reed fills time between inventing the future with hosting a TV show about science for kids, while Sue essentially runs the United Nations. Johnny is the star of every social event and Ben bashfully lifts the cars for the kids in his Brooklyn neighbourhood and flirts shyly with a primary school teacher (Natasha Lyonne).

This world is pleasingly shaken up by the arrival of the Silver Surfer, a charismatically unreadable turn from Julia Garner (under a CGI naked silver body). First Steps successfully uses this threat to humanise a group of heroes who otherwise might have proved too good to be true. For starters, their confident assurances all will be well when they head for space turns out to be far from the case when they are comprehensively outmatched by an immortal planet eater and his physics-defying silver herald. First Steps most exciting and thrillingly assembled scene is their retreat from a first encounter with this giant, a brilliantly managed high-octane chase around a black hole with a few extra personal perils thrown in on top, made even more gripping by Michael Giacchani’s pitch-perfect score.

That’s before the devilish conundrum of balancing the fate of seven billion people with Sue’s unborn son. If First Steps refuses to really dive fully into it, it does successfully raise the emotional stakes. It’s also a ‘reasonable’ offer from Galactus, a surprisingly soulful anti-villain, played with a mix of disdainful arrogance and death-dreaming melancholy by Ralph Ineson (there is a lovely moment when he takes a break from imminent city-smashing to pick up and sniff a fistful of Earth as if he’s forgotten the smell) desperate to escape the cycle of endlessly devouring planets to maintain his interminable life.

Horrific as it is to imagine a baby taking his place, First Steps avoids really delving into this intergalactic trolley problem. Because, at heart, it’s a film where superheroes alarmingly make decisions for billions of people with no oversight or pushback. Having unilaterally decided to reject Galactus’ offer, the Four seem surprised the rest of Earth are less than thrilled at their impending demise because the Four won’t make a Sophie’s Choice. There is some rich potential here to really delve into the way the Four are, arguably, benign dictators, reshaping this world in their own image and accepting adulation and unquestioning following. First Steps ignores it – the world’s discontent underdone by a single speech from Sue – and only for a split second is the moral quandary treated as something meriting genuine debate. As the surfer points out, if the kid was an adult he would certainly accept: is it right to take that choice from him?

But it’s a comic book movie, right? So, let’s not overthink it. And Marvel was never going to darken its First Family with hints of elitest oppression, demanding sacrifices from others (and the world makes huge sacrifices to protect their child) but not themselves. First Steps is a fun film. I liked its vibe, like a live-action Incredibles (only not that good), I enjoyed the BB4-like robot Herbie, all four of its leads are highly likeable with excellent chemistry. So, I’m trying to just not think about where this onrushing trolley is going and instead enjoy the view.

Moonstruck (1987)

Charmingly romantic comedy with little touches of Shakespeare in its celebration of family love

Director: Norman Jewison

Cast: Cher (Loretta Castorini), Nicolas Cage (Ronny Cammareri), Olympia Dukakis (Rose Castorini), Vincent Gardenia (Cosmo Castorini), Danny Aiello (Johnny Cammareri), Julie Bovasso (Rita Cappomagi), Louis Goss (Raymond Cappomagi), John Mahoney (Perry), Feodor Chaliapin (Old man), Antia Gilette (Mona)

People do strange things all the time. We don’t always understand why, so why not say it’s a midsummer madness caused by the moon. Moonstruck seizes that old superstition of blaming the position of our nearest celestial neighbour for sending us all a bit barmy, and weaves it into a film that’s both a playfully eccentric romantic comedy and a sweet tribute to the power of a family’s loving bonds. John Patrick Shanley’s (Oscar-winning) script pulls these strings together so well, it’s not a surprise it’s the sort of a film that frequently ends up on people’s ‘favourite film’ lists.

Loretta Castorini (Cher) is an Italian-American widow, living with her parents, who is starting to wonder if she is cursed with spinsterhood. As the moon reaches its bright zenith, she agrees to marry her terminally dull, utterly unromantic boyfriend Johnny (Danny Aiello), because anything’s better than nothing (despite the fact he seems to see her as much a substitute for his mother as a romantic partner). She agrees to mend the bad blood between him and his younger brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage). Ronny is a picture-postcard of an eccentric, a one-handed baker (blaming his brother for that) prone to melodramatic fits of rage and outbursts of Operatic passion. Loretta and Ronny – blame that moon – are instantly smitten with each other. Who is going to sort that out?

It all pulls together into a sort of modern fairy tale, where everything has an air of gently heightened reality. It’s also the sort of thing that wouldn’t seem out-of-place in Shakespeare’s lightest comedies: people fall in love on a sixpence, feuds are fixed in minutes, cheating spouses instantly return to their wives and jilted suitors smile and join in the celebratory drinks. In this world of theatrical, fairy-tale comedy, it’s quite easy to buy that an exceptionally bright moon is sending everyone a little bit crazy (like Shakespeare’s Dream lovers in the forests outside Athens, going through one crazy doped-up night before settling suddenly into two loving couples) and eventually you just run with it in Jewison’s charming film.

With a script full of witty lines and theatrical bits of bombast (which Cage in particular, inevitably, rips through), Moonstruck is also one of those endlessly charming, relaxing and pleasant films where fundamentally everyone is at-heart decent. Sure, mistakes are made throughout; harsh words and truths are spoken, but within a film where everyone cares for each other. Ronny may (rather unjustly) blame his brother for briefly distracting him at work into losing his hand, but deep down he’s just waiting for an excuse to forgive his brother. Loretta may have a prickly relationship with her mother, but it’s roots are really firm and based around both protecting the other from knowledge of the knee-jerk philandering of her father. It takes the influence of the moon to suddenly spark these people into a few days of crazy behavior that changes their lives and leads them to re-address their relationships with each other.

It also makes Loretta, in an Oscar-winning comedic turn from Cher, face up to the fears about where her life is going. In a performance that is remarkably unglamourous – Cher plays every inch of the reliable window settling into spinsterhood and the film never falsely ‘transforms’ her – Cher invests Loretta with a deep fear and resignation below her surface of reliability and unflappability. Loretta is so used to being practical and dependable, organising the lives of everyone (even patiently instructing the confused Johnny on how to propose marriage), part of her romantic relief with Ronny is being able to let rip a more sensual and vulnerable part of herself. Cher lets the mask slip, as if having had love potion dripped into her eyes, letting her express her deeper feelings.

It makes sense then that she should fall in love with someone as self-willed and resistant to being mothered as Ronny. In an early role that straight away captures Nicolas Cage’s willingness to rip into a scene (what other actor would feel like such a natural fit for a lovably blow-hard, one-handed, baker melodramatically prone to threatening no end of harm on himself?), Ronny has all the sort of wildness and uncontrolled energy and excitement the rest of Loretta’s life doesn’t have. And he doesn’t want her to fill a surrogate role for another family member – he wants her to be part of an equal relationship on her own terms with him.

It’s probably the sort of relationship Loretta’s parents had at one point. Before her mother Rose (another Oscar-winner, Olympia Dukakis) become cynical and shut-off from her husband Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia). Cosmo has let his decency get squashed under a fear of growing old, clinging to a younger girlfriend (Anita Gillette) who he conducts an affair more out of habit more anything. No wonder Rose considers flirting with John Mahoney’s constantly-jilted professor (in a touch that hasn’t aged well, he keeps trying to date his students), but not going the whole hog, while Cosmo tries to feel young again by doubling-down on his quietly dying affair.

What’s surprising then is that Moonstruck bubbles all this romantic back-and-forth into a warm celebration of familial love. While romantic bonds are firey, they are transient – the bonds of family last. Moonstruck culminates in the family putting the sort of romantic divisions that have kept them apart aside to come together in a warm celebration: like Shakespeare’s lovers they have woken up and found out everything is in fact fine. There’s something really reassuring and hopeful about this – that our feuds and divisions can bring us together as much as they can tear us apart.

It’s another reason as well why this is a popular film. It’s helped of course by John Patrick Shanley’s well-crafted script, and the terrific playing of the actors. Cher and Cage both have great chemistry and get the tone of the eccentric but touchingly tender unlikely romance just right. Dukakis and Gardenia are both funny and sweet as their parents, Aiello gives a very generous performance as a dutiful-boy-who-never-grew-up and there’s a scene-stealing cameo from Feodor Chalipin as Loretta’s eccentric grandfather. Above all, Moonstruck is a playful, feel-good film that doesn’t take itself too seriously and lives you feeling hopeful that everything can work itself out – even when the magic of the moon sends us a little crazy.

The Return (2025)

The Odyssey retold as an exploration of trauma and guilt in a rich and rewarding film

Director: Uberto Pasolini

Cast: Ralph Fiennes (Odysseus), Juliette Binoche (Penelope), Charlie Plummer (Telemachus), Tom Rhys Harries (Pisander), Marwan Kenzai (Antinous), Claudio Santamaria (Eumaeus), Ayman Al Aboud (Indius), Amir Wilson (Philoetius)

War can tear your soul apart, even if it’s become an ancient clash of legend: the memory of the deeds you did and the lives (both friend and foe) you left behind can haunt you. The pain of guilt and trauma swims behind the expressive eyes of Ralph Fiennes’ Odysseus in this unique adaptation of Homer’s famous tale of the longest journey home. A version that, as the title suggests, jettisons the journey itself (along with all those Gods) focusing instead on the spiritual journey a soul must take to come-to-terms with things seen and done and to face the consequences on those left behind. Pasolini’s film does this with expressive, melancholic beauty, bringing a unique vision to a story told many times before.

A shipwrecked Odysseus is washed, naked, up on the shore of his kingdom of Ithica – although its heavily implied this is an accident as he is clueless at first to where he is. In fact, lying naked on the beach, suggests the cunning old warrior has in many ways been born again: this time to face the pain of those he left behind. That doesn’t just include his wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) waiting fruitlessly for years for word of his whereabouts, but also his bitter son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) who deeply resents his absent father. It’s also the people of his kingdom, now poor and ravaged, the cream of a generation lost under his leadership, the island pillaged by a parade of cruel suitors for Penelope desperate to claim the kingdom. So great is Odysseus’ guilt he continues to conceal his identity – perhaps worried as much at confronting the truth about himself as he is the myriad people on the island with reason to hate him.

The Return replays Homer as an exploration of war trauma and PTSD. In many ways it has more in common with William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives than Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy. No matter the era, it’s never easy for warriors to find a place in a world of peace they left far behind. Powered by a deeply affecting, sensitive performance from Fiennes, The Return centres a man beaten down by shame and regret, barely able to look others in the eye. This is the lasting impact of conflict. While the war at Troy is already being mythologised by the young, Odysseus’s stories focus on the ordinary citizens of Troy, who longed for peace and met their end in fire and blood. Fire and blood, what’s more, that he visited upon them.

Mix that in with the constant memory of the boatloads of Ithica’s finest young men, who have not returned with him, their souls lost in conflict and at sea. No wonder Odysseus feels solely tempted to forget himself, to become just another anonymous beggar. The Return is the tragedy of an incredibly smart, cunning man shamed that his gifts are harnessed best for death and destruction. In battle he is ruthlessly efficient, using the strengths of others against them, constantly identifying every possible advantage.

It’s a fate that he – and Penelope – fear may absorb their son. Telemachus, played with a frustrated petulance by Charlie Plummer, has watched his father’s kingdom fall apart, felt abandoned by both his parents (one to war, the other to stoic silent) and straining at the leash to do something to prove himself. If that means testing how far the parade of Penelope’s suitors will go, so be it – even if their patience with this boy becoming a man is wearing fatally thin. Tension hangs over The Return: will Telemachus follow in those footsteps Odysseus so bitterly regrets – will violence consume the next generation as much as the first?

What it will do is leave more victims behind. Juliette Binoche – with an instinctive chemistry, gives a deeply humane but fascinatingly cryptic performance – simmers with the never-ending pressure of trying to keep home and family together, very aware her own home is now awash with dangerous men she can only just control. Binoche is a tight-wound bundle of tension, suppressed fear and unacknowledged anger at her betrayal. This is a woman clinging to hope of her husband’s return, as it offers the only escape from the trap he has left her in – and if that means forcing his hand so be it.

Ithica has become a ragged island. Pasolini’s visuals for the film, influenced by Baroque artwork in its parade of barely-clothed nudes in rural settings and run-down classical wrecks, not only look gorgeously artful but successfully conveys the impression of a kingdom on its last legs. With everyone thinly clothed and living in shacks, Odysseus’ palace crumbling and lives being cheaply taken whenever the suitors fancy, it’s clear the world he left behind has disintegrated. The suitors are largely a gang of louts, increasingly fed-up with waiting (‘This fuckin’ place!’ Tom Rhys Harris’ Pisander petulantly whines at one point after getting lost in a futile chase through the maze-like woodland). They are fragilely led by Marwan Kenzai’s Antinous, whose tragedy is that he genuinely loves Penelope. In another life, indeed, you can imagine him making a considerate and kind husband if unreturned affection hadn’t made him bitter.

These ideas and concepts bring a fresh vision to The Odyssey, grounding this adaptation in a world of post-traumatic guilt and the horror of violence, devoid of gods and monsters. Fiennes, his body muscled up like a burnt and tanned roll of taut rope, is a warrior struggling against awakening. We all know eventually he will of course – but the enormous psychological burden of once again using your wit and ingenuity to efficiently slaughter other people is always palpable. It doesn’t matter if the targets ‘deserve’ it: the psychological damage remains the same.

The Return explores all the subtly, with beautifully measured performances from Fiennes and Binoche and impressive supporting turns not least from Claudio Santamaria as Odysseus’ old servant, shrewdly aware of his master’s identity earlier than he admits and determined to rouse the king to take responsibility for his actions. Sombre, wonderfully filmed and a compelling reimagination of the myth, it’s a unique view of Greek mythology that carries real emotional impact.

Dodsworth (1936)

A marriage disintegrates in this richly mature, non-judgemental film one of the best of the decade

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Walter Huston (Sam Dodsworth), Ruth Chatterton (Fran Dodsworth), Paul Lukas (Arnold Iselin), Mary Astor (Edith Cortright), David Niven (Captain Lockert), Gregory Gaye (Kurt von Obersdorf), Maria Ouspenskaya (Baroness von Oversdorf), Odette Myrtil (Renée de Penable), Spring Byrington (Matey Pearson), Harlan Briggs (Tubby Pearson), Kathryn Marlowe (Emily), John Payne (Harry)

Marriage is tricky. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, bringing up a family, running a business and rushing between social events, what if you don’t notice you don’t have much left in common? That’s the theme of Dodsworth, one of the most strikingly modern of 1930s films, that tackles the breakdown of a marriage in a surprising subtle way, avoiding the sort of moral punishment and condemnation you’d expect from the production code. Combined with sharp writing, fine acting and some fluidly creative direction from William Wyler, and you have an overlooked classic.

Dodsworth kicks off with the retirement of car entrepreneur Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston). Having sold his successful independent factory to a major business, Sam is now effectively retired and suggests that he and his wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton) take that trip to Europe they’d always discussed but never had time to do. The trip, however, starts to reveal fractures in their relationship. Fran isn’t ready to ‘rush towards old age’ like she feels Sam, with his touristy longings and interest in engineering mechanics is. She wants to be part of society and feel the excitement of flirtations (and more) with rakeish European types (from David Niven to Paul Lukas to Gregory Gaye), while Sam ticks off the sites and sits in cafés. Sam, it turns out, has far more in common with Naples-ex-pat Edith (Mary Astor) – but feels duty bound to do whatever he can to preserve his marriage with Fran.

It’s all adapted from Sinclair Lewis’ doorstop novel, skilfully boiled down into a clear dramatic journey by Sidney Howard, from his own theatre adaptation (which also starred Huston). It becomes both slightly sad, watching two people drift apart, while also offering rich vestiges of hope of what the future can hold if you dare to take a chance. It mixes this with dry wit, scenes of compelling narrative interest and an insightful look at two people effectively going through different types of life crisis during a ‘once in a lifetime’ journey. Because nothing can disrupt your thinking about your own life more than changing nearly everything about it in one swift barrage of events.

It’s assembled into a richly involving whole by William Wyler, who lands the film just the right side of melodrama. From the opening shot, tracking towards Sam’s back as he leans against a window looking out over the factory which gave his life meaning, there is a quiet air of its characters living in denial of their own melancholy. Part of Sam is already wondering what on earth he’s going to do without his factory – its why he immerses himself in the most banal details of the sights they will see in Europe, or the engineering of their cruise ship.

Sam feels his journey will give him new opportunities, but it often sees him uncertain and slightly adrift, from not knowing how to tip waiters to finding his mid-Western mindset unable to compute the sexually liberal rules of European high society. Fran claims the journey abroad will mean leaving behind the oppressive parade of the over familiar social scene in their small town. It quickly turns out, she’s only be bored of their small circle not the glamour of social events.

Sam is played with real skill and under-played grace by Walter Huston in one of his finest performances. He’s an overwhelmingly decent man, self-made, confident but hesitant and uncertain out of his element. There’s a fuddy-duddy quality to him you can understand Fran finding grating, but he’s also capable of genuine, unfiltered enthusiasm (watch his joyful spotting of a famous lighthouse during their journey – which hilariously he nearly misses while checking his watch – and the eagerness which he tries to share this with an irritated Fran and a politely bored Niven). What’s superb about Huston’s performance is the awkwardness, shyness and even timidity he brings to a successful man, the quiet air of confused anxiety behind Sam as his certainties melt away.

Both Sam and Fran are convinced everything between them is fine, constantly speaking (increasingly dutifully) about their love, as if trying to convince each other even as it starts to fall apart. Their home already feels invaded by their daughter and her husband, who absent-mindedly serves himself drinks from Sam’s cabinet. They’re in completely different mindsets. Fran is constantly embarrassed by her husband’s tendency to hickness. Sam feels Fran’s upper-class ‘friends’ wouldn’t look twice at her without the cash she can flash. Fran is horrified by Sam’s whimsical statement that they will soon ‘be a couple of old Grandparents’. She’s young at heart, being wooed and won’t give that up.

From a ship-bound flirtation with David Niven’s suave playboy where she seems shocked at his implication that they can take things further (Sam doesn’t help by telling her she only has herself to blame), she swiftly begins an all-but-open affair with Paul Lukas’ smooth gentleman (with Sam turning an embarrassed third-wheel blind eye) even sending Sam home to extend her holiday privately, while he fields awkward questions from their family and re-directs his inner fury at his public cuckolding into grumpy rants about other’s scrabble games covering his desk and fussily reaching for his Encyclopaedia to prove trivial discussion points.

By the time Ruth has convinced herself divorce will lead, inevitably, to a glorious new marriage with much younger aristocrat Gregory Gaye, she’s at the centre of an increasingly delusional mid-life crisis, full of false claims about her age and built on fantasies. Ruth Chatterton is very good, neatly bringing to life a woman who can’t face the idea of becoming old. The film (while siding with Sam) never fully condemns her for her behaviour – even if it maintains an American suspicion of her wealthy European upper classes. In fact, it’s very hard not to feel sorry for Fran when her lover’s mother (played by an imperiously shrewd Oscar-nominated Maria Ouspenskaya) punctures her delusions about the likely future of a relationship with her feckless son.

It’s all beautifully framed by Wyler. How can you not admire the lingering shot of Fran reading a telegram from Sam and letting Lukas’ Iselin set fire to it, the camera following the paper as the wind blows it across the balcony floor to disintegrate like the Dodsworth marriage? Dodsworth is full of such beautifully subtle moments, its imagery (and Oscar winning sets) wonderfully establishing a world in transit as much as the Dodsworths. Wyler also evens the score at points: Sam remains largely sympathetic, but its possible to be irritated by his naïve dullness, just while the frequently infuriating Fran is relatable in tragic fear that her life is behind her.

It’s this mature view of people drifting apart, making mistakes and not always being condemned that makes Dodsworth such a richly intelligent film. Sam would certainly by more happy with Edith (a very moving performance from Mary Astor), just as Fran would be better off without Sam. Dodsworth is largely refreshingly free of the sort of Puritan punishments other films dealing with similar themes would use under the Production Code. Instead Dodsworth is a superbly acted, directed and written melodrama with a serious tone that remains richly rewarding viewing.

I’m Still Here (2024)

Subtle, low-key but powerful condemnation of oppression with a fabulous lead performance

Director: Walter Salles

Cast: Fernanda Torres (Eunice Paiva), Selton Mello (Rubens Paiva), Guilherme Silveira (Marcelo Rubens Paiva), Antonio Saboia (Adult Marcelo Rubens Paiva), Valentina Herszage (Vera Paiva), Maria Manoella (Older Vera Paiva), Luiza Kosovski (Eliana Paiva), Marjorie Estiano (Older Eliana Paiva), Barbara Luz (Nalu Paiva), Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha (Older Nalu Paiva), Cora Mora (Maria Beatriz Facciolla Paiva), Olívia Torres (Older Maria Beatriz Facciolla Paiva), Pri Helena (Zezé), Fernanda Montenegro (Older Eunice Paiva)

In 1970 Brazil was controlled by a military dictatorship who tried to hide their unjust and violent methods from the public eye. Many people were taken from their homes to never be seen again, such as Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a former congressman and political opponent. Now working as a civil engineer, he is taken from his home by plain clothes military officers to help with unspecified enquiries. His wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) is later also arrested, along with her teenager daughter, questioned and imprisoned for over a week then released with no word of Rubens fate. Eunice is left, bereft of answers as to what has happened to her husband, holding their family together, struggling for decades to try and get some sort of news of her husband’s fate.

Walter Salles’ heartfelt film captures the struggle of a whole nation to find answers in the story of one family – a story that achieved national fame in Brazil. And one personally known to Salles, who was himself (as a kid) a guest in the Paiva’s home and knew Rubens, Eunice and their children. His determination to tell this story with the dignity and truth it deserves is a major part of I’m Still Here’s success. It also gains real power from the focus it gives to the enduring difficulty of calmly, methodically rebuilding your families life in the face of terrible tragedy. As the title says, in many ways I’m Still Here is about persisting in the face of oppression, not letting your family collapse, to not just accept the new life forced on you, to carry on and not crumble.

It does this by keeping the film surprisingly low-key. I’m Still Here deals in subtle intimidation, the velvet glove, more than it does the iron fist. The threat of approaching oppression is signalled subtly by the military helicopters flying loudly over Eunice’s head while she swims in the film’s opening. Her older daughter is part of a general stop-and-search out with friends that carries more than an air of possible violence. When the military police arrive, dressed informally, it’s not clear at first they are there to arrest Rubens. They are scrupulously polite and deferential and only show flashes of firmness (insisting no one else leave the home). The dictatorship’s method is to hide its brutality behind a screen of everyday politeness.

Salles condemns it using the same weapons, where the film’s underplaying helps it carry even more emotional force. There is very little in the way of either triumphal emotional beats or show-stopping speeches and no moments of horrific violence. Instead, this is a film where the triumph is dealing with your pain in such a way to protect what you can of your children’s innocence and defend what you have left. Fernanda Torres’ exceptional performance works on the basis of its quietness, its refusal to exhibit the wild emotional volatility others expect, but is full instead of the resolute determination to carry on in the face of everything life has to throw at you.

Torres’ performance is a masterclass in the small and subtle. This is a mother putting on a front of normality, only sharing a few words with her older daughters because the sheer danger of what is happening is not for ‘the ears of the little ones’. She is determined to protect as much normality for her young children as she can, and if this means she must hide in her husband’s office to shed a few tears before returning to fix her daughter’s doll and prepare her children for bedtime, she will. Because collapsing into grief and guilt is exactly what the dictatorship wants: it wants people cowed and scared, so Eunice will smile in the face of overwhelming adversity and pain.

It’s telling that I’m Still Here’s focus is less on Eunice’s campaign – of which we see very little: a few meetings, a photoshoot and a final reveal – and instead the quiet drama of salvaging a personal life from a world upside down. With her husband disappeared, Eunice literally cannot access their shared bank account (even when it is whispered to her that Rubens is dead, she still would need a formal death certificate to do this), with most of their savings tied up in a huge track of land Rubens had planned to develop. Suddenly their house, near to the beaches of Rio, can no longer be an open-doored haven: the location of a key that can lock their car gate turns from being forgotten to being essential. Throughout these quiet obstacles, you feel Fernanda Torres’ Eunice eternally stamping down the immense pressure to simply scream her pain and frustration out for all to hear.

There is a true nobility in this lowkey bravery. Only moments of horror creep in, such as the murder of a family pet. It feels particularly noble since, along with Eunice, we have seen a glimpse of the horrors. I’m Still Here’s prison sequence sees Eunice and her daughter escorted to a military facility with black bags over their head, for days of relentlessly focused interrogation in rooms devoid of daylight. For over a week Eunice only gains information about her daughter from snatches of clues from a sympathetic guard and listens from her cell to screams in a prison where even frequent washing can’t remove all the blood from the floor. This dictatorship hides its brutality, but only slightly, and if some of its agents seem polite they still unquestioningly follow cruel orders.

I’m Still Here flourishes in its focus on the everyday work to hold things together, that it almost doesn’t need its two codas one set in 1996 the other in 2014. But these briefer moments do provide true moments of power: the first seeing Eunice finally getting a copy of her husband’s certificate and the final featuring a powerful cameo from Fernando Montenegro (Torres’ mother) as an aged Eunice who, suffering from Alzheimers, finally lets a flash of her pain cross over her face. And while they seem at times to be gilding the lily, their presence re-enforces the courage involved in simply carrying on and preserving in the face of oppression, even over the course of many decades.

It’s that power that makes I’m Still Here, a quiet and unflashy film told with remarkable restraint, as effective as it is. Directed with a subtle but heartfelt hand by Salles, it also allows Fernanda Torres the room for a restrained but deeply moving performance that throbs with humanity. It’s quietness and calm in the face of oppression makes it a powerful indictment of dictatorship.

Hard Truths (2024)

Leigh encourages us to take a deeper, more considered look at the people around us

Director: Mike Leigh

Cast: Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Pansy), Michele Austin (Chantelle), David Webber (Curtley), Tuwaine Barrett (Moses), Ani Nelson (Kayla), Sophia Brown (Aleisha), Jonathan Livingstone (Virgil)

Sometimes the world all gets too much for all of us. But it’s pretty much always too much for Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste). A stay-at-home wife to plumber Curtley (David Webber), mother to shy, unambitious Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), pretty much everything enrages Pansy, who responds to virtually everything around her with unbridled rage and accusatory rants. She’s completely different to her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), a motherly hairdresser with two ambitious daughters Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown) with whom she has a warm loving relationship. What made one sister easy-going and the other someone who could literally pick a fight in an empty room?

The sharpest part of Mike Leigh’s small-scale, but deeply engaging, family story is encouraging us to take a longer look at a person who, at first, is almost unbearable. To find in them vulnerabilities and fears that makes us understand and feel sorry for them. But, make no mistake, Pansy is a tough person to spend time with. Brought to life in an astonishing, visceral, deeply raw performance by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, most of the film’s opening half hour is spent establishing Pansy’s kneejerk aggression which she uses to deal with everything around her.

Jean-Baptiste launches into these furious rants with the sort of all-consuming energy that feels like you’ve been punched back in your seat, while her all-in commitment even raises a chuckle or two at the unadjusted fury of Pansy’s words. Every encounter ends in Pansy either letting rip or almost deliberately escalating everyday moments into confrontations. She tears a strip off a shop assistant in a furniture store, seemingly for no reason. She confronts a shopping till assistant and two other people in a supermarket queue. She begins a slanging match with another driver over a parking space. At dinner she barely gets a fork-full of food into her mouth, so intent is she on condemning the rest of the neighbourhood while her husband and son keep their heads down and silently eat the meal she prepared. Compared to Chantelle’s warm home life and bubbly, chatty interaction with her customers, our sympathies lie with those who have to deal with Pansy.

But the brilliant thing in here, and in Jean-Baptiste’s fragile desperation and terror just under the surface, is that Leigh’s film unpacks this to make clear it stems from an inability to deal with the world: a fear that has turned Pansy into someone who instinctively attacks first before when she feels threatened (which is all the time). Pansy clearly suffers from some sort of deep anxiety mixed with OCD. She’s terrified of germs, barely able to touch items she hasn’t personally cleaned. Her house is antiseptic, devoid of personal items. She seems totally at a loss with how to talk to people, interpreting every approach as an implicit threat and is deeply lonely under her aggression. This is the anger of someone who is scared literally all the time, who can’t deal with the pressures of the world and has retreated into a defensive cocoon to drive everyone away.

Jean-Baptiste’s performance grows, deepens and peels away layers of Pansy to become richer and richer as Leigh’s perfectly placed, deceptively slight film gently spreads itself out. Pansy is convinced the world is dangerous, certain that everyone hates her, only married her husband (who gives her no emotional support what-so-ever and silently expects meals when he gets home) because she was afraid of dying alone. She can’t sit in a room without cleaning it, can’t bring herself to put on dentist goggles someone else might have used and is nearly paralysed with fear at the thought of touching a bunch of shop wrapped flowers. To her the world is a continuing, never-ending, terrifying struggle and it has turned Pansy into a woman constantly desperate and scared. Worst of all, Pansy knows this isn’t ‘normal’, that things which incapacitate her with fear don’t even cause other people to bat an eye – and she doesn’t understand why she is like this. This emotion pours out of Jean-Baptiste in a riveting, hugely affecting second act, playing out like a deeply moving emotional breakdown.

The catalyst is the mother’s day commemoration she and Chantelle share for their mother, a woman Chantelle remembers with deep fondness and love: but whom Pansy remembers only as a woman who expected Pansy to sacrifice her own education and interests to look after Chantelle and bring money into the home. Pansy references a childhood love of mathematics that was never encouraged – the sort of natural skill you can imagine someone somewhere on a spectrum like Pansy is would have had a real passion for – which for her summarises how opportunities were never meant for.

Our sympathies slowly, but noticeably shift. Pansy can’t do what the rest of do, put aside or forget the things that upset us. Hard Truths suggests sometimes we do that too easily: Chantelle’s daughters experience tough, unpleasant days at work but come together for drinks to say how great their careers are. Others deal with painful encounters – like the bullying Moses endures – by retreating into silence. Pansy though is aware she cannot deal with situations, cannot understand herself or why she is the way that she is – and, it’s clear, doesn’t like herself either. More and more we agree with Chantelle, who can’t understand why she married the unsupportive, monosyllabic Curtley (who treats his eager apprentice with dismissive disinterest and barely acknowledges Chantelle’s family showing its not fear of Pansy that keeps him sullen and silent at home).

It’s a masterful part of this wonderful, small-scale but deeply heart felt film from Leigh. Jean-Baptiste’s performance is one of the ages, but Michele Austin gives a highly emotive performance with a charm that hides an inner steel. It’s a beautifully assembled, wonderfully acted, highly intelligent film from an accomplished director who encourages the viewers to look as closely at characters – their complexities and virtues as well as their flaws – with the same patience and regard as he has spent his career doing.

Autumn Sonata (1978)

The great Bergmans collaborate in a raw powerful film that does cover familiar Bergman ground

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Ingrid Bergman (Charlotte Andergast), Liv Ullmann (Eva), Lena Nyman (Helena), Halvar Björk (Viktor), Erland Josephson (Josef), Gunnar Björnstrand (Paul), Georg Løkkeberg (Leonardo)

In the history of Swedish cinema, there was one mighty collaboration the world was waiting for. The Bergmans (no relation) Ingmar and Ingrid, two generations of iconic Swedish filmmaking, to work together for the first time. It’s ironic that when it finally happened – and Autumn Sonata was the final time both Bergman’s worked on a project exclusively intended for cinema – it came during Ingmar’s self-imposed exile, meaning it was shot in Norway via a German company (and with a title originally in German) with British and American money. But one thing you couldn’t change: this would bring Ingrid back to the artistic Euro-film-making of her own Hollywood exile and that Ingmar wouldn’t flinch on his forensic, emotionally traumatic style for the legend.

Ingrid plays Charlotte, a famed classical pianist whose entire life has been her career, with brief stop-offs between concerts for marriages and kids. It’s meant she’s not seen her now-adult daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann) for over seven years. And that she’s also missed most of Eva’s affectionate-but-passionless marriage to Viktor (Halvar Björk) and the entire life (including birth and funeral) of her grandson Erik. Charlotte also has no idea Eva has moved her disabled younger sister Helena (Lena Nyman) from the nursing home Charlotte deposited her in years ago into her own home. A visit brings mother and daughter together again for an awkward reunion that turns into a cathartic emotional outpouring, as Eva unbottles decades of resentment, anger and pain.

Autumn Sonata revolves around this extended confrontation scene, which takes up a sizeable portion of Ingmar Bergman’s thoughtful, measured film where conversations are all too clearly ticking time bombs leading to revelations that might be best unsaid. It fixates powerfully on the damage parents can inflict on their children and the shattering pain children can cause their parents. It’s a film about the brutal, challenging complexities of family and the unspoken resentments they can cause on those within them, who see their own opportunities and freedoms eaten into by a never-ending stream of demands and expectations from ‘loved ones’.

It’s a feeling familiar to all three of the principles. Ingmar was all-too-aware of his difficult relationship with both his parents and his children, Ullmann wrote about her self-perceived failings as a mother while Ingrid’s elopement with Roberto Rossellini in the 40s led her to not seeing her own daughter for almost five years. And it plays into this incredibly raw film which, while it covers familiar Ingmar ground, is played with such powerful, visceral commitment from its leads (held grippingly in frame by Ingmar’s regular collaborator Sven Nykvist), that it’s still one of his tougher watches.

Ingrid is superb as Charlotte, a woman who arrives in the remote vicarage home of her daughter, bursting with glamour. Assured, certain and utterly confident of her position as the centre of any room, Charlotte has a tendency to narrate her own life, self-assuredly mapping out her actions (from what to wear to the decision to gift Eva a car) and basks in advance in the positive reactions she anticipates. Charlotte maps her life out in terms of concerts and recitals (constantly, when Eva asks about an event from her childhood, Charlotte will ground herself by referring to a performance from that time). She automatically assumes maestro status in the house, including listening to Eva’s piano playing, moving her aside to take over and lecturing her on how the piece should be played.

She’s also though a woman deeply uncomfortable with emotion and emotional commitment. It’s an insight into how distant and unconnected Eva’s childhood must have been (brief flashbacks show Charlotte’s politely affectionate utter lack of interest in the young Eva) that what’s motivated her to visit Eva is to distract herself from the unpleasant burden of dealing with her recent husband’s death. Not grief or the need for comfort mind: it’s the experience of dealing with the events connected to the death that’s unsettled her. Her refusal to engage with anything emotional continues, from avoiding the topic of Eva’s dead son entirely to reacting to something close to barely concealed irritation at discovering her disabled daughter Helena in the home: she didn’t come here to be reminded about this other difficult emotional bond she’d outsourced to a professional.

Charlotte’s emotional coldness and distance under her warm confidence is brilliantly embodied by Ingrid. She’s a woman so overwhelmingly focused on her career she probably should never have had children at all (and perhaps regrets doing do), wasn’t remotely interested in Eva and Helena’s father (a decent, bank-manager sort played silently by Erland Josephson in flashbacks) and wants nothing from this visit except to feel better about herself. The lacerating home truths unleashed on her, see Ingrid’s composure fracture in shock, guilt and regret, her eyes becoming wells of shamed emotion.

Equally brilliant is Liv Ullman, perhaps even more so. Ullmann appears at first mousey, dowdy, humble and deferential – her husband opens the film with a heartfelt monologue about her being convinced she is not worth loving and that he only regrets he has never been able to persuade her otherwise. The cause for this becomes clear as Eva releases years of pent-up fury and anger at her mother’s oscillating from ignoring her to bursts of obsessive attention focused on coaching Eva into becoming what Charlotte wants her to be (Ingrid is fantastic at establishing Charlotte’s dumb-founded amazement that these times she fondly remembers were in fact purgatory for her daughter). Ullman’s delivery of this is powerful, viciously resentful and overwhelmingly painful.

This confrontation is the centre of Autumn Sonata but Ingmar knows that, despite what happens in Hollywood, moments like this don’t cure festering boils. In fact, our great gift as humans is to forget, re-form and move on. The film’s coda sees both women doing this: Charlotte feels her shame, but in a one-sided conversation with her agent (a wordless cameo from Gunnar Björnstrand) has already begun the process of self-justifying self-mythologising of her past. Similarly, having released years of frustration, Eva returns to her compromising self, drafting letters of apology to her mother. Or perhaps these are springs of hope? Somehow in Bergman it’s hard to think so.

You can argue that all of this very familiar to Bergman watchers: and it is (the presence of Ingrid is probably what cements it as one of his best-known films). But this is also a thought-provoking work in its own right. Autumn Sonata suggests we may try to confront or deal with things that have caused us pain. But in reality, the long, continual work of doing so is too much or us: we revert instead to compromise, adjustment and familiar patterns. Flashpoints carry emotional and dramatic weight, but life is made up of forgetting. It’s a powerful closing idea in this viciously raw piece of film-making from Ingmar, that draws such heart-breaking and emotional performances from Ingrid and Ullman.