My Fair Lady (1964)

Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison cover how to speak proper in My Fair Lady

Director: George Cukor

Cast: Audrey Hepburn (Eliza Doolittle), Rex Harrison (Professor Henry Higgins), Stanley Holloway (Alfred P Doolittle), Wilfrid Hyde-White (Colonel Hugh Pickering), Gladys Cooper (Mrs Higgins), Jeremy Brett (Freddy Eynsford-Hill), Theodore Bikel (Zoltan Karpathy), Mona Washbourne (Mrs Pearce), Isobel Elsom (Mrs Eynsford-Hill), Henry Daniell (British Ambassador)

My Fair Lady is possibly one of the most popular musicals of all time. A singing-and-dancing adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s most popular play, a satire on self-improvement and sexual politics, the original Broadway production ran for over six years and 2,717 performances, while the original cast-recording album was a smash hit bestseller. It was a question of when rather than if a film version would be made. When it finally happened, the film was garlanded with Oscars aplenty, not least Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.

The musical follows the story of Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), a cockney flower girl in Victorian London, whose life is changed after a chance encounter with linguistics genius Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). Higgins has a bet with his colleague Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) – he can change Eliza’s accent and manners so much that the shrill cockney girl will pass for a society belle. The bet will not only change their lives, but also those of Eliza’s father, sage-like binman Alfred (Stanley Holloway), and lovestruck romantic young gentleman Freddy Eynsford-Hill (Jeremy Brett). 

From the start, producer Jack L Warner wanted to develop a new verison of the film, fresh and different from the stage production. George Cukor, the esteemed director from Hollywood’s Golden Years, was brought on board as a safe pair of hands – but it was clear Warner was calling the shots. How to put your own stamp on a massive hit musical? Well you start by getting a fresh cast in. Julie Andrews had made the role her own in the original production, so Hollywood was stunned when she was overlooked for the part. Instead Audrey Hepburn was hired – while Julie Andrews got the consolation price of being able to accept Disney’s offer of the role of Mary Poppins. Warner knew who he wanted for Higgins – and Cary Grant was swiftly courted for the role. But Grant refused, allegedly responding that he wouldn’t even see the film unless Rex Harrison was retained in his signature role.

So Harrison owes him a drink or two, because the film allowed him to leave a permanent record of a stage role he had played over 1,000 times on Broadway and in the West End. Harrison had taken a revolutionary approach to musicals, by basically not singing. Instead he sort of spoke the songs rhythmically – an approach that every other performer of the role has stuck to. The film is a brilliant capture of this unique and authoritative performance, and while Harrison is not exactly fresh he’s certainly charismatic, delivering every scene with confidence and well-rehearsed bombast.

Harrison’s steely lack of willingness to compromise also lead indirectly to a revolution in sound recording in the movies. Harrison refused to obey the custom at the time to lip-sync on set to a pre-recorded soundtrack. Harrison insisted that his performance was subtly different every time so he could never lip-sync accurately. Instead the technicians were forced to invent a sort of wireless microphone that could be disguised in the over-sized neck ties Harrison wears. This also means that at least one musical number has the bizarre situation of Harrison singing live, Hyde-White lip-syncing and Audrey Hepburn being dubbed.

Ah yes Hepburn. If there is one thing everyone remembers about Hepburn’s performance in this film, it is that she doesn’t sing a single note of the final film. Her actual singing was quickly considered by Warner to be not up to snuff, and so she is replaced by voice-double-to-the-stars Marnie Nixon. It’s always a mark against Hepburn, whose performance is often rather shrill, stagy and (whisper it) even a little bit irritating. In fact, she’s pretty much miscast as the cockney flower girl, never convincing as a bit of rough from the streets, and is so horrendously misstyled throughout that she also jarringly looks like a 1960s fashion icon floated into a period film.

Having hired the male star of the Broadway production – not to mention Stanley Holloway also being retained from the original cast after James Cagney refused to be drawn out from retirement – the film quickly settles down into being a straight Broadway musical captured as faithfully as possible on the big-screen. My Fair Lady is a film crushed under the pressure of its design, and watching it today it looks unbearably studio-bound and flat. In every scene you can never forget you are watching the action take place on enormous sets, with the camera pulled back to try and get as much of the expensive soundstage work in frame as possible.

As a dance musical, it’s pretty flat – Holloway’s numbers in particular are strikingly lifeless in their dancing, which makes you regret even more that Cagney couldn’t be lured to star in it – and much of the singing feels forced or over-performed. Even Harrison’s numbers feel pretty by-the-numbers from Harrison’s constant repetition of them. Even the more impressive scenes – such as the race track sequence – feel artificial and over-designed, the money chucked at the careful period detail and over-elaborate costumes and set (designs courtesy of Cecil Beaton, who allegedly drew the designs and then disappeared to leave them to be interpreted by others) seeming more and more dated as the years pass by.

But then this was a film that probably felt dated at the time it was made – it beat Dr Strangelove for best picture, and in five years’ time Midnight Cowboy was lifting the Oscar – never more so than in Cukor’s direction. One wonders at times what Cukor really did: Warner cast the film and led on the design and staging. Harrison and Holloway had played their roles literally thousands of times already. The camera work is as conservative and unimaginative as you can expect, with the film dryly set up to give you the perfect view from the stalls. Several touches – such as the staging (complete with blurry focus edges) of Eliza’s fantasies of the domineering Higgins being punished by firing squad – are clumsy and obvious. It’s a film made with no real independent personality whatsoever.

Not to mention the fact that it completely fails to draw any chemistry from the Higgins/Doolittle relationship whatsoever. It’s an odd one, as the musical takes on a romantic ending of the two characters together – an ending, by the way, that Shaw famously hated when a suggestion of it was added to the original Pygmalion production. Here, this comes from nowhere, and feels unbelievably forced and artificial as Harrison has demonstrated no interest at all (other than irritation) for Hepburn, and she in turn offers little back. When they come back together it’s hard to care.

But they cared back then as this was a huge box office smash. It’s very odd to imagine it now – because this isn’t a great film, it’s a decently done one that carries some charm but never finds an identity for itself as film away from its musical roots and never brings anything unique and imaginative to the table. It’s extraordinarily flat as a piece of film-making and seems increasingly more and more dated in its performances, its atmosphere and its staging. It’s got some charm, but I’m not sure if it’s got enough.

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

Rami Malek brings Freddie Mercury to life in crowd-pleaser Bohemian Rhapsody

Director: Bryan Singer (Dexter Fletcher)

Cast: Rami Malek (Freddie Mercury), Lucy Boynton (Mary Austin), Gwilym Lee (Brian May), Ben Hardy (Roger Taylor), Joe Marzello (John Deacon), Aidan Gillen (John Reid), Allen Leech (Paul Prenter), Tom Hollander (Jim Beach), Mike Myers (Ray Foster), Aaron McCusker (Jim Hutton), Ace Bhatti (Bomi Bulsara), Meneda Das (Jer Bulsara)

Biography can be a tricky territory on film. How can you hope to capture a whole life, with all its ups and downs, its shades of grey, in a single sitting of two hours? Well the truth is you can’t really – and Bohemian Rhapsody is an enjoyable but very safe and traditional attempt to tell something of Mercury’s life. It carefully organises his life into a clear five act structure (Beginnings, Early success, Triumph, Temptation and fall, Redemption) that wouldn’t have been unfamiliar to the writer of a medieval mystery play.

The film uses Queen’s legendary Live Aid performance as the book ends for a story that covers Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) as he joins Queen, works closely with the band to compose the hit songs that would make them legends, then falls tragically under the influence of band manager Paul Prenter (Allen Leech) and leaves the band to build a solo career and succumbs to those dreaded demons of drink, drugs and sex. The film culminates in a brilliant recreation of Live Aid (by the way, only making the vaguest of passing references to the cause behind Live Aid, with the main motivation for performing seeming to be that everyone else is) which, despite some wonky CGI at points, brilliantly captures the atmosphere of being at an electric live gig. 

Bohemian Rhapsody is an affectionately made crowd-pleaser of a film which has convention running through its soul like sugar at the centre of stick of rock. With the heavy involvement of the surviving members of Queen and their manager, it’s a film that wants to very carefully avoid anything too controversial – which is fair enough when it’s people making a film about their friend – and does its best to shave off his rough edges, and apportion blame for faults anywhere other than Freddie.

As such, the film defines Freddie’s successes as those he achieved as part of “the family” of Queen – and his failures when he fell under the influence of others who were using him. The film draws Freddie as being desperate to find love and acceptance – from his struggles to be accepted by his traditional father (a very good performance by Ace Bhatti), to his deep love for his wife Mary Austin (while guiltily struggling with his homosexuality), to his sometimes prickly relationship with the rest of Queen, who are basically a band of brothers. Is it any wonder that someone as desperate for love as Freddie might fall under the influence of someone offering constant but not genuine affection?

Anyway, the film very carefully spreads the genius of Queen neatly around the band (we see them all chucking in songs and key ideas, even if Freddie is the driving force). Part of the reason the film works is that the band are right – these are songs for everyone. These are songs that make you want to be involved in their performance, that make you want to sing along and stamp your feet. It’s the magic alchemy of the band’s own genius that the film is so dependent on – even if the film does sometimes struggle to dramatise the act of creating art. Early on we see Freddie idly play the opening bars of Bohemian Rhapsody on the piano. “What’s that, it’s beautiful” asks his wife – “It has promise” Freddie shrugs. That’s about par for the course for how the songs come together in this film. What makes it work is the chemistry between the actors and the general lightness of the story telling.

That lightness is largely missing from the sections of the film that chart Freddie’s “dark days”. Keen to absolve Freddie as much as possible from fault, the film largely takes all his negative traits and actions and basically pours them into another man and identifies him as the reason for everything bad that happens in the film. I have no idea if the real Paul Prenter (a moustache twirling performance by Allen Leech) bore any resemblance to the chippy, bitter, scheming, selfish, greedy bad influence who appears in this film – but then Prenter has been dead for over 20 years so we’ll never know. The film blames everything – and I mean everything – on Prenter and paints Freddie as an innocent victim led astray.

The film also shies away as much as possible from showing us anything too gay. In fact, it’s hard not to get the awkward (if no doubt inadvertent) feeling that the film’s implying that the more Freddie got immersed in the gay underworld, the more he was consumed by his flaws and by bad things. In any case we get shots of Freddie at S&M parties, but shot with a dream like wistfulness that concentrates on Freddie walking towards the camera disconnected from his surroundings. The film juggles the timeline of Freddie’s life as much as possible to make for a clean narrative (in actual fact Prenter wasn’t dismissed until two years after Live Aid, Queen never split up and reformed and Freddie wasn’t diagnosed formally with AIDS until 1989), and it adds to a feeling that we are seeing a carefully formed drama that is telling a “better” version of Freddie’s life.

The biggest weapon in the film’s arsenal is Rami Malek’s performance in the lead role. His recreation of Freddie’s style and on-stage swagger is so faultless, you start to believe you are seeing the real thing. He also really adds a vulnerability, loneliness and sensitivity to Freddie’s private life. He can be prickly and arrogant, but it all stems from a deep insecurity that Malek brilliantly builds with a tender empathy. It’s a star-making performance, and he is very well supported by the rest of the cast, including Lucy Boynton as his loving wife, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy and Joe Mazzello very good as the other members of the band and Tom Hollander excellent as their eventual manager.

The main issue with the film is its strident conventionality. It obeys all the rules you would expect of a good biopic, and builds a picture of Freddie’s life that perfectly fits an ideal drama structure. Its basically safe, traditional and largely directed with a lack of imagination (although it’s troubled production, Bryan Singer’s dismissal due to “personal problems” and Dexter Fletcher’s late parachuting in to finish the film no doubt contributed to this) which offers very little that will surprise you and, in its quesiness on homosexuality, some that might offend you. But I think it provides enough pleasure from Queen’s wonderful discography that it almost rocks you.

Death on the Nile (1978)

The all-star cast line-up for murder and mayhem in Death on the Nile

Director: John Guillermin

Cast: Peter Ustinov (Hercule Poirot), Jane Birkin (Louise Bourget), Lois Chiles (Linnet Ridgeway Doyle), Bette Davis (Marie van Schuyler), Mia Farrow (Jacqueline de Bellefort), Jon Finch (James Ferguson), Olivia Hussey (Rosalie Otterbourne), George Kennedy (Andrew Pennington), Angela Lansbury (Salome Otterbourne), Simon MacCorkindale (Simon Doyle), David Niven (Colonel Race), Maggie Smith (Miss Bowers), Jack Warden (Dr Bessner), IS Johar (Mr Choudhury), Harry Andrews (Barnstaple)

Is there anything more perfect for a Bank Holiday afternoon than an all-star Agatha Christie adaptation? Take a look at the TV schedules on those days and sure enough one of them will pop up. So on New Year’s Day, I took my place on the sofa for a welcome revisit to dastardly goings-on aboard a luxury cruise ship sailing down the Nile. 

Simon Doyle (Simon MacCorkindale) has jilted his lover Jacqueline de Bellefort (Mia Farrow) in order to marry the fabulously wealthy Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles). It’s a tricky love triangle – so you can imagine the newly-married Doyles are far from pleased to find Jacqueline popping up on their Nile cruise holiday. Things eventually explode into a confrontation between Simon and Jacqueline that leaves him shot in the leg and her sedated. While they are both out of the picture, Linnet is murdered in her bed. With the two obvious suspects out of the picture, who among the (all-star) passenger line-up did the deed? Just as well Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) is on the ship to solve the puzzle.

Following on the heels of the smash hit success of 1974’s Murder on the Orient Express, the producers of that film didn’t really shake up the formula too much. Hire a load of star actors, pick one of Agatha Christie’s most picturesque-set novels and then watch the money come pouring in. Albert Finney wasn’t available to come back (rumour had it he wasn’t keen in any case on the huge amount of make-up involved) so instead Peter Ustinov came on board and away we went.

Death on the Nile feels very much like a film following a formula. Perhaps it struggles to live up to the first film because it is a slightly less compelling mystery than the first film (although still a damn good puzzle with a real twist of a solution). Perhaps it was more difficult to recapture the magic? Or perhaps it’s because it lacks the quality of direction that Sidney Lumet brought to the first film. Lumet managed to create something that always felt more than a vehicle for star turns – the more plodding John Guillermin instead feels like the sort of guy brought in to manage the day-to-day realisation of a producer’s vision (essentially the same role he fulfilled on The Towering Inferno). Death on the Nile feels very comfortable on the television perhaps because it is filmed in a very straightforward, unobtrusive style with less visual panache than many of the David Suchet series Poirots (even the earlier ones).

But the film does a good job in hiring Peter Ustinov. Ustinov has the comedic chops – matched with the acting prowess – to walk a fine line between the drama and the slight air of comedy that underpins the film. The sort of performance that tells everyone that this is essentially a Christmas treat and shouldn’t be treated too seriously – but still conveys enough of the character’s humanistic shock and anger at violence and murder. Poirot can very easily become a slightly ridiculous character, and Ustinov is canny enough to realise that (relative) underplaying of the character actually works rather well to make him engaging and entertaining, but not too heavy.

Not that heavy is the film’s problem, as this is a pretty light soufflé. The all-star actors happily go through their paces, although you can pretty much tell most of them are in this for the free holiday and the pay cheque. Most of them have fun with their parts – none more so than Angela Lansbury who goes way way way over the top as a bohemian novelist – but they pretty much go through the motions. Shaffer’s decent screenplay doesn’t do much in any case to sketch these characters out – and you suspect much of the bitchy duelling between Bette Davis’ selfish rich widow and Maggie Smith’s put-upon companion was spun out post casting. 

Saying that, I was rather taken with Olivia Hussey’s performance as a fundamentally decent person in the middle of the madness, while Lois Chiles is good enough that you regret her career didn’t really go anywhere after this film. Simon MacCorkindale and Mia Farrow also do well with tricky parts. But it’s all pretty much paint-by-numbers stuff.

Visually the film looks lovely on the Nile. The costumes and designs are great – even if some of them look pretty much straight out of the 1970s rather than the 1930s – and you can tell that the money has been lavished on it to make a pure, old-fashioned entertainment. Shaffer’s script does a decent job of adapting one of Christie’s most twisty tales – even if it does give us what feels now a pretty racist portrait of the meek and crawling ship manager played by IS Johar.

But this is safe and comfortable entertainment – and it definitely is entertaining – rather than something that feels truly filmic. You could argue that this film more than any other set the tone for what we expect from an Agatha Christie adaptation – and its mixture of light comedy and grisly murder set in a lush 1930s location is pretty much de rigeur for everything else that follows. And you know what, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Emily Blunt is practically perfect in every way in Mary Poppins Returns

Director: Rob Marshall

Cast: Emily Blunt (Mary Poppins), Lin-Manuel Miranda (Jack), Ben Whishaw (Michael Banks), Emily Mortimer (Jane Banks), Pixie Davies (Annabel Banks), Nathanael Saleh (John Banks), Joel Dawson (Georgie Banks), Julie Walters (Ellen), Colin Firth (William Weatherall Wilkins), Meryl Streep (Topsy), Dick van Dyke (Mr Dawes Jnr), David Warner (Admiral Boom), Jim Norton (Mr Binnacle), Jeremy Swift (Hamilton Gooding), Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Templeton Frye), Noma Dumezweni (Miss Penny Farthing)

Some sequels go into production even before the first film hits the cinemas. Others give you a good long wait – and Mary Poppins has had you waiting 54 years. Of course, part of that was down to her creator, PL Travers. Travers so hated the Disney original (I mean, she really hated it) she outright banned all other adaptations of her work – but her estate were far more open to the prospect (and let’s be honest, probably also to the money) that Disney could finally go ahead with a sequel.

And thank goodness for that, since this delightful film is practically perfect in every way. It’s 25 years since the events of the first film, and Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw) is now a widower with three children, whose home is about to be repossessed by the bank for non-payment of loans. His sister Jane (Emily Mortimer) is trying to help, but the pressure and sadness are showing on Michael and are forcing his children Annabel, John and Georgie (Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh and Joel Dawson) to grow up fast. The Banks family is in trouble – so it’s the perfect time for the arrival of Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) to save the day – with a little bit of help from gas-lighter Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda).

Mary Poppins Returns is a triumphant mix of nostalgia and originality, that walks a very difficult tightrope between being a loving pastiche and tribute to the original film while also managing to bring its own original charm and magic touch. That’s a difficult trick to pull off – but it basically takes a slight remix of the original film’s story and adds a heft of emotional impact to create something that feels modern and fresh while also being very close tonally to the original.

This is never clearer than in Emily Blunt’s sublime performance as Mary Poppins. If there is anyone who had a more difficult job in this film than Blunt I can’t think of them. She had to take on the most iconic character of an iconic actress – and does so brilliantly, but creates a character who feels an equal mix of both Andrews and Blunt. This is clearly the same character as before, but Blunt mixes in a wonderful heart-warming care and concern under the pristine English exterior that melts the heart. She has a glowing twinkle to her, an almost bottomless charm with an endearing delight for the wonder and silliness that is part of Poppins world. And boy can she sing and dance? She carries the film with effortless grace – to such endearing effect that, just like with Julie Andrews, you miss her as she becomes less prominent in the final act.

And of course she is matched by a superb company of actors. Lin-Manuel Miranda makes the transition to the big-screen like a duck to water, hugely loveable, wonderfully charming and superb (as you would expect) at the musical sequences. The three children give exemplary performances, with never a hint of sickly sentimentalism. Emily Mortimer is radiantly giddy as Jane, while Ben Whishaw will bring a lump to the throat as a Michael who is struggling under a huge amount of grief.  That’s not the mention wonderful turns from the whole of the cast, especially from Holdbrook-Smith as a kindly lawyer.

All these actors are “marshalled” brilliantly by director Rob Marshall. With his experience of musicals – both on screen and stage – Marshall knows his stuff and brings all his experience to bear here to create a sequel that will be seen (I’m sure) as a worthy companion to the original. Marshall’s direction of the musical sequences is faultless. He knows exactly how and where to place the camera for maximum effect, and gets just the right tone and mood from these scenes. He’s also, let’s not forget, a brilliant choreographer and has put together some exquisite sequences, not least the lamplighter song Trip the Light Fantastic, a whirligig showstopper of a number that if you saw it in the West End would have the whole crowd on their feet.

The songs make for easy criticism (reviewers seem duty-bound to say they are not as good as the original) – but to these ears Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman’s songs and scores are both catchy and engaging. Give them time and I’m sure you’ll find them as replete with impact as the Sherman brothers’ tunes from 1964. Saying that, there might be one musical number too many – but that’s a very minor criticism. 

Because this is a film that gets so much else right. The storyline is certain to leave a lump in the throat, with its delicate handling of grief and the sadness both of growing up and also children being forced to leave their childhoods behind in impossible circumstances. These are universal themes – and they certainly impacted on me, and on a cinema packed with families all of whom were engrossed. That’s part of the magic of what Marshall has achieved here – heck, even the final Big Ben set-piece starts pushing you towards the edge of your seat in tension. I also loved the bravery of the colour-blind casting. It’s a film that stands on its own feet so well, it almost takes you out of the film when Dick van Dyke appears at the end – it doesn’t need the cameo, this film is its own beast.

Mary Poppins Returns will leave a smile on your face and a glow in your heart. It’s totally lovely from start to finish. Emily Blunt is superb (with wonderful support from all) and Rob Marshall triumphs as director and choreographer in this, surely his finest movie ever. It’s got something for all ages, and a truly heart-warming story. It takes everything that works so well in the first film and builds on it. It’s a wonderful mixture of homage and originality, that you will enjoy time and time and again. Practically perfect!

Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)

Carol Lynley’s daughter ‘Bunny’ goes missing – but is the girl real or not? Classic noir mystery Bunny Lake is Missing

Director: Otto Preminger

Cast: Laurence Olivier (Superintendent Newhouse), Carol Lynley (Ann Lake), Kier Dullea (Steven Lake), Martita Hunt (Ada Ford), Anna Massey (Elvira Smollett), Clive Revill (Sergeant Andrews), Finlay Currie (The Doll Maker), Lucia Mannheim (The Cook), Noël Coward (Horatio Wilson)

Otto Preminger’s career was an interesting mixture of high-brow, noirish thrillers and pulpish adaptations. Bunny Lake Is Missing is a mixture of these, a restructuring of a hit novel. Transplanting the novel from New York to London, the film covers a single day and the investigation into a missing child ‘Bunny’ Lake. Her American mother Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) drops her at her new school, and returns at the end of the day to find no one has seen her daughter or any record of her existence. While her protective brother Steven (Kier Dullea) rants and rages, Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) leads the investigation. As Newhouse fails to find any evidence for the child’s existence at all, the question is asked: is she a figment of Ann’s fragile imagination?

Preminger plays this delicate game of “guess who” with the audience for a skilled and enjoyable 90 minutes before giving us any form of answer. The film throws us straight into the mystery of whether Bunny is real or not from the off, as our first shot of Ann is her alone in the school after dropping her daughter off. We see as little evidence of Bunny’s existence as the cast does. From there it’s a careful balance between giving us enough reasons to both trust Ann’s conviction her daughter is real and also give us enough reasons to suspect that Ann may be as unbalanced as Newhouse is concerned she might be. 

It’s quite the game the film plays, and Preminger does it very well, the film never tipping the hand too much one way or the other. Shot in luscious black and white, it’s a film of noirish shadows and imposing blackness where everything feels a little bit out of kilter and untrustworthy. Preminger throws us into Ann’s perspective by using a number of clever tracking shots that allow us to follow her through the events of each scenes. These shots are sustained, subtle and also give us a further subconscious reason to trust her – we are effectively seeing the events of the film side-by-side with her. It makes for a rather empathetic film, and one you find yourself investing into.

Not least because it completely understands the twin horrors of both losing a child and not being believed by anyone no matter how desperate you plead that you are telling the truth (no matter how generous people are while doing so). Preminger acutely understands we all deep down worry that we are going to be let down by those we need to believe in – and this feeling of concern, mixed with frustration and pity for Ann is what draws us to her. Even while we think there is more behind Bunny’s existence than meets the eye.

The screenplay by John and Penelope Mortimer also throws plenty of potential suspects at us. These are largely a series of delicious cameos for vintage British actors. These extreme odd-balls also make the two Americans in London (Ann in particular) seem even more like fishes out of water. Martita Hunt is excellent value as a retired school headmistress, seemingly confined to a bedroom in the attic of the school (!) whose hobby is recording children talking about their nightmares. Anna Massey is equally good as a harassed matron more concerned about the negative impact on the school’s reputation than child’s safety. Pick of the bunch of this rogues gallery is Noël Coward (having a whale of a time) as Ann’s drunken landlord, a faded actor and sexually ambiguous seductress who in one priceless scene gleefully shows a group of police detectives some of his favourite whips (“I find the sensation [of being whipped] rather titillating…[this was] reputed to belong to the great one himself. The Marquis de Sade”) from his collection of bizarre sex toys.

These perverts, oddballs and weirdos are all investigated with a cool professionalism by Laurence Olivier’s Superintendent Newhouse. Olivier gives possibly one of his most humane, restrained and engaging performances: he’s the epitome of caring, dedicated professionalism and a superbly humane detective. Carrying much of the burden of conveying the films narrative, Olivier is superb here – and he manages to make Newhouse exactly the sort of man you would long to investigate your child’s disappearance, even as he starts to doubt the child even exists. Olivier is in fact so strong, that the parts of the film where he disappears suffer noticeably from his absence – no one else among the principles can match him for presence.

Saying that, Carol Lynley does an excellent job as a character we invest in and sympathise with, but can never quite bring ourselves to be sure is reliable. It’s a difficult line she walks between being believably distraught and simultaneously slightly off kilter, enough to make you worry that she be (knowingly or not) making the whole thing up. The feeling may be more than helped by the exceptionally weird relationship between herself and her brother, one of an incestuously unsettling intensity (their relationship as brother and sister isn’t divulged until almost 15 minutes into the film and it’s as much a surprise to the audience as it is to the characters).

Kier Dullea as her brother gives a decent, if rather strained performance, as Steven. Dullea’s slight emptiness in the role can perhaps be partly attributed to his terrible relationship with Preminger, later claiming making the film was the worst experience of his life. (Olivier was also unimpressed calling Preminger a bully). 

It’s a shame as Dullea is crucial to the final sections of the film. I won’t give away the reveal and solution, but Preminger overplays his hand here, stretching the final sequence of the film out to a full 15 minutes which rather overstays its welcome. Maybe the sort of psychological complexity it’s aiming for is a bit more familiar to use today, than it was in 1965, but it certainly feels like a scene overstretched. But that’s a blemish on a very solid mystery before then that brings more than enough pulpish pleasure, fine performances and interesting film making to reward rewatching.

Roma (2018)

Alfonso Cuarón’s beautifully filmed semi-auto-biography

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Cast: Yalitza Aparicio (Cleo), Marina de Tavira (Sofia), Fernando Grediaga (Antonio), Jorge Antonio Guerrero (Fermín), Marco Graf (Pepe), Daniela Demesa (Sofi), Diego Cortina Autrey (Toño), Carlos Peralta (Paco), Nancy García (Adela), Verónica García (Teresa), José Manuel Guerrero Mendoza (Ramón)

All great artists come from somewhere. Experiences fashioned and moulded them. And great storytellers often feel an urge to dramatise and explore their own backgrounds, to bring these events that formed them as artists to life for a wider audience. It’s what Alfonso Cuarón does here with his semi-autobiographical Roma, a Federico Fellini-inspired meditation on events from his own childhood and upbringing, filmed with magnificent, patient lushness.

Despite its semi-autobiographical nature, Roma actually revolves not around the young version of Cuarón (he in fact is hard to identify in the film, but is probably the imaginative younger son Pepe) but Cleo, the family’s live-in maid. Set in 1970-1, the household comprises a middle-class Mexican family (husband a doctor, wife a chemist) and three live-in servants. The film follows a year or so in the life of the family and Cleo, including her surprise pregnancy and the repercussions of that on Cleo, as well as the impact of troubles in the marriage of the parents Antonio and Sofia. 

Cuarón’s debt to Fellini’s semi-autobiographical films, which turned his own childhood and career into a sort of filmmaker’s fable, is clear – heck even the title itself is a clear nod to Fellini’s own childhood story also titled Roma. It’s a poetic presenting of a version of events that may have happened to the filmmaker, and it feels personal and filled with meaning.

This Roma is a lusciously filmed, gorgeously meditative, visual treat. Shot in crisp and clear black and white, the camerawork is sublime – slow and gentle, carefully following events. Several shots use a slow dolly shot in an arc, to give the feeling of your head turning to take in scenes and the events within them. Cuarón presents a string of arresting and beautiful images, and the film’s lyrical observational tone – like a gentle Mexican Mike Leigh fable – lets the action soak over the viewer and lure you into caring for the characters and the events. 

I say that, because actually very little happens for large chunks of this film, other than following the lives of the family and the everyday events they deal with, from cleaning up dog’s mess from the drive, to trips to the cinema. It’s this air of ordinariness, this lack of event, that gives the themes bubbling under the surface a lot of their strength – namely the shock pregnancy of Cleo and the clear marriage break-up taking place between the two parents. These darker themes – as well as the potential political radicalism of one minor character – are dangerous undercurrents that threaten, but don’t overwhelm, the normality of many of the events. Cuarón lets them play as subtext, while keeping the event and drama to a minimum – this helps make the drama feel extremely real.

However, it also means that when these themes start to pay off into more traditionally dramatic events in the final quarter of the film, it carries a surprising and sudden emotional force that caught me off guard. Somehow, from just living in and among this extended family, and essentially observing their day-to-day life, it set me up to invest even more in the turmoil that threatens their happiness, as those darker currents that had been kept under the family’s (and the film’s) radar burst up onto the surface. So suddenly, at the end of the film, I found myself actually choking back a few tears at the genuine and real emotion that the film suddenly gives us.

This is helped by the naturalistic performances of the cast of non-professional actors. I often feel that the reality of performances like this, this neo-realism approach of encouraging people to play versions of themselves, a la Bicycle Thieves, is as much to a tribute to the patient, gentle and subtle direction of the film-makers as it is to the actors. Cuarón certainly worked with his cast here – shooting the film sequentially to help the actors develop their performances as the film’s story itself develops. Saying that, Yalitza Aparicio is intriguing as the dedicated maid and I was extremely taken by the strength of Marina de Tavira as the mother holding her family together.

What I found less successful about the film was the fact that this story is meant to be about Cleo, but I’m not sure what we really learn about her. Cuarón partly covers her lack of experience by reducing her dialogue to a minimum and letting her eyes convey her story. It’s just I’m not sure what story there really is. Events happen to her – and clearly take an emotional toll – but it never feels (to me) that we get an insight into her character, to her real inner life. We get glimpses but she remains a slight cipher for events that happen to her: what impact do they have on her? How does she change? What does she learn? Crude as “learning” can be in drama, Cleo feels basically the same at the end of the film as she does at the beginning. 

In fact if this film was in English, or set in England, I can imagine it being savaged for its presentation of the servant as a woman who seems to define nearly all her life by her dedication and service to her employers. There is a certain sweetness at Cleo being treated like one of the family, and covered in warmth and affection, but she still gets ordered to clear dog shit off the drive. If Downton Abbey is often criticised for the paternalistic view the employers have of the lower classes (sweet as it is to see the care and concern Sofia treats Cleo with), surely this film is guilty of it as well? The film also flips this with those same lower classes integrating their own contentment with those of their masters. At times Roma feels like a man paying tribute to his nanny by saying “she went through terrible things, but the important thing was she was always there for us”. Which somehow points exactly at how much he really knew about this person, even if the film seems to show the warts and all of her life. 

Roma is a beautiful and poetic exploration of a childhood – but it feels like it has the understanding of a child. It doesn’t really scratch below the surface to give us the adult perspective, to interpret what the adults are thinking and feeling. It treats the audience like the children – we see things, but we don’t get down into the emotional depths of its characters’ stories. Don’t get me wrong – there are scenes laced with emotional force – but it’s because scenes such as tragic childbirth or danger to children are going to carry emotional force regardless. It doesn’t feel like the depth is connected to the characters. For all the time we spend with Cleo, I couldn’t describe at all what she is like or who she really is (except maybe “long suffering”, “dedicated” or “kind”). For all the film’s beauty, charm, poetry and joy it’s somehow, ever so slightly, empty.

Gumshoe (1971)

Fulton Mackay and Albert Finney in charming Liverpool set Chandler spoof Gumshoe

Director: Stephen Frears

Cast: Albert Finney (Eddie Ginley), Billie Whitelaw (Ellen Ginley), Frank Finlay (William Ginley), Janice Rule (Mrs Blankerscoon), Carolyn Seymour (Alison), Fulton Mackay (Straker), George Innes (De Fries), Billy Dean (Tommy), Wendy Richard (Anne Scott), Maureen Lipman (Naomi)

Film noir is a genre beloved by many, and – with its many conventions and, in particular, its hard-boiled Chanderlesque style – it’s also ripe for parody. That’s what Gumshoe does here, transplanting the rough, grimy mysteries of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade to Liverpool in the 1970s. In doing so, it allows Albert Finney to let rip with the sort of hugely enjoyable personality performance that plays to his strengths.

Finney plays Eddie Ginley, a would-be comedian and entertainer in his thirties, obsessed with Chandler and Hammett. Placing an advert in the paper offering his services for private investigations in the spirit of a lark, he finds himself hired to look into a decidedly complex affair concerning a female lecturer, a fat South African, an occult bookshop, an unhappy South African political refugee and quite possibly his brother William (Frank Finlay) and his old flame and now sister-in-law Ellen (Billie Whitelaw).

Gumshoe is a an enjoyable, small-scale, cine-literate drama, with a playful script by Neville Smith that has a wonderful ear both for the style of Hollywood detective drama, and the streets of Liverpool – and knows how to mix them together. Shot simply by Stephen Frears (who rather sweetly claims on the blu-ray documentary to not have had a clue what he was doing), the film rattles along with a few good jokes, some decent set-ups and an actually rather good mystery. It largely falls just the right side of parody – not too smarmy, affectionate enough but never taking itself too seriously. It’s a very well judged pastiche – and it’s also a pretty damn good mystery itself.

The film was somewhat of a passion project for Albert Finney (his production company put up much of the funding).  And you can see why, as Finney is excellent – relaxed, smart and funny. Eddie Ginley is part dreamer, part realist trying not to see the truth around him. He knows this world of detecting is partly a game, partly dangerous, partly a fantasy – but he wants to enjoy while it he can. Finney also clearly enjoys the sort of Marlowesque dialogue, just as he gives real emotional depth to a man who has always been looked down on by his brother, and jilted by his girlfriend for said brother. It’s one of his best performances, he’s outstanding – a charming, playful, warm and also super-smart and cunning performance.

The rest of the film gives playful highlight moments for a number of performers, wrapped up in the enjoyment of the material. Finlay does a decent job as a stuffed-shirt straight man, Billie Whitelaw enjoys a sly parody of any number of femme fatales from 1940s movies, and Janice Rule is intimidating as a very different type of suspicious female. The best supporting performance however comes from Fulton Mackay as a brusque but wry Scottish hitman, tailing Ginley throughout the film to reclaim money he feels is owed to him. 

It’s a shame that a fun, playful and engaging film has in some places dated so badly. Not least in its language aimed at a black heavy Ginley gets into a scrap with. Intimidated and off-guard, Ginley falls back onto banter aimed to put the heavy off balance – but which listened to today is basically a string of vile racial slurs using words like jungle, bananas, trees etc. etc. etc. And the attitudes are repeated time and again in the film, with the character constantly referred to in the most derogatory and racialist terms. Mind you at least Oscar James as the butt of this gets a neat dig at Ginley hardly being “the Great White Hope” after a brief bout of fisitcuffs.

It’s an interesting sign of how dated the film is that the villains are racist apartheid South Africans, Finney was at the time a leading campaigner against Apartheid, but neither he nor the film clearly  put calling a black man a monkey into the same bracket as that bigoted system. No one involved really is a racist, not even the characters – it just wasn’t deemed a problem to say those things in the 1970s. (Even the booklet in Indicator’s excellent blu-ray dwells on this uncomfortable dated material).

But, bench that from your mind, and you’ve got a charming, fun pastiche that pokes a lot of fun at Bogart and Chandler. The make-believe fun of Eddie’s Marlowesque hard-boiled dialogue is constantly punctured by him having to explain what he’s trying to say. The film has a lot of fun with the details of a mystery, but still keeps that smart sense of tongue-in-cheek. It’s packed with some excellent lines and some sharp performances. Finney is superb. It’s a pastiche and an affectionate homage of a whole genre – and, although it is old-fashioned and feels a bit dated, it will I think stand up to re-watching.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013)

Idris Elba and Naomie Harris reconstruct the life of Nelson Mandela in illustrated slide-show movie Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Director: Justin Chadwick

Cast: Idris Elba (Nelson Mandela), Naomie Harris (Winnie Mandela), Tony Kgoroge (Walter Sisulu), S’Thandiwe Kgoroge (Albertina Sisulu), Riaad Moosa (Ahmed Kathada), Zolani Mkiva (Raymond Mhlaba), Jamie Bartlett (James Gregory), Simo Mogwaza (Andrew Mlangeni)

In the 1980s, hagiographic epic biopics that aimed to tell the story of the subject’s whole life were all the rage. In fact they were frequent Oscar behemoths. It’s easy to imagine that, if it had been released 20 years earlier, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom would have been garlanded with awards for its attempt to capture every major moment in Nelson Mandela’s life from birth to his becoming President of South Africa. Sadly for the film, it wasn’t.

The fashion nowadays, for biographical films about major figures like Mandela, is to make a focused story about one key incident in their lives and from that build up an understanding of what made the man. Spielberg’s Lincoln focused on the immediate struggle to get the abolition bill passed. Du Vernay’s Selma looked at Martin Luther King’s involvement in the Selma marches. Eastwood’s Invictus looked at a newly-elected Mandela trying to use the Rugby World Cup to bring a nation together. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom ironically goes the opposite way and tries to sprint through every single event of Mandela’s life. Doing so, it manages to be a less affecting, less involving and less engaging film than Invictus.

The rush is so intense to get through events that every scene feels like it has been cut down to deliver the vital bullet points and nothing more. Scenes rarely go over a couple of minutes, and most are comfortably under a minute. The general structure of most of them is roughly the same: a character will argue with Mandela (if black) or say something distasteful or racist (if white), Mandela will say something wise and inspiring that sounds like a direct quote from the book. Cut to the next scene.

This means that events fly by with little context and no real understanding. In fact, it feels like without having read the book and boned up on South African history in advance, most of it will mean nothing to you. Years can go by with a single snip of the editor’s scissors. Clashes and riots – particularly in the final third of the film – take place, but we are given no idea why or what the root causes of them were. 

Other events skim by so quickly that they lose all meaning or dramatic impact – in about 15 minutes of the film we cover Mandela arriving at Robben island, ill treatment and contempt from the guards, Mandela’s resolution that they will gain the right to wear proper trousers as a step towards being treated as humans, abuse from the prison governor, Mandela learning to control his anger, the prison governor leaving, a new governor arriving off camera, the regime lightening and finally the prisoners celebrating getting their trousers. If you think that sounds rushed here, imagine what it feels like watching it. All the narrative links between the scenes are severed – how did Mandela win the right to wear trousers? We have no idea. It sounds like a little thing, but it’s symptomatic of the problems of the film. 

This is despite a promising start, with a young Mandela fighting for justice and against prejudice in the courts of South Africa (winning cases because the racist whites refuse to be questioned by a black lawyer). The film is quite daring in showing the warts and all of the younger Mandela – his affairs, his ill-treatment of his first wife, his flirtations with violence – and there are flashes later on in the increasingly troubled relationship with his second wife, Winnie. But it soon loses these humanising touches under the pressure of ticking off events.

Justin Chadwick’s direction is largely flat – hamstrung as well by the film being cut so tightly to the bone. He fails to add any real epic sweep to the story, and largely struggles to convey the huge social and political issues that were tearing South Africa apart. As such, he’s often forced into holding a largely static camera in place to capture the four or five speeches that form each scene.

The  main bright spark in the film is the two lead performances. Idris Elba captures Mandela’s mannerisms and voice perfectly, but also brings a real humanity and empathy to the role – he largely manages to defy the film’s attempt to turn Mandela into a lofty marble carving of a man, not letting the human realism of his story escape. It’s a performance that feels very real and human – which is a far harder achievement than it sounds. Naomie Harris is all fiery radicalism and growing fury as Winnie (even more striking since she starts so young and naïve). One of the film’s real disappointments is that it rushes so fast through events that we never get a real, clear picture of the turbulent ups and downs of their marriage (the film is reduced to throwing some Mandela dialogue on his feelings into voiceover).

When the film finally ends it feels more like a sprinter with a stitch, too worn out to run any further through more years, than because it feels like it has made a point. It really wants to be Gandhi – but that film, despite its school-boy history faults, was patient, well paced, more focused and (crucially) an hour-plus longer. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom compounds its feeling of being old-fashioned with being rushed and confused. For all Idris Elba’s admirable efforts, Mandela deserved better.

The Imitation Game (2014)

Benedict Cumberbatch saves the world in smug, empty mess The Imitation Game

Director: Morten Tyldum

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch (Alan Turing), Keira Knightley (Joan Clarke), Matthew Goode (Hugh Alexander), Rory Kinnear (Detective Nock), Allen Leech (John Cairncross), Matthew Beard (Peter Hilton), Charles Dance (Commander Alastair Dennison), Mark Strong (Maj General Stewart Menzies)

“Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine”. If there is anything that captures the smug self-satisfaction of this ludicrously pleased-with-itself film, it’s that convoluted phrase, with which the film is so pleased that it is repeated no fewer than four times. What does it mean really? Nothing of course, it carries all the meaning of a fortune cookie. Turing is certainly someone whom you could expect something of, since the film is at pains from the start to demonstrate he is a maths prodigy and a genius. But then that would spoil the romance of the film suggesting that because Turing is socially maladjusted, he is somehow unlikely to achieve something – or that achieving something would be even more special having overcome the “disability” of his personality.

Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) is under police suspicion in 1951 after a mysterious break-in at his Manchester home. A keen detective (Rory Kinnear) suspects he may be a Russian agent – why else does he have no military record? But we know different, as flashbacks show Turing working at Bletchley Park on the cracking of the German cipher machine Enigma. Working with the support of an MI6 officer (Mark Strong), Turing has to win the trust of his team – with the support of best friend and maths genius Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) – to build a ground-breaking computer that could crack the impossible code. But back in 1951, Turing is in trouble: he’s gay and that’s a crime in post-war Britain.

Now, Turing’s personality in this film. In real life, Turing was an eccentric, but perfectly capable of functioning perfectly normally in society. That’s not dramatic enough for the film, so Turing is reimagined as someone practically afflicted by Aspergers syndrome, incapable of understanding or relating to people without severe effort and prompting. Of course this is really there to introduce conflict – first with his team (who need to be won round to loving the old eccentric genius), secondly with his boss (who can’t stand his inability to fit in) and thirdly with the police (who can use it to write him off). It’s a film-disability for a character to overcome, another puffed up triumph that we can celebrate, while at the same time pat ourselves on the back because this is a victory for those “not normal”. But it’s probably bollocks. 

But then that fits in rather nicely with the whole film, which is more or less probably bollocks from start to finish. The film of course can’t dramatise maths or computing very well, so it throws us all sorts of feeble clichés from tired old film genres instead. Charles Dance plays a reimagined Denniston (in real life a cryptographer) as a standard obstructive boss who all but shrieks “you’re off the case Turing!” at the one-hour mark. The key moment of inspiration of course comes from flirty pub conversation with a charming secretary. Running around and frantic throwing of papers takes the place of all that boring maths. 

The film can’t resist any level of dramatic cliché. When a member of the code-breaking team mentions in passing “I have a brother in the navy you know”, as sure as eggs is eggs you can bet the team will decipher a message that could save his life but will be forced to make A Terrible Choice. Of course even this picture of a small code-breaking team making the calls themselves over which messages to act on is nonsense – it’s a decision that would be so far above their pay grade, they should be taking oxygen just thinking about it. But in this bonkers version of the universe, Turing  himself makes the call to keep the initial breaking of the code a secret, and the government happily allows him alone to make the call about which codes to act on. Oh for goodness sake, spare me.

But then this is a film that wants to turn Turing into the man who won the war single-handed. While Turing was one of the key figures who made the breakthrough, this was a massive team effort, not one man’s inspiration, and reducing the victory of the war down to one (film cliché) difficult genius is the same old ripe nonsense we’ve seen many, many times before. The film tries to pretend that Bletchley Park and the breaking of Enigma, and Turing himself, is an unknown story – when it’s been pretty well-known since it was announced by the Government in the 1980s.

The film is rubbish, but it’s also gutless. Of course “fifth man” John Cairncross is part of the team – and of course Turing discovers he is a spy. (The reveal of course is due to the same old tedious movie cliché of “I found a book on his desk that was the key book he used for the code”.) And then in a moment of stunning tastelessness, Cairncross blackmails Turing into keeping his mouth shut which he agrees to do – an action that, if it had ever happened in real life, would have been an appalling moment of treachery from Turing, and reinforces all the suspicions of the time that homosexuals couldn’t be trusted. 

Ah yes, homosexuality. This film is very, very, very proud of its crusading actions to expose the cruel treatment of Turing for his homosexuality. At the same time, the film is of course way too gutless to even begin to show Turing doing anything actually gay (he doesn’t even so much as hold another man’s hand) during the film. The one genuine moment of love the character is allowed to express, is in the form of a crush on a schoolfriend. (The film substitutes renaming Turing’s machine “Victory” after this school friend “Christopher”, the film keen to try and plug the gap of this film featuring virtually no LGBTQ content at all). But the film preaches intensly and proudly about the equal rights of homosexuality, while veering away with squeamishness from putting anything remotely homosexual on the screen.

The shoddy writing, over-written and self-important, is matched up with Morten Tyldum’s flat, “prestige” film-making that reduces everything to a chocolate box. The film does have some acting beyond what it deserves. Benedict Cumberbatch is good as Turing, although his performance is a remix of some of his greatest hits from past projects, from Hawking to Sherlock, and you feel hardly it’s a stretch for him – even if he plays with it real, and genuine, emotional commitment. Keira Knightley’s cut-glass accent is practically a cliché, but this is one of her best performances with real warmth and empathy. Most of the rest of the cast though are serviceable at best.

“Serviceable”, however, is still better than the film itself, which is a cliché-ridden, gutless, plodding and highly average pile of nothing at all – a totally over-hyped, over-promoted and completely empty film that is about a zillion times less interesting, brave or revealing than Hugh Whitemore’s 1980s play Breaking the Code. Not worth your time.

The Fifth Estate (2013)

Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Bruhl struggle through this turgid retelling of hacking derring-do in The Fifth Estate

Director: Bill Condon

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch (Julian Assange), Daniel Brühl (Daniel Domscheit-Berg), Alicia Vikander (Anke Domscheit-Berg), Anthony Mackie (Sam Coulson), David Thewlis (Nick Davies), Stanley Tucci (James Boswell), Laura Linney (Sarah Shaw), Moritz Bleibtrue (Marcus), Carice van Houten (Birgitta Jónsdóttir), Peter Capaldi (Alan Rusbridger), Dan Stevens (Ian Katz), Alexander Siddig (Dr Tarek Haliseh)

In 2010 the world was thrown into turmoil when a website called Wikileaks published a host of top-secret government documents that revealed a never-ending stream of Western wrong-doing during the war on terror. The leak was co-published by WikiLeaks and the Guardian and New York Times. However Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (played here by Benedict Cumberbatch) had other ideals – namely that the files should not be redacted in any way to protect serving US officials or informants in hostile countries. 

It should be a gripping story of the state failing to keep up with the speed of modern communications. But instead this is one hell of a turgid, dull info-dump of a film that turns this potentially explosive event into something about as gripping as watching a series of people type into a computer. On top of that, the film totally fails to develop any proper personality dynamics to engage your interest, and instead falls back into the usual crude filmic language of a star-struck protégé realising his mentor has feet of clay.

Bill Condon’s direction is totally incapable of making the entry of data into a computer dynamic or visual, and is completely unable to bring the world of computer hacking and data search to life. In fact, there is so much information given to the viewers (rather than drama) that the impression I was left with is that Condon doesn’t really understand what’s going on in the movie anyway. He certainly doesn’t manage to make it interesting or feel that important. 

Visually, the film is flat and falls back on superimposing text on the screen when people type or creating a sort of “mind palace” office to represent the inner workings of the Wikileaks server (which is basically just a big office space). In fact, the film gets less interesting as it progresses – which is a real shame after a nifty credits sequence that chronicles in images the development of the press from cave paintings, through the Rosetta stone, printing, television and the internet. 

Not to mention the lack of drama about this. Things are just happening – we never get any sense of the danger or the world-changing impact, or any reason why we should care. Poor Anthony Mackie, Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci are wheeled out as a trio of American government big wigs who talk at each other at great length about what is going on and how it will endanger government assets – but it’s all show and not tell. The plight of a Tunisian informant – played with his usual skill by Alexander Siddig – is reduced to a few scenes, a human element that gets trimmed so much it carries little impact. 

The film also deals with the personality clashes Assange inspires, here interpreted as a borderline sociopathic monster, an egotist and liar interested only in his own legend. Benedict Cumberbatch gives a superbly detailed and richly observed impersonation of Assange, but the character has no depth. He’s merely a sort of phantom monster, who the film slowly reveals has no conscience. Compare it to the presentation of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (a film that is everything this clunking disaster is not). That film is also told from the prospective of a disillusioned former colleague, but there our view of the central character is shaded and given depth – and we are encouraged to recognise we are seeing one person’s perspective. Here the film swallows whole the side of the story presented by Daniel Berg.

Berg played with a disengaged flatness by Daniel Brühl, snoozing through a part shorn of any dynamism, whose views oscillate constantly until he finally settles for being a campaigner to keep sources safe. Alicia Vikander gets shockingly short shrift as a girlfriend – she even has the obligatory “stop working on the management of earth-shattering leaks and come to bed” scene. Berg allies himself with the traditional media, similarly portrayed with a clunking obviousness: David Thewlis is a standard shouty journalist, Peter Capaldi a chin-stroking concerned editor. 

The Fifth Elementis flat and unable to dramatise the world of computer coding. The dialogue is turgid and obvious (there is a terribly obvious metaphor of Assange constantly lying about the reason for his white hair – he can’t be trusted you see!) and the performances are either dull, clichéd or saddled with this terrible writing. At the end, as Cumberbatch plays Assange denouncing the entire film in a reconstruction of a talking head interview, you get a sense of the more interesting, fourth-wall-leaning film this might have been. But sadly the rest of the film reminds you what a flat, tedious, stumbling, confused, inexplicable misfire this really is.