Three Colours: White (1994)

Zbigniew Zamachowski confronts the problems of revenge in Kieślowski’s Three Colours: White

Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski

Cast: Zbigniew Zamachowski (Karol Karol), Julie Delpy (Dominique Vidal), Janusz Gajos (Mikolaj), Jerzy Stuhr (Jurek), Aleksander Bardini (Lawyer), Grzegorz Warchol (Elegant man), Cezary Harasimowicz (Inspector), Jerzy Nowak (Old farmer), Jerzy Trela (Monsieur Bronek)

The second film in Kieślowski’s ambitious thematic trilogy probably couldn’t be much more different from the first. Whereas Blue was a romantic tragedy, this is a sort of bitter comedy, a kind of anti-farce if you like. Here, the themes of equality are much more about getting even rather than all men being equal. Just as Blue looked at the negativities of liberty, this looks at the dark side of equality, and the blinkered tunnel vision we follow in order to get ourselves even.

Polish hairdresser Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) is divorced in Paris by his French wife Dominique (Julie Delpy). In quick succession, Dominique strips him of his home, access to their bank account, his passport and his share of the business, and takes another lover. Reduced to homeless penury on the streets of Paris, Karol finally finds a way to get home to Warsaw by befriending sad-sack successful businessman Mikolaj (Janusz Gajos), a fellow Pole, on the Métro. With Mikolaj’s help, Karol finds himself back home and soon in a position to start scheming his revenge.

White is, let’s be honest, a lot less of a triumph than Blue. That was a film that combined stunning visuals, directorial invention, profound depth and emotion. It was a story that looked at universal themes from a fascinating series of new angles. White,however, is more of a shaggy dog story. It feels like it’s aiming for some sort of Chaucerian fable, but it never really goes anywhere in particular, and it never really engages as much as it should while it tries to get there. While it’s not unentertaining film, it’s at best a good one rather than a great one.

My main problem is that Dominique’s character just never clicks. Why does she do the things she does? No idea. We are never given any insight into her character – she remains a cipher, bordering on a trope of the wicked beautiful seducer. Why does she jilt Karol? Surely it can’t be because of his (rather obvious) impotence ever since he arrived in France, and felt isolated in his new home? Why does she take such a delight in persecuting him, even down to audibly having sex with her lover when he calls her (“Perfect timing” she says before getting frisky)?

It’s hard not to get the sense of a film which has a slight suspicion of women. I don’t imagine that this a suspicion Kieślowski  in any way shares – sensitive and humane portrayals of women are central to his films (not least Blue) – but when the only female character in this is the distant and unknowable Dominique it’s not good. Without any sense of why she has done the things she does, it’s hard to feel comfortable with the semi-comic destruction of her Karol plans.

But then that is part of the film’s point: Karol is obsessed (without even really knowing it) with his wife. Not even so much with revenge for that matter – just getting the chance to take on his wife in a one-sided struggle makes him feel closer to her. The only possession he takes home from Paris is a bust that reminds him of his wife (and which he painstakingly repairs after it is smashed to pieces). Much as tries to build a new life, it’s a monofocus – he only gets what he gets in order to use the resources against his ex-wife. 

So equality is in Kieślowski’s design, not a good thing. Shy, sweet Karol basically ends up entrapping himself and his wife in equally frustrating positions: she in prison, he faking his own death without a penny. What was the point for Karol? No wonder he looks up at her in prison with tears rolling down his face – he’s still in love and he’s got nothing to really show for his equality, other than their joint misery.

All of this sits alongside Kieślowski’s brilliant understanding of post-Cold-war Poland, a bustling land of opportunity to make a quick buck, where simple peasant farmers can be bamboozled out of their land by smarter guys who know businesses from the West are just dying to buy up properties. Karol shares this understanding of Poland. No wonder he’s all at sea in the rest. The instant he arrives back he’s delighted, relaxed and more confident – “I’m home!” he cries joyfully, even when his first view on arriving in Poland is a mass rubbish dump. 

Moments like that show Kieślowski’s dry comedy. There are plenty of other moments, helped by Zamachowski’s pretty lovable performance of the naïve-but-growing-in-confidence Karol. Karol and Mikolaj (an excellent Janusz Gajos) put together quite an excellent double bill of bromance laced with darker themes of depression (it’s no real surprise who Mikolaj is talking about when he tells Karol that he will help him if Karol can help his “friend” who wants to die but can’t kill himself). Karol’s hapless fate in Paris raises a few smiles, as does his surreal escape stuffed in a suitcase.

But there aren’t quite enough of them. Too much of the film either doesn’t connect or hold together. I could have certainly done without Karol’s sexual prowess returning once he is confident and rich in Poland (yawn!). Dominique’s non-character remains a serious problem, and there just isn’t enough meat on the bones here. Compared to the richness of the first entry in the series, this feels remarkably empty. It’s also a lot less visually arresting and imaginatively done than the first film: I’m already struggling to remember any of the visuals.

Kieślowski may well have wanted a sort of anti-comedy to be the pivot of his trilogy, but it doesn’t really work here. He ends up with something that feels so slight and underdeveloped that it doesn’t stick with the viewer, and doesn’t engage them either. While it has moments, as you would expect from a great director, and some very good actors, it doesn’t have nearly enough of them.

Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson are the feuding queens in Mary, Queen of Scots

Director: Charles Jarrott

Cast: Vanessa Redgrave (Mary, Queen of Scots), Glenda Jackson (Elizabeth I), Patrick McGoohan (James Stuart, Earl of Moray), Timothy Dalton (Lord Henry Darnley), Nigel Davenport (Earl of Bothwell), Trevor Howard (Sir William Cecil), Daniel Massey (Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester), Ian Holm (David Rizzio), Andrew Keir (Ruthven), Robert James (John Knox), Katherine Kath (Catherine d’Medici), Frances White (Mary Fleming), Vernon Dobtcheff (Duke of Guise)

So here we are, back in the Tudor history craze of late 1960s Hollywood. Charles Jarrott directed, following up his efforts in Anne of the Thousand Days with this professionally mounted, handsome and rather personality-free film adaptation. It occasionally falls a bit too much in love with its luscious romanticism – and it falls hard for Mary herself, surely one of the worst queens ever – but despite all that, it has an entertaining quality that never lets you down.

The film picks up with the recently widowed Mary (Vanessa Redgrave) essentially being chucked out of France after the death of her husband the King, and swiftly being sent back to Scotland to take up the throne there. Problem is: the very Catholic Mary isn’t exactly the choice of the lords of Scotland – led by her bastard brother James Stuart (Patrick McGoohan). Mary’s Catholicism also threatens to destabilise the relationship with Protestant England – particularly because she is the nearest successor to Elizabeth I (Glenda Jackson). But Mary lacks Elizabeth’s tactical understanding of ruling and is guided by her heart – leading her into a disastrous marriage with feckless alcoholic Henry Darnley (Timothy Dalton).

Mary Queen of Scots is a stately picture, which uses its location shots, costumes and production design to tell its familiar story with a sweep and relish that effectively hides the lack of inspiration in its film-making. Just as in Anne of the Thousand Days, Charles Jarrott shows he’s a fine producer of middle-brow entertainment, safe costume dramas that aren’t going to challenge anyone’s perceptions or give you any real wow moments of filming. He’s happy to set the camera up and let the actors do their thing, with the script ticking off the great events.

That’s what you get here. It’s a film that could have been a lot more of an exploration of the rivalries and different life philosophies of its feuding queens. But it doesn’t quite connect with that. This is partly because it can’t quite bring itself to engage with the reality of Mary herself, preferring the popular romantic image. The film doesn’t want to admit that many of Mary’s decisions were, to put it bluntly, completely misguided bordering on wrong. It is in love with her romantic image – and not as enamoured with Elizabeth’s wiser, more pragmatic, manipulative rule. It’s this rule by heart rather than head the film finally holds up for praise.

It doesn’t help that Vanessa Redgrave feels miscast in the lead role. Redgrave is too sharp an actor to convince as someone as easily led and foolish as Mary. She looks too shrewd, she feels too smart. Redgrave compensates by speaking softly and giving a lot of love-struck eyes to various male actors (principally Nigel Davenport’s bluff, masculine Bothwell), but it doesn’t quite work. It’s like she’s struggling to find the character – and to find the balance in a film that doesn’t want her to be seen as too stupid, while the viewer is left slapping their foreheads at every action she carries out.

This feeling stands out all the more with Glenda Jackson’s casting as Elizabeth. Having just finished playing the same role in a landmark six-part TV series, Elizabeth R(which covered a lot of the same ground), Jackson here confirms that she was the definitive Elizabeth. As smart and shrewd an actress as Redgrave, Jackson’s natural firmness marries up very well with these qualities to make the perfect Virgin Queen. There have been so many others who have taken on the role, but Jackson is simply perfect in this role – she becomes Elizabeth. Her Elizabeth is clever, manipulative, cunning but also quick tempered, capable of great wisdom but prone to moments of passionate lashing out.

The rest of the cast is a familiar parade of character actors – British actors of this generation made a living from films like this! Timothy Dalton stands out as a foppish, clearly useless Darnley (here reimagined as a syphilitic bisexual with anger management issues), as does Ian Holm as a cool-headed, would-be power behind the throne David Riccio, who meets a tragic end. Daniel Massey does a decent job as Leicester (though I can’t shake memories of Robert Hardy in the same role in Elizabeth R – was he busy at the time?), Trevor Howard gets saddled with a lot of plot as Burghley. Up in Scotland, Patrick McGoohan has a lot of fun as a scheming Earl of Moray.

All of these actors fit comfortably into the slightly browned, grainy photography style of films of this type, and the screenwriters hammer together plenty of incident alongside dramatic invention. The focus on the soap opera of Mary’s three marriages (she’s widowed in the opening moments of the film) leaves plenty of scope for invention, from Darnley and Riccio’s affair to the inevitable non-historical meeting between Mary and Elizabeth – it seems like every drama going from Schiller onwards has invented a meeting between these two as a dramatic highpoint.

This final scene captures the lack of thematic depth to the film. In a film that had focused more on really comparing the differences between the two, this could have been the culmination of a debate running through the film (can you rule with a brain but not a heart?). Instead it misses the trick, and becomes a final game of one-up-man-ship, which the film allows Mary to win because she is the more romantic figure. 

It’s well mounted and assembled like many other films like this – but it’s not the best of its genre, and you do sometimes wish for something that had a little more meat on its bones.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011)

Harry and Voldemort prepare for their final showdown in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Director: David Yates

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), Emma Watson (Hermione Grainger), Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange), Jim Broadbent (Professor Slughorn), Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid), Ralph Fiennes (Lord Voldemort), Michael Gambon (Albus Dumbledore), John Hurt (Ollivander), Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy), Gary Oldman (Sirius Black), Alan Rickman (Severus Snape), Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall), David Thewlis (Remus Lupin), Emma Thompson (Professor Trelawney), Julie Walters (Molly Weasley), Mark Williams (Arthur Weasley), David Bradley (Argus Filch), Ciarán Hinds (Aberforth Dumbledore), George Harris (Kingsley Shacklebolt), Gemma Jones (Madam Pomfrey), Kelly MacDonald (Rowena Ravenclaw), Helen McCrory (Narcissa Malfoy), Miriam Margolyes (Professor Sprout), Geraldine Somerville (Lily Potter), Adrian Rawlins (James Potter), Warwick Davis (Griphook/Professor Flitwick), Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom), Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood), Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley), James Phelps (Fred Weasley), Oliver Phelps (George Weasley), Domhnall Gleeson (Bill Weasley), Clémence Poésy (Fleur Delacour), Guy Henry (Pius Thicknesse), Nick Moran (Scabior), Natalie Tena (Tonks)

And so here we are. After 19 hours and 40 minutes, the Harry Potter franchise draws to a close in the rubble of Hogwarts. The franchise goes out swinging for some big hits – and it misses some of them – but at least it’s trying. If this turns out to be one of the least satisfying films in the franchise (at best the 6th best Harry Potter film), it’s not because they haven’t thrown anything at it.

The film adapts just under the last half of JK Rowling’s final novel. In an interesting structural twist, it actually ends up covering just over one day of time: between our heroes breaking into Gringotts Bank and the final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort, less than 24 hours has taken place. Nothing is really made of this in the film, but it’s an interesting thought. In fact Yates’ film is full of interesting half-thoughts that never go anywhere. More than any other film in the series, this is one where it is essential you’ve read the book before viewing it. Without the book you don’t get any of the rich context for most of the events.

This all culminates, for me, in the way the film falls apart in the last 20 minutes or so. This final section of the film changes, or cuts, so much of the book’s thematic depth, so many of its plot strands and explanations, that every time I see it I feel my disappointment starting to rise. I don’t want to be the guy who says “just shoot the book” – but if any film could have stuck with the book it’s this one. Why did they cut and change so much of this stuff? Did they really think, after almost 11 years and 20 hours of screen time, we wouldn’t have the patience for some of the more complex things from the book? Did they really feel that they had to stamp their own distinctive vision on it? Anyway, here are the things that always annoy me about this film:

1. Dumbledore’s backstory gets forgotten

Okay this is a minor one – and the film does leave some hints in. But for GOODNESS’ SAKE, they cut this book into two films, spent ages in the first film talking about the mysteries of Dumbledore’s dark past, then just as we meet Dumbledore’s brother Aberforth (a neat turn from Ciarán Hinds) and are about to get an explanation, Harry basically says words to the effect of “I’m not worrying about that. And neither should you folks. On with the film”.  

Even the Ghost of Dumbledore doesn’t get to explain any of this stuff. All the careful mood build of Part 1 is just thrown away. The book is about learning about death, the futility of the search for power, and humility. Dumbledore’s backstory of failed ambition is a massive part of this – and it gets dropped. It’s not like we didn’t have time in a series that has churned out films pushing up to three hours in length. I mean why put all that stuff in the first film, if you aren’t even going to reference it at all in the second film?

2. The Deathly Hallows get benched

Again wouldn’t be quite so bad if we hadn’t spent a huge amount of time in the first film talking about them – but are the words Deathly Hallows even mentioned here? Instead, just like Voldemort, the film is seduced by the elder wand, focusing everything on the ownership of this MacGuffin. The point of the book is that all this stuff is a chimera –and that the real point is learning that death should not be feared but accepted at the proper time. 

As it is, this never gets built on – and the importance of the resurrection stone (including why it tempted Dumbledore so much) never gets explained. Rather it just comes down to who controls the powerful thing, with none of Rowling’s richer themes.

Harry ends up controlling all three here but we never really get the sense of Harry controlling them all, or understand his decision to throw away the stone, or his realisation that death is not to be feared but accepted.

3. Neville gets blown away

Gotta feel sorry for Matthew Lewis (who is very good here). Reading the book he must have been thrilled: “So I pull the sword out of the sorting hat and then in one move cut the head off the snake like a total bad ass”. This should have been a great moment (it’s an iconic one from the book). Instead Neville gets blasted and, presumably to give them something to do, Ron and Hermione spend ages trying to kill the snake (intercut with Harry and Voldemort fighting) until finally Neville gets to lop that head off – by which point the moment has well and truly passed.

 4. No one mentions Voldemort keeps making the same mistakes

In the book, Harry has a beautiful moment where he basically tells our Tom that he’s made the same mistakes over and over again. Namely that, by killing Harry, who sacrificed himself for love, he made exactly the same mistake as he did with Harry’s mother and now cannot harm any of those Harry died for (i.e. the rest of the cast). It’s a great moment, where finally Harry understands what the novels have been building towards. Doesn’t merit a mention.

Neither does Voldemort’s childish obsession with famous things – he is consumed with belief in the power of a wand, he can’t let go of associating his horcruxes with famous things and the lineage of iconic wizards, etc. etc. Voldemort is basically a big, silly, empathy-free, sulky teenager – the film misses this point entirely.

Instead of explanations and depth, the film reduces Harry and Voldemort’s final clashes into dull punchy-bashy stuff. The director clearly fell in love with the visual idea of Harry and Voldemort’s heads merging together while apparating. This is a visual image that I hate because it (a) feels like showing off and (b) would only work if they were semi-reflections of each other – which they certainly aren’t. They are polar opposites. It’s a flashy effect that actually makes no thematic sense what-so-bloody-ever.

5. Voldemort goes out like a 3D special effect

Perhaps not a surprise in a film, but Voldemort gets killed and disintegrates into a huge puff of 3D-film smoke. I hate this. I hate it. I really, really, really hate it. I’ll tell you why:

  • The spells used in the duel are really unclear – it’s a great moment in the book that Voldemort’s killing curse rebounds against Harry’s disarming curse – instead we get the bright lights.
  • Voldemort dreads death more than anything – and Rowling’s writing of his body falling dead to the ground like any other normal dead guy taps exactly into what Voldemort spent his whole life struggling against. It’s a beautiful irony.
  • No one knew if Voldemort was dead or not the first time because he disappeared. In the book he is killed, by his own curse, in front of everyone and his body is left behind for everyone to look at and say “yup. Guy is dead”. Not here. Here he blows up in a puff of smoke in front of no witnesses. Did Harry just head back into the great hall and say “Okay guys. Take my word for it. He’s dead. He just is. Trust me on this. It’s not like last time. Totally dead. Promise.”

Wow. Okay that’s not really a review is it? That’s just like a disappointed fan whining “I don’t like it because it is different”. But my point isn’t that this is bad because it’s different. It’s bad because it takes stuff from the original and changes it AND NOT FOR THE BETTER. Moments that worked beautifully, or carried so much weight in the original are bastardised crudely for no clear reason.

As I say, after almost 18 hours and a life time (for many viewers) of growing up with these characters: surely we could have given the film a bit more time and allowed some actual intelligent context from the books to creep in? Surely we had the patience for Harry getting to point out to Voldemort how wrong he is? Everyone in the audience was ready for that right? If there was one film people were probably willing to dedicate three hours of their life too, in order to see it done properly it was this one, right? Rather than rushed by in a little over two?

But no this film goes always, always, always for the big spectacle. Not that this always work: Yates doesn’t shoot the battle hugely well. Aside from one excellent sequence which shows our three heroes trying to get across the castle courtyard, while chaos rages around them (beautifully scored as well), the battle is unclear, dingy and not hugely exciting. Again, I’d have liked to have had a bit more of this – to get some moments with this huge cast doing stuff in the battle (especially since they are ALL back – kudos to the producers there).

It’s a real, real shame because honestly parts of this movie are really, really, really good. Tom Felton is cracking again as Draco – and the film gives real development time to showing the impact all this has on the Malfoy family with genuine empathy. The break-in at Gringotts is exciting and fun – as well as giving Warwick Davies his best moment in the series as two-faced Griphook. Inventions and flourishes, such as Harry having visions of an enraged Voldemort slaughtering the staff of Gringotts in fury, are chilling.

Some moments of the book are carried across really well, in particular Snape’s escape – a powerfully filmed sequence of bravery from the pupils, and some great work from Maggie Smith. Yates really understands how to get moments of magic to work: the creation of the shield around Hogwarts is totally spine-tingling. When the film sits and breathes it generally gets it right. Fiennes is terrific still as Voldemort, serpentine, arrogant, unsettling. He gets some lovely moments here – from fury, to pained fear (as horcruxes bite the dust) to an almost-funny-awkward-mateyness as he tries to seduce Hogwarts pupils to his side (his awkward hug of Draco is terrific).

The three leads are of course great. Daniel Radcliffe could certainly have delivered the more complex moments of the book if he had been given the chance. He even does his best to sell the slightly awkward coda “19 years later”: a controversial sequence, it makes a great footnote in the book but it was always going to be a tough ask to make three teenagers look like 40 year olds convincingly, particularly when we are nearly as familiar with their faces as our own.

There are some troubling and failed moments in this film, stuff that doesn’t work. But then there is this:

Oh wow. For all that the film changes stuff from the books for the worst – this is a moment it unquestionably does better. And a massive, massive part of this has to be down to Alan Rickman. Rickman was told this backstory from the start of the films – and he delivers it with a passionate commitment here. Helped by brilliant score, and fascinating re-editing of moments from previous films seen from new angles, Rickman delivers the reveal of Snape’s heartbreaking moments perfectly.

Was I tired? Was it the added impact of Rickman’s own depth? I don’t know but I shed tears watching this again. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful piece of film making. Everything in it works perfectly: directing, writing, music, editing, filming and above all the acting. It’s just sublime. For all the film misses the point elsewhere it finally totally gets it here. I would take this moment over dozens of moments of Harry and Voldemort fighting each other.

And yes this Harry Potter film might miss the point, and it might bungle the ending, and it might well fail to carry across the richness and intricate plot explanations of Rowling’s original. Yes it gets bogged down in “who controls this wand” and yes it misses the point completely about the film being about learning to overcome a fear of death and defeat (something Voldemort totally fails to do) but then it has moments where it works wonderfully like this. 

But in these films we got a beautiful franchise, with some excellent films. It’s always going to reward constant viewing. And it will always move the viewer. And it’s always going to be great.

Always.

Scandal (1989)

Joanne Whalley and John Hurt get unwisely wrapped up in the Profumo affair in Scandal

Director: Michael Caton-Jones

Cast: John Hurt (Stephen Ward), Joanne Whalley (Christine Keeler), Bridget Fonda (Mandy Rice-Davies), Ian McKellen (John Profumo), Leslie Phillips (Lord Astor), Britt Ekland (Mariella Novotny), Jeroen Krabbé (Eugene Ivanov), Daniel Massey (Mervyn Griffith-Jones), Roland Gift (Johnny Edgecombe), Jean Alexander (Mrs Keeler), Deborah Grant (Valerie Hobson), Alex Norton (Inspector), Ronald Fraser (Justice Marshall), Paul Brooke (Sergeant), Keith Allen (Reporter)

In 1963 the British Government was nearly destroyed by a sex scandal. John Profumo, Minister for War, was widely suspected of conducting an affair with Christine Keeler (a former show girl turned society figure) at the same time as she was sleeping with Russian naval attaché Eugene Ivanov. Profumo denied it to the House of Commons. A few weeks later he confessed he had lied and resigned from Parliament. The scandal shook the country to the core, and led to an exhausted Harold MacMillan’s resignation as PM. As the scandal span out to reveal sex parties in country homes, the country couldn’t get enough of the discovery that large numbers of the upper classes enjoyed nothing more than swinging, orgies and indiscriminate sex laced with sado-masochism. 

Scandal reconstructs the build-up to and eventual explosion of controversy around this affair, focusing on Keeler (Joanne Whalley) and Stephen Ward (John Hurt), the society osteopath and friend to the rich and famous who had worked out that if he found and coached attractive young girls, Henry Higgins-style, into engaging and fun companions, he could swiftly move up the social ladder by giving the rich and powerful people they could sleep with. When the Profumo affair blew up, it was Ward who was left holding the parcel: abandoned by his rich and powerful friends, Ward was placed on trial as a pimp, vilified in court and in the press, and eventually committed suicide the night before the court case finished (which convicted him in absentia of living off immoral earnings).

It’s this miscarriage of justice that Scandal zeroes in on – and the film does a good job of showing that Ward basically didn’t really do anything that wrong. He didn’t mistreat the girls, he thought he was helping them improve their lives and he didn’t attempt to blackmail his friends. His own sex drive seems curiously disconnected (he was clearly more of voyeur) and if anything, John Hurt (excellent as always) plays him as a slightly sad social-climber. A sort of Horace Slughorn of sex, far more excited by his bulging address book, access to the exclusive clubs of London and calling lords of the land by their matey nicknames, than by all the nooky.

Scandal however is a rather unemotional, unengaging and distant film. It’s hard to get too wrapped up in, as it too often goes for documentary checklist rather than real character engagement. On top of that, it’s often rather unclear – it’s tricky to tell the exact timelines, it’s hard to see often how some events relate to others, it’s unclear in particular how Christine Keeler’s relationship with jazz promoter and drug dealer Johnny Edgecombe led to exposure. It’s a film that’s both in love with telling the facts and so blinded by them that it doesn’t turn them into an engaging story.

But then perhaps part of this is because looking back today, it’s hard to see what all the fuss was about with the Profumo affair. After generations where government ministers have been accused of everything from toe-sucking to performing a sex act on a dead pig, it’s hard not to look at the Granddaddy of all government sex scandals and not think it rather quaint. Today it would barely merit more than few news cycles: and Profumo would certainly have been back in the cabinet within two years. Even the spy angle (was Profumo leaking secrets to Keeler, who in turn leaked them to Ivanov?) was widely (and almost immediately) discredited at the time. 

Not that the seismic impact really comes across anyway in the film. This is partly because the film focuses on Ward and Keeler in particular. For the two of them, there wasn’t much at stake – until their lives were destroyed. In fact, for most of these people at the various dodgy parties – other than embarrassing tittle-tattle – there wasn’t much at stake. A film that gave more space to Profumo – and really made-clear what he was running the risk of losing here, particularly after he lied to Parliament – might have made it clearer the dangers that all involved were inadvertently running.

But that would have been to dent the film’s purpose of showing Ward and Keeler as essentially innocents abroad. Joanne Whalley has a particularly difficult job as a Keeler so thoughtless, short-sighted and self-obsessed, she verges on the dim. Whalley makes her bright, engaging and fun-loving, but never with a whiff of sense. By the time Keeler is blurting out totally unconnected Profumo facts when speaking to the police about her relationship with Edgecombe, you can tell she doesn’t have a chance.

The film’s real strength though is John Hurt’s masterful performance as Stephen Ward. Hurt’s pock-marked face and ruddy complexion (going through a difficult divorce he allegedly spent most of the filming struggling with alcoholism) and slightly sweaty desperation are perfect for the role. A natural victim as an actor, he makes Ward always slightly desperate, always trying too hard, always the grammar-school boy pushing his nose up against society’s window. He’s a super creepy Henry Higgins grooming girls for a “better life” (his genuine belief!) and getting himself an entrée into posh society at the same time.  

Ward, the film argues, didn’t feel he was ever doing anything wrong – and he realises far too late that society, his posh friends and the government don’t agree. “It’ll blow over” he reassures Ivanov: totally wrong. Ward basically was a hedonist who wanted people to have a good time – and was thrilled to be invited to the party. When the shit hit the fan, he was dumped with the blame. It’s an angry note that the film – with its obsession with covering so much ground – fumbles slightly: it wants to be a searing indictment of the hypocrisy of the upper classes, but it fudges the emotional connection so much that you can’t feel it as much as you should.

Instead Scandal just sort of simmers rather than boils. It doesn’t communicate what a sea change this was in how Britain viewed its politicians and upper classes – from hereon they were always seen as men with feet of clay – and it doesn’t get the audience feeling as angry or engaged with things as you might expect. It has a lot of sex in it but (perhaps deliberately) it’s not sexy – the orgy scenes would make a great mood killer – and it seems to miss the hedonistic tone that dominated the class at the time. 

There is some decent directing – a scene of Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler preparing for a night on the town is particularly well done – and some strong acting, not least from Ian McKellen is a slimy Profumo (rumour has it a recently de-closted McKellen was keen on the role as it was the most hetrosexual role he could imagine playing!). But it never quite clicks together into something really emotionally engaging. And it isn’t quite as clear and easy to follow as you need. Structuring the story as a kind of love story between virtually the only people in the story who don’t have sex together is interesting – and Hurt and Whalley are good – but it’s just not quite a good enough film for what it wants to do.

Black Mass (2015)

Johnny Depp dives into his make-up box in this sup-par wannabe Goodfellas

Director: Scott Cooper

Cast: Johnny Depp (James “Whitey” Bulger), Joel Edgerton (John Connolly), Benedict Cumberbatch (William Bulger), Rory Cochrane (Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi), Kevin Bacon (Charles McGuire), Jesse Plemons (Kevin Weeks), Peter Sarsgaard (Brian Halloran), Dakota Johnson (Lindsey Cyr), Corey Stoll (Fred Wyshak), David Harbour (John Morris), Julianne Nicholson (Marianne Connolly), Adam Scott (Robert Fitzpatrick), Brad Carter (John McIntyre), W. Earl Brown (Johnny Martorano)

Well Goodfellas casts a long shadow doesn’t it? Certainly long enough to completely drown Black Mass which, despite some good acting and period detail, never really comes together into something compelling or engrossing or even really that interesting. But you’ve got to admire how often Scott Cooper must have watched Scorsese’s classic. Shame he didn’t bring anything new to the table.

In South Boston in the mid-1970s, James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp) controls organised crime. With his rule under challenge from rival gangs, Bulger turns informer to the FBI – specifically agent and childhood friend John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) – offering information on his rivals in return for being allowed to take over their business. Inevitably, Bulger exploits the relationship for his own gain – with the increasingly blind-eye of Connolly who becomes more and more embroiled in the underworld. 

So there are good things in this. The period detail is pretty good. There are plenty of good gangster moments, even if they’re the reheated leftovers from everything from The Sopranos to Goodfellas. The low-level gangsters we follow have a slightly different perspective – even if most of their characters are completely interchangeable. It’s interesting that Bulger moved in such legitimate circles as the FBI and his State Senate President brother (well played by Benedict Cumberbatch). But the film never really makes this come together to mean anything. You don’t learn anything, you don’t understand anything new – it’s just a series of events.

That’s despite, to be fair, a very good performance by Johnny Depp. Sure the part caters to Depp’s Olivier-like love of the dressing-up box – here he sports bad teeth, a bald patch, a paunch and a pair of searing bright-blue contacts that make him look like a Muppet demon – but for all that, he is very good. His natural presence works to make Bulger a leader and he has a swaggering, dry, cruel quality to him that never makes him anything less than unsettling. He also conveys the monstrous moral blankness behind Bulger, using a fig-leaf of loyalty to cover his destruction.

It’s a shame then that he’s not really given anything to do. Too much of the part is reminiscent of other things: from Jack Nicholson in The Departed (to be fair, Bulger was the inspiration for that character), to Joe Pesci’s “Do I amuse you?” speech or his insanity from Casino. Montages as tired as a sleepless night run through the collection of funds and the beating of rivals. It’s just all so predictable. It’s a box ticking exercise. Yawn.

The biggest shame is that, in Connolly, the film has a far more interesting potential lead character. Imagine it repositioned to follow him instead: the semi-chancer, semi-star-struck kid swept up in the glamour of crime. So much more interesting. How far did he turn a blind eye? How far was he essentially an accomplice? Did he feel or know he was doing the wrong thing? Consider Depp’s brilliance in Donnie Brasco and then imagine what he could have made of this Faustian figure: and what an interesting film we could have had.

Instead, good as Edgerton is, the film barely scrapes the surface of his thoughts or motivations. We get beats – and his wife (excellently played by Julianne Nicholson) is clearly disgusted by his gangster friends – but it constantly falls flat as we keep pulling back to Bulger, or internal FBI arguments that tell us nothing. On top of this Bulger’s empire is ham-fistedly explained: it’s never clear what his reach is, what his main crimes are or what his aims are. We see killings but don’t often know why – and a sequence in Miami is so poorly explained I still don’t know what it was about.

The film introduces Bulger’s lieutenants – but reduces them to identikit hangers on. All the flash-back retrospective confessions (a framing device the film uses to very mixed effect) in the world can’t turn them into characters. Even Bulger’s relationship with his patrician brother gets lost in the shuffle – again a film focused on a crime lord and his State Senator brother would have been more interesting.

Black Mass is well made – but its problem is that there is on the edges a far more interesting film that never comes into focus. If they had chosen a different focus we could have had a film worth watching. Instead, like Connolly, the film is seduced away by the dark soul of Bulger. Depp is great – but the film is so in love with him and his transformation that it becomes something completely forgettable.

Three Colours: Blue (1993)

Juliette Binoche seeks liberty from grief in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s masterpiece Three Colours: Blue

Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski

Cast: Juliette Binoche (Julie de Courcy/Vignon), Benoît Régent (Olivier Benôit), Emmanuelle Riva (Madame Vignon), Florence Pernel (Sandrine), Guillaume de Tonquédec (Serge), Charlotte Véry (Lucille), Yann Trégouët (Antoine), Hélène Vincent (La journaliste), Zbigniew Zamachowski (Karol Karol), Julie Delpy (Dominique)

There are few foreign language films that have cemented themselves in film’s cultural history more than Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy. These three inter-linked films – made with French and Polish money – looked (individually) at themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, while using a colour palate and design that reflected one colour of the French flag each. The first film in this interlinking trilogy is Blue, a sombre, intriguing, intimate drama that perhaps wears its intelligence a little heavily on its sleeve.

Julie de Courcy (Juliette Binoche) is the only survivor of a car crash that kills her husband, a famous composer, and her daughter. Lost in grief, Julie decides that she will separate herself from the world and live entirely independently. She rents out her home, distances herself from friends, takes back her maiden name and destroys what she believes to be the only copy of her husband’s final composition – a concert for the unification of Europe. But Julie finds that liberating herself from all worldly connections is not as easy as she hoped.

Blue is a heartfelt, gentle film that throbs with emotional intensity, much of it coming from Binoche’s searing performance of a woman consumed with a mixture of grief and survivor guilt, who sees complete isolation and “liberty” from all connections as the only chance for sanity. Kieślowski’s direction is masterful – patient, stable, quiet and with a brilliant eye for small details. The film is crammed with small moments that speak of peace and quiet reflection – from watching a lump of sugar being soaked in tea, to lingering studies of everything from rooms to streets. 

The opening sequences of the film convey this masterful confidence from Kieślowski. The camera is a still observer, alternating between subtle POV shots and gentle, perfectly placed observation of Julie. Every moment of the shocking discovery of Julie’s loss is wonderfully assembled – from the stumbling news from the doctor, to the crackling mini-TV on which she watches her family’s funeral being broadcast. Quietly we see Julie return to her own home – and Binoche bottles up emotion with a resolve that suggests as much her determination not to engage with the pain as it does self-control. No wonder her housekeeper bursts into tears at the fact that Julie isn’t crying.

This all ties in very interestingly with the film’s theme of liberty. Conventionally, we would have had Julie escaping from something to find her own life. Kieślowski’s film more interestingly explores the positive and negative of liberty. Julie chooses freedom from all of life’s connections – but this is shown constantly to be not only impossible, but also less than healthy. Her surface liberty is instead crushing her under the pressure of isolation.

At the same time, the film is partly about Julie learning to free herself from her survivor guilt. Cutting herself off from the world denies her a genuine emotional connection with her husband’s friend Olivier (a puppy doggish Benoît Régent). In the first months of her guilt she sleeps with Olivier, hoping it will get her a bit of peace (it doesn’t). Inevitably, as Julie finds out more about her husband’s life – and as we find out that his music output was heavily reliant on Julie’s secret collaboration – the film becomes a question of whether Julie will allow herself the liberty from her past to continue living.

Because in a way this is an anti-tragedy: it starts with a trauma and is about the survivor learning to continue her life. Kieślowski peppers the film with moments of falling, from items to bungee jumpers on the TV. Slowly, these images of falling progress to include being caught, or shots of the bungee cords snapping the person back from oblivion. It’s a neat, subtle continual reference to Julie’s unconscious search for support.

Particularly as it’s made clear that Julie’s entire personality is all about giving, about loving and supporting people. From her silent collaboration with her husband, to her patient caring for her mother suffering from increasing dementia (another perverse form of liberty), to her forming a reluctant friendship with an exotic dancer in her block of flats (who the rest of the tenants are trying to drive out), it’s clear that Julie’s attempt to distance herself is never going to truly work. A character late on even tells her that her husband had always described her as kind and forgiving – qualities Julie learns to re-embrace. 

The wider world that Julie is trying to escape is represented brilliantly throughout by the score of her husband’s (her?) music for Europe. This score – a richly exuberant piece of music by Zbigniew Priesner – constantly intrudes into the action, accompanied by moments where Kieślowski seems to suggest time has stopped as Julie becomes lost in her reflections. Kieślowski uses colour changes and slow zooms to suggest throughout these beats where Julie temporarily becomes lost in the past and memories. The continual presence of the music is perfectly done.

The one element I was less keen on was the over use of blue. From filters on the camera, to backlighting, to objects present in every frame, there is a lot of blue in this movie – every shot has something blue in it. Although this is clever, and clearly thematically intentional for the whole trilogy – I’ve got to be honest spotting this stuff probably took me out of the film at moments. I imagine on a second viewing this will be dramatically reduced – but it’s one of those curses of a trilogy of films that have been so hyped up on the arts circuit, that you are aware of some of its subtle tricks so much that they cease to be subtle.

But Three Colours: Blue is still a masterful, quiet study of grief, loss and yearning, that avoids the obvious and explores different types of liberty and freedom. Binoche is brilliant in the lead role, and Kieślowski sears the brains with images (I still wince remembering a sequence where Julie deliberately scrapes her knuckles over a wall she walks past) and his direction is impeccably sensitive and unshowy, letting the film speak for itself. I can’t wait to watch the other two films in the trilogy – and see how this might affect my views on this first one.

Platoon (1986)

Charlie Sheen goes to war in Oliver Stone’s Oscar winning Vietnam film Platoon

Director: Oliver Stone

Cast: Charlie Sheen (Chris Taylor), Tom Berenger (Sgt Barnes), Willem Dafoe (Sgt Elias), Kevin Dillon (Bunny), Keith David (King), Forest Whitaker (Big Harold), Mark Moses (Lt Wolfe), John C. McGinley (Sgt O’Neill), Francesco Quinn (Rhah), Reggie Johnson (Junior), Johnny Depp (Lerner)

Vietnam has been a long-standing scar on the American psyche. For over 12 years, American soldiers were rolled into Vietnam to fight for something many of them were pretty unclear about. Vietnam was a bloody shadow boxing match for super powers to indirectly combat each other. American casualties were high, and the country that sees itself as championing justice and the free world ended the war with the blood of millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians on its hands. Is it any wonder the country still struggles to compute this?

Before Platoon there had been films that had dealt with the Vietnamese experience. Apocalypse Now had embraced the druggy, morally confused insanity of the war. The Deer Hunter had effectively shown the traumatic impact the war had on regular blue-collar steel-workers. But Platoon was something different. This was the war on the ground, with privates and sergeants as the focus (many of them poor, working class and also black) – the lower rungs of American society flung into a war they don’t understand, in a country they can’t recognise, fighting an enemy they have no comprehension of. 

Platoon throws the audience into the visceral, cruel, terrifying horror of pointless conflict, with a feeling that the war will never end. Stone pulls off a difficult trick here: the film shows a horrifying picture of war and killing, but combines this with successfully showing the adrenalin rush that comes from conflict – and the excitement of visceral film-making. 

Oliver Stone had fought as a young man in a similar unit, after dropping out of college. Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) is effectively a surrogate figure for the director, with the film crafted from Stone’s own experiences and those of his fellow soldiers. The film is a simple, intense experience with a straightforward plot: Taylor is torn between two potential “father figures”. One, Sgt Barnes (Tom Berenger), is a supernaturally ferocious warrior and martinet whom the men hold in awe. The other, St Elias (Willem Dafoe), is an equally fierce fighter, but also a hippy, nearly saint-like protective figure. Which of these two will Taylor side with?

Well okay it’s not a massive surprise really is it? The strength of Oliver Stone’s film is its visceral, bloody, impressive intensity. You are thrown into the midst of a series of terrible battles, interspersed with bored soldiers bickering or taking pot. At no time is the viewer (or the soldiers) given any real idea about what is going on, what the aims of the war are, what is really happening in the battles. Stone plays the film totally from the soldier’s POV. Battles are a confused mess at night. The location of the enemy is frequently unclear. There are no indications of any tactics at all. There is barely any leadership – Mark Moses’ Lt Wolfe is an almost hilariously ineffective moral weakling, who follows the leads of his sergeants. The soldiers (or rather the two sergeants) essentially operate as lone wolves, doing what they think best for any particular circumstance.

The film pivots on a confused raid on a Vietnamese village, as the platoon descends on a village for no very clear reason – apart from seemingly being pissed off that one of their number has been killed in the night. Nominally they are searching for Vietcong fighters. But really it seems like an excuse to let off steam. Platoon must have hit hard in the 1980s, as it doesn’t flinch at all from watching American soldiers committing atrocities. Women are shot, teenagers are beaten to death, a fox hole containing what looks like a child is exploded after a brief warning. The soldiers are all terrified, thrusting guns into Vietnamese faces. Above all Sgt Barnes feels no guilt at all at executing villagers in order to pressure the elders into telling what he thinks they might know about the Vietcong (who equally are largely faceless figures of terror in the distance stalking the platoon).

Where the film is less strong is in its plotting and narrative ideas. These are straightforward in the extreme, with Barnes and Elias almost literally as opposing devil and angel on Taylor’s shoulders. The film is clearly weighted in favour of Elias’ hippie mentality, his desire to preserve innocent lives and his caring attitude to his men. Barnes is presented far more harshly – even though his brutality stems from his own deep-rooted desire to keep his men safe, and his belief that Vietnam is hell and you can’t pussyfoot your way around hell. 

Saying that, it’s hard to argue against Stone’s feelings that compromising your humanity is not worth it no matter the struggles to keep yourself and others alive. But these are (forgive me) rather obvious, even traditional points – and its part of the film being essentially a conventional morality tale with a breath-taking military setting laid over the top. The ideas in this film won’t really challenge you – and in fact the film itself is really more of an experience than something that rewards reflection.

Stone’s direction is extremely good – even though he at times falls too much into the trap of overblown, overly operatic visuals (Taylor’s final confrontation with Barnes in the forest falls heavily into this trap). Stone has never been accused of being the most subtle of directors, and there is no stone (sorry) left unturned here to get the message across. In fact Platoon frequently hits its points so hard and with such unsubtle force, that it actually leaves you very little to think about after its finished – the film does all the work for you, like an angry rant that goes into unbelievable depth of detail.

But the acting has a very healthy commitment to it. Sheen shows why he was an actor of promise before he became a self-destructing punchline. Dafoe is very good as the serene Elias – a man’s man, but one comfortable in his own skin, with a strange campness about him, whose courage extends to doing the right thing no matter what. Tom Berenger is hugely impressive as the cold-edged Barnes, who has had to stamp out his humanity to survive. The rest of the characters split into two rival camps following these different soldiers, and there are some fine performances here from some now far more recognisable actors.

Platoon was garlanded with Oscars, partly because it talked about the American experience in Vietnam in a manner (and from a perspective) that had not been addressed before. It is an important historical landmark of a film, even if it is possibly not a great film. A simple, at times less than subtle anti-war film dressed up as a war film, it will immerse you in the conflict and the horror – but I’m not sure it will give you as much to think about as it thinks it does.

The Young Victoria (2009)

Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend play the royal couple in the cozy The Young Victoria

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée

Cast: Emily Blunt (Queen Victoria), Rupert Friend (Prince Albert), Paul Bettany (Lord Melbourne), Miranda Richardson (Duchess of Kent), Mark Strong (Sir John Conroy), Jim Broadbent (King William IV), Harriet Walter (Queen Adelaide), Thomas Kretschmann (King Leopold), Jesper Christensen (Baron Stockmar), Jeanette Hain (Baroness Lehzen), Julian Glover (Lord Wellington), Michael Maloney (Sir Robert Peel), Michel Huisman (Prince Ernest), Rachael Stirling (Duchess of Sutherland)

Now ITV’s Victoria exists, it’s a bit strange to go back and watch The Young Victoria. With the love today of long-form drama, and the time it can invest in things, it’s funny to see what the drama took almost 8 hours to do being crammed into an hour and a half here. But saying that, The Young Victoria is still an entertaining, luscious viewing experience which, while it has some strange ideas about certain events, is the sort of relaxing Sunday afternoon viewing that will take you out of yourself.

After the death of William IV (a slightly overripe Jim Broadbent), Victoria (Emily Blunt) is elevated to the throne. Finally able to shed the control of her mother’s (Miranda Richardson) domineering secretary Sir John Conway (Mark Strong), Victoria is determined to steer her own course. But she is surrounded by competing influences, not least from the charming arch-politician Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany). King Leopold of Belgium (Thomas Kretschmann) dispatches his nephew Prince Albert (Rupert Friend) to England with the express interest of marrying Victoria and controlling her – but Albert and Victoria find themselves as kindred spirits, supporting each other to rule.

The Young Victoria is the epitome of prestige costume dramas. It looks fantastic, the cinematography is ravishing, the production and costume design exquisite. It’s pretty clear what the producers thought would sell the picture abroad. The royal regalia is pushed very much to the fore, and we get some wonderfully sweeping scenes, not least an impressively large-scale coronation. The soundtrack brilliantly riffs on Handel, and Julian Fellowes’ script mixes period regal style with a sweeping feeling of romance between Victoria and Albert.

The film actually does a very good job of repositioning Victoria as a young woman, and gives her a strong quality of self-determination and a desire to be herself in a man’s world. It’s really helped in this by the combination of imperial strength, girlish wilfulness and sharp intelligence Emily Blunt brings to the role. Blunt and the film also aren’t afraid to show that, however much Victoria had guts and determination, she was also quite a headstrong woman not above making emotionally led mistaken decisions. In fact, much of the drama spins out of Victoria learning to try and put these youthful crushes and prejudices aside.

Having said that, it’s interesting that the successful conclusion of the film centres on Victoria accepting that she needs the help of Albert to run the kingdom, and that she needs to remove competing influences for her affection – Melbourne and Lehzen – to focus her affection and loyalty on him. The film frames this as a winning romance and a successful partnership (which it was) – but it’s also vaguely creepy if you think about it. Mind you, since all the affectionate influences on Victoria are implied by the script to be at least partly motivated by self-interest, with the possible exception (eventually) of Albert, it manages to suggest this was for the best.

Albert’s background gets some interesting exploration here. He’s very much presented at first as the tool of Leopold as a means of controlling British politics. But he is far too independent, smart and noble to ever be the means of manipulation. Friend is very good here – his performance is quiet, authoritative but also heartfelt. Fellowes guilds the lily a bit to show his devotion by having Albert shot by a would-be assassin late-on in the film. Historically the assassin’s pistol wasn’t loaded, and Albert didn’t get shot (though Fellowes protests Albert didput himself in front of Victoria and that this intent is what’s important, not whether he was shot or not) but the moment does work – it gives the drama a boost and it’s undeniably moving.

While Albert is presented overwhelmingly sympathetically, interestingly Lord Melbourne gets quite a kicking. Paul Bettany is presented far more as a rival love interest than the sort of father-figure Melbourne was in real life (Bettany is probably 20 years younger than the real Prime Minister). Melbourne is shown as cynical, controlling, manipulative and overwhelmingly motivated by self-interest (a few more pushes and he would virtually become the film’s villain). He’s constantly contrasted negatively with Michael Maloney’s upright, honest Sir Robert Peel (one of my favourite statesmen of the 19th century so at least I’m pleased) – and his relationship with Victoria is one of self-promotion, which seems odd seeing as historically the two of them were so close. 

The film introduces other villains for us to hiss at. Kretschmann and Christensen do a good job as arch political schemers. Our real villain though is Mark Strong, who does a great job of scowling, controlling nastiness as the failed-bully Sir John Conroy. Strong’s performance works so well because he makes it clear that Conroy feels that his “Kensington System” (an attempt to manipulate and cow Princess Victoria into being a submissive puppet) is genuinely in her best interest, and that he genuinely cares for her. His partnership with Miranda Richardson as Victoria’s near-love-struck mother works very well.

The Young Victoriathrows in enough interesting character beats like this for it to really work as an enjoyable afternoon period-drama. With some great performances – Emily Blunt carries the movie brilliantly – and while some of the historical characterisation is a bit off, and other moments feel a little too chocolate box it’s a very entertaining, undemanding view., it’s great fun. The hardcore Victorian costume-drama fans will probably prefer Victoriafor the same story in more depth – but this film does it with great sweep (and doesn’t cram in Victoria’s stupid below-stairs plotlines!).

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)

Christopher Lambert is the lord of the apes in dull Tarzan epic Greystoke

Director: Hugh Hudson

Cast: Christopher Lambert (John Clayton), Ralph Richardson (Earl of Greystroke), Ian Holm (Capitaine Fyllieppe d’Arnot), James Fox (Lord Charles Esker), Andie MacDowell (Jane Porter), Cheryl Campbell (Lady Clayton), Ian Charleson (Jeffson Brown), Nigel Davenport (Major Jack Downing), Nicholas Farrell (Sir Hugh Belcher), Paul Geoffrey (John Clayton Snr), Richard Griffiths (Captain Billings), Hilton McRae (Willy), David Suchet (Buller), John Wells (Sir Evelyn Blount)

For his follow-up to Chariots of Fire, Hugh Hudson settled on this curious mess: part heavy-handed exploration of class and the brutality of man, part picturesque jungle picture with people in ape costumes. If anyone remembers Greystroke today, it’s for an interesting bit of trivia: original director and writer Robert Towne was so annoyed at being removed from the project, he used his dog’s name as his screenwriting credit. When the Oscar nominations were announced, this pooch became the first four-legged Oscar nominee. Strangely fitting for a film about the nobility of animals.

The film is a “real life” version of the Tarzan story. What this basically means is that it is dry and boring with a ponderous self-important message about how the real animal is in man (or something like that). It also of course means that the word “Tarzan” isn’t used except in the title (presumably so that audiences could be lured into the cinema). Anyway, after his parents are shipwrecked off the jungle coast, and die after young John Clayton’s (Christopher Lambert) birth, he is raised by gorillas and becomes one of the leaders of the pack. When a troupe of gung-ho explorers are slaughtered by natives, the only survivor is Belgian Fyllieppe d’Arnot (Ian Holm). Rescued by John, d’Arnot teaches him language and takes him home to the estate of his grandfather the Earl of Greystoke (Ralph Richardson), who is desperate for an heir. But can John adjust to the jungle of the modern world?

So Greystoke is well filmed, looks good and has a couple of decent performances in it. But it’s a dull mess as a film. Watching it you suspect a lot of the runtime ended up on the cutting room floor. There are sudden time jumps. Characters appear and disappear, many serving no real purpose. The film drifts towards a conclusion that neither seems enlightening nor serves any real cathartic summation of what the film might be about. There are many, many lovely shots of the jungle and Scottish countryside, but we never really end up caring about any of the characters within it.

The film is thematically a mess from start to finish. It seems to be making a point about John being totally unsuited, by his upbringing, to adjusting to the world of man. But it never really gives a proper voice to John himself. Of course he’s only just learning language, but even without that you never really feel like you begin to understand him, or get a sense of half-remembered human traits emerging from his ape upbringing. Basically you don’t get a sense of conflict within him as to whether he should stay or go. Without that conflict, there isn’t really much interest in watching him work out the answer.

This is despite the fact the Christopher Lambert is actually pretty good as John Clayton. The role plays to his strengths: it’s highly physical (not just in the acts of athleticism but also in its half-man, half-ape physicality). Lambert also has this rather fine other-worldly quality that constantly leaves him looking a bit lost and vulnerable. The part may be underwritten but he is certainly doing his very best here, and he really does a brilliant job of playing an ape trapped in man’s body.

It’s a shame that the film takes so long to get going that he doesn’t really appear for the first half an hour or so. Instead we get a lot of ape-based action in the forest – and probably too much of his parents. Later in the film, the camera makes a point of returning two or three times to a large painting of Cheryl Campbell as John’s mother – but the film never suggests any link at all between these two characters. A lot of time is wasted setting up the parents’ voyage, while at the same time no time is spent on establishing any emotional link between the Claytons and their son.

Far more time is spent on the apes – which I suppose is the point of a film that wants to celebrate the purity of the world of animals over the corruption of man. Rick Baker’s ape make-up is pretty impressive for the time – and works really well in longshot – but in close-up is all too obviously a series of performers in masks. There is a sense of their natures, but not of them as dangerous or wild animals. In fact the film goes overboard in humanising them – even to the extent of giving them their own language of grunts and groans.

The ape stuff goes on too long – and then means the return to civilisation seems rushed and unclear. Ian Holm is excellent as d’Arnot, the bridge between the two worlds, and his fatherly love for John works extremely well. But the film makes no attempt to tackle the questions it raises of John dealing with his split animal-human relationship. Instead the film loads the decks by making almost every human character – epitomised by James Fox’s flat performance as Jane’s toff fiancée – a heartless uncaring moron.

Ah yes Jane. Played with an openness by Andie MacDowell, she’s dubbed in a painfully obvious way by an uncredited Glenn Close. This is another underwhelming relationship that seems skimmed over – one moment they have just met, the next they seem on the verge of a great love. It’s as rushed and slapdash as the introduction of a mentally handicapped servant – of course, with his childish outlook, he is closer to John than anyone could be – who literally appears out of nowhere.

The film was also Ralph Richardson’s final role – he died shortly after completing it – and his barmy Earl of Greystroke (part lonely old man, part semi-senile eccentric) does lift the film with a certain energy (he was posthumously Oscar nominated). But it’s an easy role for Richardson – and in fact his eccentric, hard-to-define energy kind of sums up the whole messy film pretty well. His character’s death is the final nail in its interest, his eccentric energy sorely missed.

The most damaging thing about Greystoke is it is dull and obvious. Pretty scenery and decent performances can only cover so much when the plot is empty and predictable. The film feels cut down absurdly – half the cast of Chariots appear in roles so tiny you wonder why they bothered – and by the time the film drifts towards its conclusion you’ll probably have stopped caring about what it was all about in the first place. It tries to ask questions about man’s nature, but it doesn’t even seem to notice it never answers them. A poor film.

Charley Varrick (1973)

Walter Matthau schemes a caper in crime thriller Charley Varrick

Director: Don Siegel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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