Kon Tiki (2012)

Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer who researched and developed a theory that the original settlers of Polynesia came from South America and not Asia as originally believed by his contemporary geographers. To prove his theory, Heyerdahl sailed from Peru on a raft made of balsa trees, reeds and rope. Together with a small crew of devoted fellow Norwegians, he proved the received wisdom was wrong.

This event took place in 1947 and for many teenagers who read his book or saw his documentary of the voyage, it became a 20^th Century legend that some could feel closer too than the other amazing tales of adventure such as the Poles and Everest.

The concept of sailing on a raft across 5000 miles of hostile ocean, although somewhat unbelievable if you tried to to explain it to those who have not known the Kon-Tike story, is carefully, truthfully and beautifully transcribed to the film screen by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg. They tell the story as it was understood – unbelievable to some. But we know that it happened because of the accounts of the voyage in the press at the time and also the black and white footage of the documentary that Heyerdahl made. It would not have been right to have used this in a dramatization so Ronning and Sandberg insert black and white 8mm footage of the film cast looking as though they were the original crew. It needs a second look to convince you.

Early parts of the film have references in its film direction to Hitchcock and Polanski – an aerial shot of a Brooklyn street and the cold interior of Heyerdahl’s shabby apartment has echoes of their techniques. The directors give us a condensed story of how Heyerdahl tried to gather financial support in New York. The heart of the film is the voyage. Anticipating 100 days to reach Polynesia – the privations are put aside in favour of showing us the daring do and fear generated by natural ocean predators – whales, sharks and weather. There is an extraordinary violent and exciting scene where the men decide to fight these predators and it is not for the faint hearted. Other scenes make Spielberg’s film Jaws seem like a walk in the park. Survival seems to overtake the psychological differences of the crew who are carried along by the faith of their leader. Heyerdahl believes in his mission. “Believe? This is not a faith – this is madness!” shouts his fridge engineer compatriot. But they did make it and they succeeded in proving a theory that did not change the world but which remains as an extraordinary example of sea going bravery and courage.

The voyage was made in May 1947 and lasted nearly four months, the raft floating along natural ocean currents with the aid of one single sheet sail. One of Thor Heyerdahl’s strengths would appear to have been his good nature and sense of humour. This lightens the tension and endears him to us, while we also experience the strain on his family life. His loving relationship with his wife is referenced at the beginning and at the end – his achievement and gains countered by the personal loss of his marriage.

Three Men in a Boat this is not – but a wonderful testimony to courage and conviction as well as an antidote to all the other films out currently at Christmas.

What I Did on My Holiday (2014)

An ensemble movie of five adults and three children set in beautiful Scottish scenery. All the better to explore the dysfunctional relationship between adults and adults and children with stones.

The story is very simple, how to mask the impending divorce of a young couple from the man’s father who is about to celebrate his big birthday.

The warring divorcees to be, played by David Tennant and Rosamund Pike are travelling to Scotland’s western highlands with their three children to celebrate said father’s/grandfather’s birthday. We discover that this middle class family are no more dysfunctional than any other family – just more creatively funnier. Getting to Scotland is just for openers – the real fun starts when they arrive.

The London family are staying with Tennant’s brother, a successfully wealthy money maker and his very depressed wife who demonstrates her clinical illness to extremely funny effect, on video, courtesy of the playfulness of our three children.

Grandfather is the cornerstone for the humour in the film, sharing his eccentricity and senior rights with the children. Offering sound advice to go off piste in their lives, particularly the older daughter who is struggling to make sense of life around her by making notes in a notebook. The contents of this help to piece together the disputes tha6 are going on around her.

Grandfather is played by Billy Connolly who in real life has recently announced that he has cancer and also Parkinson’s. This makes his character and role in this film poignant.

The fantasies of the children and the dreams of the Grandfather become as one in the story which will leave most viewers with a tear in their eye. The scenes on the beach with the children and Grandfather while preparations are being made for the party at home are touching and delightful. Whilst the adults are running around totally unaware of how the birthday party will unravel.

The authors of the screenplay also wrote Outnumbered for television and yes, many reviews have suggested that this might be Outnumbered:the Movie. What separates them is the concept of a family of five struggling to live, learn and work together with the children improvising a lot of their scenes and dialogue – and a family of five where the parents are preparing to divorce and the children are trying to learn how to navigate round this and grow up.

There are moments of improvisation which are not seamless and a little awkward for the older adults. But the children still dominate this warm hearted, funny and entertaining film to great effect.

Inside Llewyn Davis

Bob Dylan wrote about the times that were changing in his book ‘Chronicles’ (2004). He sits in a Greenwich Village apartment staring out the window and he ponders on the nature of that change. He might well have seen Llewyn Davis walking down Bleecker Street, guitar case in his hand, heading for a coffee shop basement.

The year is 1961 and it is a significant period of time when singers and song writers were learning their craft by singing in basket houses – where a basket was handed round for donations from the audience. This is the backdrop to a fictional story that starts with a violent incident that we don’t realise is unfolding in the past to explain the beginning at the end. Getting inside Llewyn Davis is a challenge because we don’t really get to see a depth of his character other than a desire for destiny to give him a break. A mediocre contemporary singer whose previous partner is no longer with us, he is not willing to join up with another partner or combination of singers.

Davis’s life seems to be in so many places because he has no permanent home, like a rolling stone. And that is the zeitgeist of the times – a man in a search for something and living for the moment. Very few of the characters, if any, including Davis endear themselves to us. Each one either successfully able to live for the moment, or react angrily because of change forced upon them.

There is an escaping cat (Ulysses) whose odyssey not only helps to create a vehicle for the story but his re-appearance as the wrong cat half way through the film gives us an inkling to the journey of Davis. There are times when he might be the wrong man in the wrong place. Whether he will ever become he right man in the right place is not the objective of the film.

‘Down in the Village nothing seemed wrong. Life was not complex. Everybody was looking for openings. Some would get ‘em and then they’d be gone and others never did. Mine was coming but not just yet.’ (Dylan, Chronicles, 2004)

Anyone who was growing up in this period, particularly in London, will have some attachment to this film. Walking down Greek Street in a donkey jacket, diving down the steps into Les Cousins for the all nighter, shelling out a few shillings for the entrance, sitting in a warm and friendly environment and listening to established and wannabee singers with their acoustic guitars. Journeying on our own odyssey as we try and discover ourselves.

For this reason, the story will not resonate with everyone. For all that, the Coen Brothers should be applauded for a well observed period in time.

The Railwayman (2013)

Eric Lomax was an engineer and a railway enthusiast who was captured by the Japanese in the Second World War. He was put into forced labour to help build the railroad across South East Asia. The British had wanted to build this before the war but abandoned the plan because it would have been inhuman in such extreme conditions to undertake the project without treating a workforce as slaves. This is what the Japanese Imperial Army decided to do.

The book upon which the film is based tells the story of what happened to Lomax particularly from the point of view of the torture that he endured and his post traumatic stress disorder after the war. The manifestation of which prompts his new wife to get him to face the cause of it. This is through a return visit to South East Asia to meet face to face with his tormentor who they discover is not only still alive but working at the site of the prison camp as a tour guide at the visitor centre that was created to tell the history of the prison camp.

The key players are Colin Firth as Lomax and Nicole Kidman as his wife with Jeremy Irvine as the younger Lomax. Hiroyuki Sanada plays the Japanese prison guard and torturer. The narrative is told in layers – how Lomax meets his wife – how she discovers his support system to deal with his stress disorder (via his comrades) – flashbacks of the events in the prison camp – and the resolution of his stress disorder. There is criticism about the absence of other background information, such as Lomax’s first wife and children. However, to include all of this would have detracted from the purpose of the film which was to tell the story of his torture and the resolution to his post war trauma.

This is not a fictional account of Lomax’s story. The facts of the story have been proven and so this film is a factual account and Lomax’s frame of reference on what happened to him is that he was the subject of cruel and inhuman torture the brutality of which had scarred his ability to function properly after the war. This detail we need to know because the resolution to his personal conflict is what makes this film work. Without it, it might have become another David Lean adventure story.

Meeting his tormentor face to face and putting him through the motions of Lomax’s own torture, enables the audience to see how the need for truth and reconciliation is at the heart of all conflict resolution. In this story that resolution is powerfully told and portrayed by Colin Firth and his tormentor.

A good and powerful story translated into film is what cinema is good at and in this case, it doesn’t come much better.

12 Years A Slave (2013)

Based upon a book published in 1853, a memoir by Solomon Northup, this film brings the story alive in a direct manner. The narrative is simple; a free African American living and working in New York state is kidnapped and sold into slavery to a Washington slave trader and auctioneer. He is then sold on first to a benevolent plantation owner and finally to a violently malevolent owner. For 12 years, we see the story unfold via a series of brutal and honestly portrayed episodes that show us something of the total removal of humanity from one race of people.

The director, Steve McQueen, is also known as a Turner Prize winning artist. I recall one of his video installations which was a carefully crafted film of McQueen re-enacting a Buster Keaton scene. This is where the front of a wooden building collapses and falls on top of Keaton but he safely survives where he stands, appearing through the open door as it collapses upon him. The video by McQueen is shot from different angles to show the physicality of the action including the vibration ripples on McQueens face. Unlike the Turner Prize judges, I never “got it” and although it looked interesting – I passed on by.

Seeing this film, which has re-awakened the world’s awareness of the slave trade and slavery during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, I was fully aware of where McQueen was coming from as an artist. We see the physicality of the act of enslavement repeated from every angle until we ourselves in the audience are reduced and stripped, leaving our emotions bare.

The timing of the film’s release is appropriate. Gone with the Wind was released over half a century ago and it portrayed slavery in a benevolent non-violent way, a class ridden plantation pecking order where even slaves had status in their working ways. Last year saw Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained in which we were invited to laugh at slavery from a white man’s perspective in a mock spaghetti western style.

On the day of the film’s release in Glasgow, the Herald published an article by Professor Geoff Palmer (Heriot-Watt University). He reminded Scotland of its one time economic dependence on the slave trade. He illustrated this with examples that we live with today all over Glasgow via its street names and buildings. Jamaica Street lies parallel with the River Clyde from where the slave trade was conducted. Not in the trading of the slaves themselves but in the output of their enslavement, sugar and tobacco. These two commoddities were economic foundation stones for three hundred years. In 1800 there were ten thousand Scots involved in running and managing this plantation trade in the West Indies. Professor Geoff Palmer has a Scottish name but he was born in Jamaica.

If this film does anything, it needs to influence the way we see our inheritance as a nation and how we respond to humanity in the 21^st century.

American Hustle (2013)

A hustle is a confidence trick. An audience can feel confident that they are being tricked. Magicians use smoke and mirrors but a hustler has to give you the confidence that although you are being conned, you can still enjoy the process of believing that you are getting something for nothing. Some hustlers could sell sand to the Arabs but in this movie the Arabs are selling the sand.

After two hours of watching American Hustle I had to discuss what I had witnessed with a companion to assure myself that I had understood what I had I seen. Which makes the film more clever than it was an outstanding piece.

I’ll try to explain. A seasoned and professional hustler teams up with a pole dancer to enter into a bond raising scam which works for them until they are caught out by an FBI investigator. He strikes a deal with the pair which will let them off if they can finger three corrupt local and national politicians for fraud. The pair devise a plan which will involve a colleague disguised as an Arab who is prepared to fund a money laundering casino in Atlantic City for the Mafia but it will require $2 million of FBI money to set the scam up. They succeed in this via a wild and funny route involving the hustler’s wife and the seduction of the FBI investigator by the pole dancer. The denouement is the arrest of the three politicians and the disappearance of the $2 million by the hustling couple.

So, how did a story that could have been effectively aired on the British TV series, Hustle, become a multi Oscar nominated film which has a Hollywood A list in its casting ? Well that could be the clue. It would have been reduced to a TV series had it not got the A list. Bradley Cooper does excel as the FBI investigator in a really OTT performance of a man carried away by his own confidence. Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams are superb and carry the film. Christian Bale commands attention in an eccentric way that reflects the ra of the story, namely the 1970’s. This is reflected in the careful detail of the sets and and good selection of music.

There is a brilliant cameo from Robert de Niro as a scary Mafia boss who did not play the part for laughs. The rest of the film is fast, furious and funny in parts and enfuriatingly confusing in others. You have to keep up or you will get lost – or hustled.

Saving Mr Banks (2013

Mary Poppins passed me by when it came out. I was not young enough and not quite old enough to be able ever to say that I sneaked in to see it when the film was released. And it would be many years before it was shown on TV. In fact, the first time that I saw it was shortly after watching Saving Mr Banks. Thus completing the story for me.

Saving Mr Banks is a film with two stories tracking each other with a denouement that is cleverly created by Walt Disney himself – not just in the film but also in Mary Poppins.

Emma Thompson plays P.L.Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, which was a very popular childrens book on both sides of the pond. Although not impoverished, her agent uses the lack of funds coming in as a lever to persuade Travers to travel to America to oversee the script and music preparation that Walt Disney is commissioning. He has yet to secure the rights of her treasured book. Treasured in the sense that Travers is reluctant to have any creative embellishments made to her story. Walt Disney, played by Tom Hanks in his second big acting role this year (Captain Phillips was the other) has yet to get Travers’s signature on the contract to give him the film rights. He devotes his time humouring her and trying to win her over to allow him to use imaginative, creative methods to put the story over to a young and old audience alike – with music and song. The latter proposition is a painful one for Travers and provides a number of funny and frustrating moments for the composing and song writing team.

Two characters, Hanks and Paul Giametti, chauffeur to Travers in Hollywood, are used to good effect as vehicles for engaging with humanity with Travers to help her unpick her uncertainties. For the audience we also have the second thread of the film. This is the episodic flashback of her childhood story and her relationship with her father, and to a certain degree, her mother and aunt. This is not an untypical childhood story, set in 19^th century Australia, where adult truths are not always clear and sometimes hidden from children growing up.

Hanks has begun to understand that Travers’s reluctance to let go of her master piece (and I use that phrase in its literal sense) because the book is synonymous with her experience and relationship with her father. The film is neatly brought to its finale with Disney travelling to London to complete this analysis in her living room over a cup of tea (milk in first). This is a touching and thoughtful scene that is beautifully and sensitively filmed and scripted. We could not end without some acknowledgement of her home truths and we see Travers inviting herself to the premier of Mary Poppins (she had previously been overlooked to save any embarrassing criticisms from her). In true Hollywood tear jerk fashion we see her in the stalls acknowledging the end result with her own tears.

The acting is very good, the script is well crafted, the two stories converge properly, and most amateur psychologists will be pleased with the conclusion.

However, a spoonful of sugar will never take away the fact that Walt Disney was a ruthless businessman who knew the power of money especially when he knew the artist was in need of an income.