Philomena (2013)

Films such as The Magdelene Sisters (2002) gave us an introduction and insight to the cruel culture of Ireland during the 20^th century up to and including the 1970’s whereby pregnant unmarried girls were removed from their community and placed in convent run laundries. Until the stories began to be exposed in recent years, this picture of pregnancy being seen as a terrible sin requiring God’s punishment, was unknown to everyone outside of Ireland. How could you challenge or criticise sisters of charity for their support of unmarried mothers? Especially when you could not see what the regime was like or see what happened to their children.

What in fact they were doing was keeping young women captive and forcing them to work in commercial size laundries while their babies were being nurtured and prepared for adoption – in some cases in return for big money.

Philomena comes into this genre of storytelling from the point of an ageing woman who is now a grandparent and who in the 1950’s had been placed into such a convent laundry after becoming pregnant. Her mother had died and there was nobody to care for her and a baby. The convent sisters will now regard her as having “fallen” pregnant and will ensure that she will be judged accordingly. “Did you take your nickers down, girl?”

We come into the story after Philomena’s daughter has met ex BBC news reporter Martin Sixsmith at a social function. He is offered the chance to take an interest in Philomena’s story on the day that her daughter had discovered that her mother had given birth to a boy fifty years ago to the day, who at the age of three had been removed and given to an American couple for adoption. Would Sixsmith write a human interest story about her mother and her lost boy? The only way in which he could agree would be to find out what happened to him. This will take them to America.

The story is driven by the two central characters, Philomena who is played by Judi Dench and Sixsmith who is played by Steve Coogan. Both put in non-competing performances which deliver emotional scenes of anger and depression in the story climax. The early scenes are developed around a warm and caring relationship with wry humour as a mortar for their characters. Philomena has a dry, caring and forgiving nature founded on her Catholic faith. Coogan plays his part with alarming straightness, only once maybe showing a tiny glimpse of his earlier Alan Partridge days. The combination of Philomena’s forgiveness, tempered by doubt which frequently helps to change her mind and make quick turnaround decisions, and Sixsmith’s frustration driven by his determination to seek the truth, delivers the perfect story.

At one point in the story we discover what actually happened to Philomena’s (now adult) son and we wonder where the story will now go. However, the point of the film and this story is in the ending,  where confrontation to expose the truth leads to resolution and from Philomena, forgiveness.

“She might forgive you”, says Sixsmith, “…..but I can’t”.

Captain Phillips (2013)

We know that the world is changing and that this story will lead to an event of extreme danger. We know this because Captain Phillips tells his wife in the opening scene that the world is changing as they drive in heavy traffic to the docks to board his new ship. The drive on the motorway has echoes of the opening scene in Falling Down where Michael Douglas’s character is seen abandoning his car.

Abandonment is the last thing Captain Phillips has on his mind when Somali pirates, poor fishermen press ganged into kidnapping big ships for big money, board his ship.

The filming of the action is dramatically authentic and this is especially so in the first half of the film when the ship is chased by small speed boats and – even when the hoses are turned on full pressure all around the vessel and rapid course changes are made to out manoeuvre them – the pirates risk their lives in getting a ladder hooked onto the side and they board the ship.

The capture of the ship and the subsequent escape by the pirates with a hostage (no spoilers!) dominates the story narrative. The characterisation, particularly of the Captain and the pirate leader, Muse, is delivered in sweat and blood by Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi.

From setting the scene initially on a massive container ship, progressing to a tiny motorised life boat is a stroke of genius. The camera work is tight and this ratchets up the tension. To then make certain that we are under no illusion that the story is taking place at sea in the middle of a vast ocean – we see images of the sky leading down to the horizon and then the ocean, ending in aerial shots of whatever vessels are in the action. This is not innovative camera work – just skilful. Showing us, not telling us.

This camera technique is put to excellent use at the end when we get to realise that the US is not going to allow Captain Phillips to be kidnapped and sends out what seems to be a significant percentage of its naval fleet plus a platoon of navy SEALS.

Tom Hanks performance as a seasoned merchant shipping master is remarkable for its measured delivery. This is not one of his stereotypical, treacly big movie roles. This is an actor performing at the top of his craft and career. As Phillips, his leadership skills are put to the test when he congratulates his crew for fending off the pirates and their response is to remind him that as union members they are not contracted to defend the ship against pirates in the way he is asking them to. This is a do or die moment which he ably deals with, knowing that, by being at sea, he has the upper hand.

This is a roller coaster of a film gripping the audience from beginning to end, in true naval fashion requiring a stiff drink afterwards.

Enough Said (2013)

An ensemble movie consisting of a divorced couple with a self obsessed daughter, a divorcee who has a confident and uncomplicated approach to life whose daughter is living with her and preparing to leave home for college. There is also a couple, friends of the divorcee, one who is a psycho therapist, who are having a conflict with their employee, a Spanish maid, who they cannot tolerate for her strange habit of replacing strange objects in the wrong place.

The story relates to the divorcee, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a self employed masseuse who visits her clients, carrying a portable massage bed, in their own homes. She is also caring for her daughter who is in the throes of letting go and moving on to college in another place. The daughter also has a friend who seeks to make a friend of her mother. In the process of making that friendship, given advice that her friends mother should not really have been giving and also giving space and hope for her own independence which also she should not really have been giving. The divorcee’s daughter is able to put this to her mother very effectively at the end of the film. But I digress. At a party, our divorcee meets a woman who engages her for a home visit massage. At the same party she also meets a man who obviously takes a shine to her. She is totally unaware that this man is divorced from the woman who has just engaged her for a home visit. Through a friend, the divorced man, who is played by the late excellent James Gandolfini, arranges a date. They slowly hit it off. Later in the story the divorcee discovers from the woman at the party, who she is now visiting regularly and becoming friends with, in a roundabout way that the man the divorcee is dating is this woman’s ex-husband.

Are you still with me ? Don’t worry. It is not a complicated story or film to watch and follow. But just try explaining it to your friend. Which is why many reviewers who have written about this film, have been challenged to sell this film to its wider audience. There is only one spoiler which isn’t spoiling the film – that is discovering that the man you are dating was once married to the woman that you are offering a massage service to and who has been confiding in you her dislikes of his personality and the things that she was irritated by.

How do you let on ? Why don’t you let on. This is not completely explored but it is the impact of not doing so that is the crux of the story. Louis-Dreyfus misses her opportunity and at a dinner party she even tests out the personality traits that so detest Gandolfini’s ex-wife. She does this in a heartbreakingly unkind way.

It is the relationship between Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini that dominates the story. It has some haunting one liners. After falling out Louis- Dreyfus goes round to try and salvage the friendship, to be rebuffed – “You broke my heart, and I’m too old for that now.”

Dreyfus’s daughter, played by Tracey Fairaway, emphasises the need to be owned and loved. When she leaves at the airport to go to to college, both Dreyfus and her ex-husband are there to send her off and they are together on their way out, arms around one another – “We made a really good person there”.

The film plays out with Dreyfus and Ganolfini willing their relationship to get back on track and we are left with an optimistic hop at the end.

It is a humorous, not funny, film with characters that are well cast. They gel so well that you can imagine that it might have fun to have been on set with them. The story is authentic and believable and draws you into the relationships and willing the characters to get it sorted Which they sort of do.

Goodness knows what the Americans think of us in the UK. At one point, after dropping her daughter off at school, Dreyfus shouts at another student to pick her litter up. “Pick your rubbish up, your’e not British.!” 

Sunshine on Leith (2013)

Cinema as blissful entertainment, like eating a chocolate bar all by one’s self, does not offer a great deal of choice these days. Action, adventure, crime and drama dominate, as they always have. The era of the musical seemed to be over until Mamma Mia came out and filled every seat for weeks and months with audiences attending in fancy dress or going as a group to sing the songs. Even men who had been grudgingly taken along left the cinema with grins on their faces. Then next and from a completely different genre arrives Les Miserables. This was the antidote to the party film and also a challenging film for a repeat viewing. It was a film with a tortuous story and some memorable music that was difficult to sing to.

Mamma Mia was not a great film. It had a loose story, awful singing, and it won a raspberry nomination. Sunshine on Leith is nothing like this – even someone’s awful singing is put to good use in a memorable dance scene.

Two men return from serving in the army where thay have been in action in Afghanistan. One anticipates returning to his girlfriend, the other anticipates finding one. They get fitted up and the story leads us to the parents of one of them, played by Peter Mullan and Jane Horrocks. A letter from the past and a funeral lead us down the path of a love interest from twenty years ago with a resulting, unknown to Mullan, daughter who is now an adult. This is not a shallow story of loss and love but a story that most people in its audiences might relate to. It is honest and carries with it the cloak of integrity that many theatre rep companies offer to their audiences. Indeed, this story was developed, written and performed by Dundee Rep. Company.

The songs ? As Mamma Mia was based upon the Abba songbook, so Sunshine on Leith was based upon the songbook of The Proclaimers, a Scottish group whose canon of work are the spirit of the 1980’s and 1990’s and reflect the vibrant energy of a changing nation as industry slowly disappears. They sang songs of love, loss and yearning, giving hope and anthems to many as they grew up. The play’s author has cleverly woven the story around the songs and they enable some excellent set scenes that can only bring a smile to your face.

For me, the Proclaimers prove my Leonard Cohen theory. Their songs are sometimes better sung and more effectively delivered by others. Never having enjoyed Cohen’s songs when he sang them, I was impressed years ago when Jennifer Warne sang them in Famous Blue Raincoat, showing how beautiful the lyrics could be. This theory of auteurs not being the best singers in the world is evidenced in Sunshine on Leith.

As you would expect with a classical film musical, we have a story that breaks your heart, makes you smile and offers set musical pieces that carry the story along. Three memorable scenes worth pointing out are the anniversary party where the band strikes up Oh Jean for Mullan to serenade his wife. He cannot sing but the band’s playing and guests dancing to his rendition are great fun. Jane Horrocks singing the title song is sweet and tender while the closing flash mob style dance routine will have you smiling all the way home.

Blue Jasmine (2013

Nostalgia has a habit of clouding our memories with attractive images. The subconscious filters out the bad times or tries to amend them with the thoughts of what if. The famous line from On the Waterfront, ‘I could have been a contender’ comes to mind when we meet Cate Blanchet’s character………… She is frequently recalling what it is she has lost and instead of ‘could have been……’ she had been a contender. Until, that is, she discovered that her imprisoned banker husband was a fraudulent crook.

The reason for stating this is that in twenty five years time when young people look back at the ‘teens it will be a challenge for them to recall the difference between the good and the bad times when the only possible chance for many to own their own home will be to inherit their parents house. How many will reflect with goodwill to the lack of financial opportunity that most folk in the UK and US have had to experience? Blue Jasmine is a story of our times. The zeitgeist is one of hope and a struggle for survival.

Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine. She has lost everything when we meet her talking to a woman on a plane. We then realise she is talking at her because when the woman’s husband greets her at the luggage carousel and asks her who the woman talking to her was, she says ‘I don’t know but she wouldn’t stop talking to me.’ This was a clever entrance vehicle to the story and it is one of two moments when the audience that I was in, laughed. The other was when Jasmine’s sisters children, in a diner with Jasmine for a treat ask her why she keeps talking to herself. Both these moments were poignant and clear indicators that people near her were thinking she was odd. The laughter was nervous.

Jasmine has fled to her sisters house in California. She is penniless but her tastes and expectations remain the same. Her sister Ginger, played by Sally Hawkins, is bringing up two young boys by herself after separating from her husband. We discover that in a previous time that she and her husband have lost a considerable windfall of money in one of Jasmine’s husbands fraudulent investments. Ginger is now with a new boyfriend and Jasmine tries to corrupt this new relationship.

The story shows us Jasmine’s downfall in the form of a spiral. At each level downwards we see a facet or an action that she is using to grip onto for safety. But in doing so it becomes a catalyst for another person’s downfall, corruption or temporary destruction. We can see the pointers for this in the lies that she has to spin to survive. She has nothing, why should others be better off than she or have life worth living when she does not.

She is also prey to other male speculators who want her. One is a lusty dentist who advances she fends off. The other, a wealthy diplomat who she wants but cannot allow the truth to come between them. When it does, the rejection becomes a catalyst for her breakdown.

We finally see her on a park bench talking to herself again. She could have been a contender but there are only so many breakdowns and traumas a girl can take.

This is not a hurtful story. We are pleased that her sister Ginger gets it together again. The director, Woody Allen, does not wish Jasmine harm and he has created a web of sympathy that only those who have been the victims of austerity might share.

My Week With Marilyn

My Week With Marilyn  (January 2012)

(Directed by Simon Curtis 2011)

Biographical tales on film have to bend your imagination a little because of the challenge in finding actors who truly resemble the character from history they are portraying. In these days of prosthetics a lot can be done to enhance and transform the face. A broader chin here, a pointier nose there.

How then do you offer a visualisation of a memoir written by Colin Clark who was the third director on the movie The Prince and the Showgirl starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe ? On the one hand we have a glamourous and attractive stage and movie star of the twentieth century, and on the other we have an iconic sex symbol. Both these actors have played formative parts in the psyche of anyone interested in stage and cinema over the age of 60. Perhaps therefore, Kenneth Branagh and Michelle Williams are able to get away with their portrayals without too big a leap of faith. Williams is able to do this through the decent direction – glimpses of Monroe’s earlier performances as played by Williams are spliced into the story to show us where she has come from.

The story offers us a Monroe that aspires to be not an iconic film star but a serious actor. This she is trying to achieve by employing  “method” acting teacher Paula Strasberg Someone should have told her that this was not the film to practice her method acting with. Branagh releases his frustration on Zoe Wanamakers excellent Strasberg , “Well, you had better tell her to pretend to believe in her character…”. We also see sweeping shots of what she is reading in her bedroom, James Joyce’s Ulysses , an echo of the Eve Arnold portrait. It is the play between Olivier and Monroe that offers the more interesting episodes of this memoir, as observed by Clark, played by Eddie Redmayne. His boyish portrayal of Clark is the story thread of the film. This relates to how he falls in love with Monroe, who is beginning her addiction to barbiturates and allowing her vulnerability to affect everything she does. Her (paid) supporters protect her ego which gets a battering in the process of her clashes with Olivier on the film set.

This is a very British film which has all the trappings of a re-watchable movie.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (30 December 2011)

[David Fincher 2010]

Stieg Larsson’s Swedish trilogy about the eccentric, highly intelligent, computer hacking, confident and totally independent woman who becomes befriended by a journalist when he is hired by a former corporate company founder to investigate the historical disappearance of his granddaughter – has already been filmed in the Swedish language. The three books were filmed in 2009 and released the same year in Britain. The popularity of the books worldwide meant that it would not be long before the American studios decided to to make a version that meant that it could be seen without having to spend nearly three hours reading subtitles. On this occasion, the remake is justified for that reason. It is unfair to compare the two films simply because they both follow the story in all its complexities without deviation, apart from one (possibly important) detail at the end of David Fincher’s film. If you read the book, and I strongly advise you to read the book, you will spot it easily.

The lead male character in the story, Mikael Blomkvist, played by Daniel Craig has lost a major court case when the subject of an article he has published sues him for libel. His investigative journalistic qualities come to the attention of the founding non-executive of a corporate company who is desperate to find out what happened to his granddaughter who had disappeared some twenty years previously and on whose anniversary he receives a mysterious framed flower. To assist him, the subject of the title, Lisbeth Salander, who is working part time as an investigator with a private security firm, is recruited because of her extraordinary ability in discovering background information on Blomkvist for his new employers.  Salander is played by Rooney Mara and both she and Craig deliver excellent performances in the roles of the key players in the story. Although there are times when you recall Craig in his role as James Bond, his Blomkvist is a far superior part for him to play.

The reason why the book should be read before seeing the film is because it is so complicated to follow on screen alone and the challenge is to be able to understand the subtlety of the twists and turns as they unfold on the screen, thus leaving the viewer with confusion on occasions with regard to the complexities of the family history. The details of the family history are crucial to the story behind the girl’s disappearance and the book reader is able to linger on these at a slower speed. The film does not do justice to the family members and we meet them only too briefly. Only the one family member, who we discover is behind the reason for the granddaughter’s disappearance, is given this opportunity of in depth treatment and this is at the end when his true nature is uncovered in terrifying detail. This particular sequence keeps you on the edge of your seat with the fear he creates.

The title of the book when it was published in Sweden was The Woman Who Hates Men and as Lisbeth Salander unfolds her own part of the story in the film, the purpose behind the title is revealed. Rooney Mara acts the part superbly on the screen without going beyond exactly what we understood in the book. The visualisation of the sexual violence she experiences is offered without exaggeration, and although a real challenge to sit through, is noted for it’s lack of gratuity and titillation. This is a long film of a long book which David Fincher completed with integrity. It felt Swedish and the non-Swedish actors worked hard to sustain quasi Swedish accents. Even the IKEA style interiors gave it an aura of authenticity.