FILM FORTNIGHT: The King’s Speech

Ah, Tom Hooper, whatever are we to do with you; a professional Oscar-bagger whose adherents’ vociferousness in their praise of his directorial skill is only matched by his critics slagging him off. This is not to say that he makes bad films (although I have seen one reviewer call Les Miserables the third worst film of 2012; a somewhat bold claim), but more a reflection of the fact that Hooper’s style of film making is pretty much what the Academy thinks is the cinematic equivalent of nirvana. This very… specific style has not endeared him to everyone, specifically those who think his films are all the more dull and predictable for it.

Where was I again? Oh yes; The King’s Speech, the most critically successful to date of Hooper’s films, bagging a Golden Globe, seven BAFTAs and four Oscars. For the four of you who never quite heard what the plot was about, our gaze is cast back to 1925 and onto the then Duke of York, Prince Albert (Colin Firth), second in line to the throne after his older brother David (Guy Pearce). Albert is among of the most interesting Royals in (relatively) recent history and was the father to our current Queen, but the part of his character we are most interested in now is his heavily pronounced stammer. This impediment is hardly conducive to him being comfortable in a heavily public role, and he tries multiple methods to cure himself; but this is the early 20th century, and we are yet to see the extraordinary advances in medical science that came along during the decades after the Second World War. As such, the treatments offered are somewhat Victorian in nature and don’t work, leading to increasing frustration from the Prince regarding the issue, to the point where he basically decides to give up. His wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), however, is more determined, and puts him in touch with Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an Australian speech therapist with somewhat unconventional methods (and indeed mannerisms) for the time.

The changing relationship between Logue and the Prince is the central plot thread for the remainder of the film; one a rather bluntly-spoken commoner and the other who has spent his entire life being served in deference to with the complex rules of formality and tradition acting as his social bodyguard. That this is going to cause tension is obvious from the opening scene, and is indicative of one of the film’s most prominent flaws; the near-total lack of anticipation. This does not half to be a bad thing necessarily; many a good film has been so without any need to resort to tension or anticipation, but every scene of The King’s Speech can pretty much be calculated from the first five seconds, and sticking around to watch frequently doesn’t add anything to the central plotline.

It’s a shame really, because there are other aspects (and other scenes) that the film gets magnificently right, particularly those scenes that focus on the transitional state of the world at the time. This particular point in history was a turbulent one; times were changing, the new and old were trying (and in many cases failing) to coexist, and the establishment was frequently struggling to cope with all this newness. No establishment embodied this more than the royalty; these were the last days for nobility in all its pomp and finery, the days when it finally realised how much of its power had been stripped away and how it could not go on pretending to be a divine figure of authoritative power. As the film makes clear, monarchies had been falling across Europe, and others were to be reduced to puppets beneath new regimes, and while this theme is never explicitly mentioned or made a central part of the film, it subtly pervades all around it in a way that makes one feel genuine sympathy for the characters concerned. It is present in the way the prince treats the children and the stories he tells of how his father treated him, in the methods that work for him and the methods that don’t, even in the way characters address one another. All in all a wonderful piece of directing to work in there; I only wish it had taken centre stage more frequently. Perhaps then it wouldn’t perpetually feel as if it were 15 minutes away from finishing.

Mention must of course be made of the actors; Colin Firth took three ‘Best Actor’ prizes for his role as the king, and I found his portrayal incredibly interesting. Firth has always brought a particular brand of confidence, even cockiness, to the roles he plays and is frequently cast in controlling figures of power for this very reason; but here he is required to express both the power and authority of a monarch and the fragility of a patient. The film’s plot, and in particular Geoffrey Rush’s perfectly executed character of Logue, mean that these two opposing images must frequently share the limelight and come into conflict with one another, whilst all the while having to make themselves felt through the Prince’s stammer. This would be a mean task for even the most skilled of actors, and for someone such as Firth who I have never seen portray weakness in this way, it is a particularly interesting challenge. I wouldn’t say that he pulls it off perfectly, or that I find his performance massively compelling (he doesn’t quite manage to express how hard he’s trying, from my point of view), but it is nonetheless a good attempt at a very challenging role. This may have been somewhat hindered by the fact that, as usual, Bonham Carter manages to steal the show, once again showing her extraordinary versatility as an actress with a striking, and occasionally even funny, portrayal of the Duchess (a woman we would now refer to as the Queen Mother). That she and Rush only took home one ‘Supporting Actor/Actress’ role apiece is, to me, quite an eyebrow raiser, even if it was up against The Fighter. Some other performances, most notably Timothy Spall turning up as Winston Churchill for no readily explained reason, are less beneficial to the film and often feel as though they are taking screentime away from what’s important (there’s a fine line between ‘interesting cameo’ and ‘why the hell are they here?’), but thankfully they are not prevalent enough for this to be a massive problem.

To me, The King’s Speech is far from a perfect film; it is not terribly compelling all too frequently, large pieces of the plot seem to serve very little purpose, the script takes significant artistic liberties with historical fact (yes, I know that shouldn’t be important, but I’m too much of a nerd about these things), the plot is somewhat formulaic and predictable and it can’t quite seem to make up its mind over what it is, thematically speaking, about. However, it is executed so exquisitely that these flaws, in part, hardly matter; yes, they’re there, yes the film is imperfect, but that’s no reason not to sit back and enjoy the experience. Did The King’s Speech deserve two ‘Best Picture’ awards? Perhaps not. Is it a bad film? Not a chance. Perhaps not worth digging through to see, but certainly worth watching if you get the chance.

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FILM FORTNIGHT: Ocean’s Eleven

Any film with ‘Eleven’ in its title is giving itself rather ambitious goals; eleven of anything, be it targets, bad guys, explosions or, as in this case, lead characters, is always going to be difficult to fit into a film without at least the last four losing any touch of something special. Even the original Ocean’s Eleven, made back in 1960 (did you know this film was a remake? I sure as hell didn’t) apparently made do with just five main leads and a few bit-part players to act as manpower for the con, and by introducing eleven distinct characters each with a well-defined role, the risk of the whole film turning into a screen time contest is ever-present. Thankfully, everybody knows their place; the film is plenty long enough for everyone to get their five minutes of character definition so we know who the hell this guy is when he shows up an hour later, and the film has the good sense to be plot- rather than character-driven to allow it to stick to what it’s about; the heist.

Yes, it’s another organised crime/massively-overblown-way-of-nicking-a-ton-of-money film; our protagonist this time is George Clooney’s Danny Ocean, recently released from prison and instantly deciding to go back into business as a career criminal (because laying low is for wusses). His partner in crime is old friend Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt), and their plan is hardly lacking for ambition; rob the vault that serves three of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas when at its fullest. This is a typical feature of modern big-budget film-making; building tension and a sense of ‘this really means something so I should care about it’ by virtue of sheer scale, rather than emphasising the importance of the con itself.

But ho-hum, the film tells us, this is not merely an exercise of scale; this con does have a special meaning for our characters. This comes in the form of Ocean’s ex-wife Tess (Julia Roberts) and Rather Unnecessary Romantic Subplot™ which, since it takes the form of a ‘big reveal’ halfway through the film I shall choose not to spoil here. Not that it matters especially, since it is a rather extraneous feature; it doesn’t serve to make the protagonist’s actions any more realistic since it is so bloody stupid, and its only real reason for being is so that the filmmakers could put Julia Roberts’ name on the promo material. In 2001 Roberts was the undisputed female star of the film industry, the first woman ever to be paid $20 million for a film, and her name sold cinema seats.

Anyway, back to the actual con, where the film now tries to build scale through complexity; to pull it off, Ocean and Ryan decide to build a the stereotypical ‘crack team’ to handle the job. To this end, they recruit nine fellow crewmembers, each with their own special skill and stereotype revealed in their scheduled two minutes of exposition. We have the socially awkward pickpocket (Matt Damon), the incredibly cockney explosives nut (Don Cheadle, executing what is often regarded as the worst British accent in cinema history), the gifted but infighting brothers (Casey Affleck/Scott Caan) and the Oriental super-acrobat (Shaobo Qin), to name but the most interesting, and all have their requisite one moment of usefulness in the resulting con itself.

However, even if the film has the good sense not to focus on its protagonists, the sheer number of them still presents issues. Of the film’s two hour running time, what feels like three-quarters of it is made up of pure setup, with no action, no fun, no heist; nothing to keep the pace up and the film interesting. In a genre where pace and tension are everything, having no actually interesting subplots to keep the ball rolling for the first hour or so is sheer directorial madness. It seems as if the film was relying on the Clooney/Roberts romantic subplot to cover this period, but since this whole dynamic never feels either especially real nor purports to be meaningful it’s not enough to carry the whole shebang. Steven Soderbergh is not exactly delivering a vintage directorial display here.

The number of actors presents problems in other ways too; there are some pretty good bits of acting on show here, with Clooney being realistic if not particularly emotional and Pitt bringing some characteristic personality to his role. Carl Reiner’s Saul, an old-school con man with one of the more significant roles in the film, also works as a consistent and compelling character, helped by a generous portion of screentime, but these turns are so restricted for space that none of them are ever able to mean anything, only serving to highlight the flaws in the film’s plot. It doesn’t help that pickpocket Linus Caldwell has the misfortune to be played by Matt Damon, who doesn’t appear to function terribly well when not leading a film. His performance here is somewhat uninspired, which would be more forgiveable were his character not meant to be particularly significant. Between these character flaws and those in the film’s storyline, by 80 minutes in I was getting positively bored.

Soderbergh does manage to, somewhat belatedly, partially redeem himself with the execution of the film’s central con, when it finally turns up; the deception employed is as multi-layered, clever and effective as a good on-screen heist should be. It also manages to be totally unexpected without resorting to any of the deus ex machina that inexplicably turned up in the sequel, instead relying on a supremely well-set up piece of criminality that would be far more effective if it had the good grace to turn up at the end of a film I was actually emotionally invested in.

In my review of The Sting, I described it as ‘Ocean’s Eleven with a simpler character base and more realistic motivations’. Whereas The Sting is a proper old-fashioned crime film, Ocean’s Eleven only tries to be one for the last half-hour, and is significantly poorer for it. Still, could be worse; Ocean’s Twelve proved that.

FILM FORTNIGHT: The History Boys

OK, back to films this time, specifically The History Boy. Something of an old favourite of mine, the kind of thing I occasionally catch myself running through in my head. And with the death just a few weeks ago of one of the film’s stars Richard Griffiths, it seemed only right to turn my gaze to it now. So…,

There is a particular type of film that attempts to be compelling by getting rid of almost all the distractions of plot in favour of plundering the rich resources posed by character, behaviour, context and emotional development. The storyline of such films tend to be based around small scenes that mean very little on their own but serve largely as a framework for the important parts of the film itself to play out around them; a nice idea, if it can be pulled off. Done wrong and we are left with two hours of tedium whilst a bunch of theatrical hipsters pretend to hold the emotional and intellectual high ground, and a lot is left down to the sheer ability of the actors concerned to execute their roles; it’s one of the reasons why reading Shakespeare out of a textbook is so much less compelling than a well-executed live performance, and why so many schoolchildren get turned off by it. That, combined with the overly florid Elizabethan language, and the fact that they have to study Twelfth Night.

The History Boys is, thankfully, burdened by neither of the latter two issues, but its format makes the former a major point of potential worry; set in a Sheffield school in 1983, our story opens with eight history student getting their A-level grades, and very well they’ve done too. For this reason, the school (and its rather ambitious headmaster, Clive Merrison’s Felix) encourages them to apply to read history at Oxbridge, for which they need to take an entrance exam that will require another term’s schooling and revision. The other main players are their teachers: history teacher Mrs. Lintott (Francis de la Tour), specialist exam-preparation teacher Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) and the colourful General Studies teacher Hector (Griffiths). “General Studies” here being taken as a rather loose term.

The teachers are the main source of the film’s drama; Irwin, recruited at the start of the film, offers up a totally different approach to the boys’ previous teaching style and, indeed, a different perspective on history itself, which results in one or two moments that strike a little close to the bone for some. Then we have Hector, who doesn’t teach so much as mess around in a classroom for a couple of hours, before offering the boys a lift home on his moped and casually groping them along the way. Whilst the boys have an amicable relationship with him over this, it’s kind of obvious to see that this isn’t going to end well.

It should be pointed out that all of this is established within the first 20 minutes of the film, and indeed there is practically no plot movement in the centre of the film; it is all left open purely for character interaction and development. This ‘interaction’ is frequently rather risqué in nature, but for such a serious, deeply emotional film it’s surprising the extent to which the film seems determined to have fun and enjoy itself; credit must go to Alan Bennett (the writer of the original play) for managing to inject so much humour into the piece. The actors also appear suffused with the spirit of the thing, and turn out some wonderful performances; special mention must go to Dominic Cooper for a starring turn as the sexually-charged, rather aggressively bright Dakin, and Griffiths, who at no point in the entire film looks like he’s acting rather than just doing what comes naturally. However, none of that changes the fact that this is a film built around practically nothing happening, and looking back now I struggle to visualise how the rather confused web of scenes fit together, and how indeed the film manages to make any sense at all.

However, no matter how much I try to apply fridge logic to the situation, the fact is that it simply does; it’s just that well done. Nicholas Hytner’s film is so engrossing and insidiously enthralling that everything becomes just about the characters, as if one is in fact part of this eclectic little group and this is your life playing out around you. These are your friends, your mentors, the people you laugh with, the people you cry over; it’s a slice of life at its most real yet most compelling, and most beautiful. 99 times out of 100 this sort of thing surely wouldn’t work, but by its being sit at a point in these boys’ lives that is so pivotal, and by framing it in such a fantastically well-executed manner, the realism of the event manages to feel purposeful rather than meandering. There’s something deeply satisfying, like watching an old friend come good, about watching the way these characters develop and grow over 100 minutes’ screentime, and it’s all very… right, somehow. And that’s even before we get to the ending; a tear-jerking third act that manages to hit every point on the emotional spectrum before cascading into a bittersweet crescendo of beauty and hope that would strike dumb even the most loquacious of critics. I could spend all day analysing every little intricate moment of these few minutes, every emotional tug and every moment of simultaneous hope and pain, but am restricted by both my wish not to spoil anything and my wish not to write something 5000 words long.

The History Boys is many things; relatively slow, rather lacking in plot and based around a decidedly unconventional idea being among them. But it honestly doesn’t matter; when a film attempts to mean this much, and pulls it off with such spectacular aplomb, any attempt to degrade it somewhat misses the point. If you haven’t watched it yet, then you’re missing out on something special.

War Games

So, what haven’t I done a post on in a while. Hmm…

Film reviewing?

WarGames was always going to struggle to age gracefully; even in 1983 setting one’s plot against the backdrop of the Cold War was something of an old idea, and the fear of the unofficial conflict degenerating into armageddon had certainly lessened since the ‘Red Scare’ days of the 50s and 60s. Then there’s the subject matter and plot- ‘supercomputer almost destroys world via nuclear war’ must have seemed terribly futuristic and sci-fi, but several years of filmmaking have rendered the idea somewhat cliched; it’s no coincidence that the film’s 2008 ‘sequel’ went straight to DVD. In an age where computers have now become ubiquitous, the computing technology on display also seems hilariously old-fashioned, but a bigger flaw is the film’s presentation of how computers work. Our AI antagonist, ‘Joshua’, shows the ability to think creatively, talk and respond like a human and to learn from experience & repetition, all features that 30 years of superhuman technological advancement in the field of computing have still not been able to pull off with any real success; the first in a long series of plot holes. I myself spent much of the second act inwardly shouting at the characters for making quite so many either hideously dumb or just plain illogical decisions, ranging from agreeing on a whim to pay for a flight across the USA to a friend met just days earlier to deciding that the best way to convince a bunch of enraged FBI officers of that you are not a Soviet-controlled terrorist bent on destruction of the USA is to break out of their custody.

The first act largely avoided these problems, and the setup was well executed; our protagonist is David (Matthew Broderick), a late teenage high school nerd who manages to avoid the typical Hollywood idea of nerd-dom by being articulate, well-liked, not particularly concerned about his schoolwork and relatively normal. Indeed, the only clues we have to his nerdery come thanks to his twin loves of video gaming and messing around in his room with a computer, hacking into anything undefended that he considers interesting. The film also manages to avoid reverting to formula with regards to the film’s female lead, his friend Jennifer (Ally Sheedy), who manages to not fall into the role of designated love interest whilst acting as an effective sounding board for the audience’s questions; a nice touch when dealing subject matter that audiences of the time would doubtless have found difficult to understand. This does leave her character somewhat lacking in depth, but thankfully this proves the exception rather than the rule.

Parallel to this, we have NORAD; the USA’s nuclear defence headquarters, who after realising the potential risk of human missile operators being unwilling to launch their deadly weapons, decide to place their entire nuclear arsenal under computerised control. The computer in question is the WOPR, a supercomputer intended to continually play ‘war games’ to identify the optimal strategy in the event of nuclear war. So we have a casual computer hacker at one end of the story and a computer with far too much control for its own good in the other; you can guess how things are going to go from there.

Unfortunately, things start to unravel once the plot starts to gather speed. Broderick’s presentation of David works great when he’s playing a confident, playful geek, but when he starts trying to act scared or serious his delivery becomes painfully unnatural. Since he and Sheedy’s rather depthless character et the majority of the screen time, this leaves large portions of the film lying fallow; the supporting characters, such as the brash General Beringer (Barry Corbin) and the eccentric Dr. Stephen Falken (John Wood) do a far better job of filling out their respective character patterns, but they can’t quite overshadow the plot holes and character deficiencies of the twin leads. This is not to say the film is bad, far from it; director John Badham clearly knows how to build tension, using NORAD’s Defcon level as a neat indicator of just how high the stakes are/how much **** is waiting to hit the proverbial fan. Joshua manages to be a compelling bad guy, in spite of being faceless and having less than five minutes of actual screen time, and his famous line “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play” carries enough resonance and meaning that I’d heard of it long before I had the film it came from. It also attempts the classic trick, demonstrated to perfection in Inception, of dealing with subject matter that attempts to blur the line between fiction (the ‘war games’) and reality (nuclear war) in an effort to similarly blur its own fiction with the reality of the audience; it is all desperately trying to be serious and meaningful.

But in the end, it all feels like so much add-ons, and somehow the core dynamics and characterisation left me out of the experience. WarGames tries so very hard to hook the viewer in to a compelling, intriguing, high-stakes plot, but for me it just failed to quite pull it off. It’s not a bad film, but to me it all felt somehow underwhelming. The internet tells me that for some people, it’s a favourite, but for me it was gently downhill from the first act onwards. I don’t really have much more to say.

An Opera Posessed

My last post left the story of JRR Tolkein immediately after his writing of his first bestseller; the rather charming, lighthearted, almost fairy story of a tale that was The Hobbit. This was a major success, and not just among the ‘children aged between 6 and 12’ demographic identified by young Rayner Unwin; adults lapped up Tolkein’s work too, and his publishers Allen & Unwin were positively rubbing their hands in glee. Naturally, they requested a sequel, a request to which Tolkein’s attitude appears to have been along the lines of ‘challenge accepted’.

Even holding down the rigours of another job, and even accounting for the phenomenal length of his finished product, the writing of a book is a process that takes a few months for a professional writer (Dame Barbara Cartland once released 25 books in the space of a year, but that’s another story), and perhaps a year or two for an amateur like Tolkein. He started writing the book in December 1937, and it was finally published 18 years later in 1955.

This was partly a reflection of the difficulties Tolkein had in publishing his work (more on that later), but this also reflects the measured, meticulous and very serious approach Tolkein took to his writing. He started his story from scratch, each time going in a completely different direction with an entirely different plot, at least three times. His first effort, for instance, was due to chronicle another adventure of his protagonist Bilbo from The Hobbit, making it a direct sequel in both a literal and spiritual sense. However, he then remembered about the ring Bilbo found beneath the mountains, won (or stolen, depending on your point of view) from the creature Gollum, and the strange power it held; not just invisibility, as was Bilbo’s main use for it, but the hypnotic effect it had on Gollum (he even subsequently rewrote that scene for The Hobbit‘s second edition to emphasise that effect). He decided that the strange power of the ring was a more natural direction to follow, and so he wrote about that instead.

Progress was slow. Tolkein went months at a time without working on the book, making only occasional, sporadic yet highly focused bouts of progress. Huge amounts were cross-referenced or borrowed from his earlier writings concerning the mythology, history & background of Middle Earth, Tolkein constantly trying to make his mythic world feel and, in a sense, be as real as possible, but it was mainly due to the influence of his son Christopher, who Tolkein would send chapters to whilst he was away fighting the Second World War in his father’s native South Africa, that the book ever got finished at all. When it eventually did, Tolkein had been working the story of Bilbo’s son Frodo and his adventure to destroy the Ring of Power for over 12 years. His final work was over 1000 pages long, spread across six ‘books’, as well as being laden with appendices to explain & offer background information, and he called it The Lord of The Rings (in reference to his overarching antagonist, the Dark Lord Sauron).

A similar story had, incidentally, been attempted once before; Der Ring des Nibelungen is an opera (well, four operas) written by German composer Richard Wagner during the 19th century, traditionally performed over the course of four consecutive nights (yeah, you have to be pretty committed to sit through all of that) and also known as ‘The Ring Cycle’- it’s where ‘Ride of The Valkyries’ comes from. The opera follows the story of a ring, made from the traditionally evil Rhinegold (gold panned from the Rhine river), and the trail of death, chaos and destruction it leaves in its wake between its forging & destruction. Many commentators have pointed out the close similarities between the two, and as a keen follower of Germanic mythology Tolkein certainly knew the story, but Tolkein rubbished any suggestion that he had borrowed from it, saying “Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases”. You can probably work out my approximate personal opinion from the title of this post, although I wouldn’t read too much into it.

Even once his epic was finished, the problems weren’t over. Once finished, he quarrelled with Allen & Unwin over his desire to release LOTR in one volume, along with his still-incomplete Silmarillion (that he wasn’t allowed to may explain all the appendices). He then turned to Collins, but they claimed his book was in urgent need of an editor and a license to cut (my words, not theirs, I should add). Many other people have voiced this complaint since, but Tolkein refused and ordered Collins to publish by 1952. This they failed to do, so Tolkein wrote back to Allen & Unwin and eventually agreed to publish his book in three parts; The Fellowship of The Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of The King (a title Tolkein, incidentally, detested because it told you how the book ended).

Still, the book was out now, and the critics… weren’t that enthusiastic. Well, some of them were, certainly, but the book has always had its detractors among the world of literature, and that was most certainly the case during its inception. The New York Times criticised Tolkein’s academic approach, saying he had “formulated a high-minded belief in the importance of his mission as a literary preservationist, which turns out to be death to literature itself”, whilst others claimed it, and its characters in particular, lacked depth. Even Hugo Dyson, one of Tolkein’s close friends and a member of his own literary group, spent public readings of the book lying on a sofa shouting complaints along the lines of “Oh God, not another elf!”. Unlike The Hobbit, which had been a light-hearted children’s story in many ways, The Lord of The Rings was darker & more grown up, dealing with themes of death, power and evil and written in a far more adult style; this could be said to have exposed it to more serious critics and a harder gaze than its predecessor, causing some to be put off by it (a problem that wasn’t helped by the sheer size of the thing).

However, I personally am part of the other crowd, those who have voiced their opinions in nearly 500 five-star reviews on Amazon (although one should never read too much into such figures) and who agree with the likes of CS  Lewis, The Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times of the time that “Here is a book that will break your heart”, that it is “among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the twentieth century” and that “the English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and those who are going to read them”. These are the people who have shown the truth in the review of the New York Herald Tribune: that Tolkein’s masterpiece was and is “destined to outlast our time”.

But… what exactly is it that makes Tolkein’s epic so special, such a fixture; why, even years after its publication as the first genuinely great work of fantasy, it is still widely regarded as the finest work the genre has ever produced? I could probably write an entire book just to try and answer that question (and several people probably have done), but to me it was because Tolkein understood, absolutely perfectly and fundamentally, exactly what he was trying to write. Many modern fantasy novels try to be uber-fantastical, or try to base themselves around an idea or a concept, in some way trying to find their own level of reality on which their world can exist, and they often find themselves in a sort of awkward middle ground, but Tolkein never suffered that problem because he knew that, quite simply, he was writing a myth, and he knew exactly how that was done. Terry Pratchett may have mastered comedic fantasy, George RR Martin may be the king of political-style fantasy, but only JRR Tolkein has, in recent times, been able to harness the awesome power of the first source of story; the legend, told around the campfire, of the hero and the villain, of the character defined by their virtues over their flaws, of the purest, rawest adventure in the pursuit of saving what is good and true in this world. These are the stories written to outlast the generations, and Tolkein’s mastery of them is, to me, the secret to his masterpiece.

The Dark Knight Rises

OK, I’m going to take a bit of a risk on this one- I’m going to dip back into the world of film reviewing. I’ve tried this once before over the course of this blog (about The Hunger Games) and it went about as well as a booze-up in a monastery (although it did get me my first ever comment!). However, never one to shirk from a challenge I thought I might try again, this time with something I’m a little more overall familiar with: Christopher Nolan’s conclusion to his Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises.

Ahem

Christopher Nolan has never been one to make his plots simple and straightforward (he did do Inception after all), but most of his previous efforts have at least tried to focus on only one or two things at a time. In Dark Knight Rises however, he has gone ambitious, trying to weave no less than 6 different storylines into one film. Not only that, but 4 of those are trying to explore entirely new characters and a fifth pretty much does the whole ‘road to Batman’ origins story that was done in Batman Begins. That places the onus of the film firmly on its characters and their development, and trying to do that properly to so many new faces was always going to push everyone for space, even in a film that’s nearly 3 hours long.

So, did it work? Well… kind of. Some characters seem real and compelling pretty much from the off, in the same way that Joker did in The Dark Knight- Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle (not once referred to as Catwoman in the entire film) is a little bland here and there and we don’t get to see much of the emotion that supposedly drives her, but she is (like everyone else) superbly acted and does the ‘femme fakickass’ thing brilliantly, whilst Joseph Gordon Levitt’s young cop John Blake (who gets a wonderful twist to his character right at the end) is probably the most- and best-developed character of the film, adding some genuine emotional depth. Michael Caine is typically brilliant as Alfred, this time adding his own kick to the ‘origins’ plot line, and Christian Bale finally gets to do what no other Batman film has done before- make Batman/Bruce Wayne the most interesting part of the film.

However, whilst the main good guys’ story arcs are unique among Batman films by being the best parts of the film, some of the other elements don’t work as well. For someone who is meant to be a really key part of the story, Marion Cotillard’s Miranda Tate gets nothing that gives her character real depth- lots of narration and exposition, but we see next to none of her for huge chunks of the film and she just never feels like she matters very much. Tom Hardy as Bane suffers from a similar problem- he was clearly designed in the mould of Ducard (Liam Neeson) in Begins, acting as an overbearing figure of control and power that Batman simply doesn’t have (rather than the pure terror of Joker’s madness), but his actual actions never present him as anything other just a device to try and give the rest of the film a reason to happen, and he never appears to have any genuinely emotional investment or motivation in anything he’s doing. Part of the problem is his mask- whilst clearly a key feature of his character, it makes it impossible to see his mouth and bunches up his cheeks into an immovable pair of blobs beneath his eyes, meaning there is nothing visible for him to express feeling with, effectively turning him into a blunt machine rather than a believable bad guy. There’s also an entire arc concerning Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and his guilt over letting Batman take the blame for Harvey Dent’s death that is barely explored at all, but thankfully it’s so irrelevant to the overall plot that it might as well not be there at all.

It is, in many ways, a crying shame, because there are so many things the film does so, so right. The actual plot is a rollercoaster of an experience, pushing the stakes high and the action (in typical Nolan fashion) through the roof. The cinematography is great, every actor does a brilliant job in their respective roles and a lot of the little details- the pit & its leap to freedom, the ‘death by exile’ sequence and the undiluted awesome that is The Bat- are truly superb. In fact if Nolan had just decided on a core storyline and focus and then stuck with it as a solid structure, then I would probably still not have managed to wipe the inane grin off my face. But by being as ambitious as he has done, he has just squeezed screen time away from where it really needed to be, and turned the whole thing into a structural mess that doesn’t really know where it’s going at times. It’s a tribute to how good the good parts are that the whole experience is still such good fun, but it’s such a shame to see a near-perfect film let down so badly.

The final thing I have to say about the film is simply: go and see it. Seriously, however bad you think this review portrays it as, if you haven’t seen the film yet and you at all liked the other two (or any other major action blockbuster with half a brain), then get down to your nearest cinema and give it a watch. I can’t guarantee that you’ll have your greatest ever filmgoing experience there, but I can guarantee that it’ll be a really entertaining way to spend a few hours, and you certainly won’t regret having seen it.

The Hunger Redemption

Today, I wish to take a look at the subject of films. I do not make any claims to be a film buff or any expert on such things, but I go to see my fair share and like to think I know the basic principles and terminology.

Normally though, I still wouldn’t bring the topic up, but a couple of events over the last couple of days almost wrote a post for me. The first of these was a showing of The Shawshank Redemption on the TV the other day, which changed my opinion of the film from the mere Excellent ranking it had slipped to since last time I saw to up to the far more deserving Superlatively Awesome position. The other occurred earlier today, when I went to see The Hunger Games, and I saw an interesting opportunity to compare the two.

At first glance, this might seem quite an odd choice of comparison- the two films are from completely different eras of film making and have some wildly different fundamentals, but when one thinks about it they are actually remarkably similar in several aspects. Both are exactly the same length, both are adapted from highly successful books, both manage to cram a lot of film into their (admittedly still quite long) running times, and both contain a central theme of the man (or in the newer film’s case, woman) versus the system, to name but a few. The most important similarity though, is the films’ aims- neither are action showstoppers or visual spectaculars, trying to wow the audience with a show- these films are trying to appeal more on the basis of what they say and mean instead.

However, one crucial difference strikes me- my reaction to the film. Shawshank is a very emotive film for me, and it is impossible to watch it and not leave with a deep sense of the profound and the epic- the film just feels like it’s really, really good, as well as being so. The Hunger Games, on the other hand? Well, it’s certainly not bad, and is certainly above average, but something strikes me as… missing. There is nothing to elevate this film from the mundane and merely ‘good’, to the unique and exceptional- it lacks a certain spark imbued to truly great films.

But why exactly is that? What is it about the execution of The Hunger Games that makes me respond so comparatively poorly to it?

A first thing that strikes me is a lack of depth in the film’s plot. I have said already that a lot of stuff happens in the film, and I can see why they’ve done it- to drop sections would annoy fans of the book and spark web-based outrage for critics to giggle at. But then again, Harry Potter did much the same thing in pretty much every film (because how the hell do you pack 800 pages into a couple of hours screen time?) and, with hindsight, the film benefited from it. For all I know, not having read the books, Gary Ross (director & screenwriter) already did plenty of cutting but… a bit more probably wouldn’t have hurt, to be honest. So much ends up happening that is not a natural progression from another moment that it severely eats into the film’s running time without really adding anything major to it, and prevents anything from gathering any emotive weight to make it seem meaningful.

Speaking of lack of natural progression, that’s another thing- the film has a lot of thematic inconsistency that makes some sections sit very uncomfortably with others. The raw, rough nature of the District 12 opening scenes, for example, does not contrast as effectively as it should with the opulence of the Capitol and the accompanying stupid fashion sense. There is prime opportunity here to contrast the decadence and the poverty of the two and to create some real emotional hit to carry the film along with, but it never really comes. Katniss (the main character, whose name I cannot write without giggling inside) just seems to sit too comfortably with all the pomp and ceremony, which for a character who is meant to be fighting the system and even inspires a f*&%^$g rebellion, just seems odd- and yes, I know she has to make herself popular to attract sponsors, but it’s not beyond the wit of a filmmaker to at least demonstrate some emotional response to the whole business, is it? The irony is that the acting in the film is actually very good and emotive- but the screenplay and directing simply don’t allow it to come to the fore.

This lack of consistency is not only a plot-driven thing- there is a lot of it in the cinematography too. The film switches between ‘Hollywood-style’ backed off shots and more gritty, up close and personal moments- which I would applaud if this switching all happened when it apparently should. As it is… well, take a fight scene near the end. These scenes generally attempt to have on consistent camera aesthetic to get a consistent feel and allow the audience to absorb themselves in the action, rather than doing what Ross has chosen to do on this occasion and constantly switch between confusing, rolling shots between three people in black jumpsuits on a black background so you have no idea who anyone is, to sudden wide shots which tell you roughly who everyone is without giving you any real sense of immersion before throwing you back into the realm of confusion.

If I wanted to, I could go on nit-picking all day, which I don’t really means to since it demeans what is still a very good film. But my real point is that my perpetual feeling whilst watching The Hunger Games is one of a loss of direction, of there being something missing. There are lots of great elements, great camera shots, and great themes in there, but they all just appeared to have been thrown in haphazardly and mixed together without any real aim or direction. There is no real sense that this film has one consistent message, one standout theme, or one clear idea that it builds itself upon, and this just makes it feel… unsatisfying.

…And now to actually justify this as a contrast, I once again give you: The Shawshank Redemption– the epitome of a driven message ramming itself home. To understand what makes Shawshank great, only one simple fact needs to be noted- every single moment in this film is just one part of the emotional rollercoaster of up ‘n’ down of Andy DuFresne’s life. This is a film purely about one man’s life being  dragged through the shitheap, and his sheer determination and balls to pull himself out of it. It is a series of slow buildups and damning falls, of hopes being built and broken, and of the man finally coming good. Every risen hope dashed invests the heart of the viewer in DuFresne, and he becomes our collective avatar. We feel his joy when a chance of freedom or hope arises, and share his pain when it is dashed against the rock- which makes the film’s perfectly paced and beautiful finale something truly special, and something which the entire audience can enjoy and experience. Because we never get that kind of emotional investment in our characters, we are never in a position to enjoy it in the same way as The Hunger Games.

Do not take from this by any means that Games is a bad film, because it’s not, and I don’t mean to slam it so hard. I just think it’s a shame that would could have been a brilliant film has had to be compromised in such a way.