Depressing Films

Watched a couple of really depressing films last week. The first was 'Neds', that follows the upbringing of a bunch of going-nowhere teenagers in 1970s Glasgow, and the second was 'Exhibit-A', which presents 'found footage' of an English family slowly falling apart. Both are almost relentless in their depiction of ordinary people locked into a downwards spiral of their own doing. Only 'Neds' offers any comedy relief, and then it's very brief.

'Neds' follows the upbringing of John McGill, a bright young kid growing up on a working class Glaswegian housing estate in the 1970s where - as John Lennon said - they hate you if you're clever and despise a fool. He graduates from primary school and is immediately threatened by kids who say they're going to make his life hell at secondary school. I'm sure everyone can relate to that fear of the unknown every child has when changing schools. John moves school though and is put in the second class down, after trying to be moved into the upper class (and getting beaten for failing) he knuckles down and after a term proves himself with his grades. Fast forward several years and John is sitting at the top of his class with his bright future ahead.

How is it then that during the summer months John manages to get in with the wrong people and become something of a lunatic feared by local street gangs? It's a question that the film poses but offers few answers. Perhaps the influence of a drunken father has inevitably driven him here? Perhaps the stress of trying to be the intellectual in a world that hates intelligence finally gets to him? Maybe it's just bad luck. Whatever the answer, the events of the last 2 thirds of the film are so unrealistic and unbelievable that they undermine the film's social realism. By the end I was depressed and confused in equal measure.

Second up was 'Exhibit A'. The opening shot of the film is a police information slide explaining that 'the following footage...' was found at the scene of the murder. So right away we know that someone's going to die. The film follows several months in the lives of a Yorkshire family, the father of which struggles to hold his life together as a number of small things pan out against him.

This is a mercifully short film (85 minutes) given its psychologically tortuous content. It's a film whose main point seems to be that secrets are a good thing, no matter how much we might think openness is a good idea. If you knew what everyone thought of you then the world wouldn't be much fun for anyone. Interesting enough but fairly obvious stuff really and hardly breaking new ground in the found footage genre.

God those films were depressing. You can tell I don't have a Love Film account to be happy, my next film was 'American - The Bill Hicks Story', a documentary about Bill Hicks. Hicks was an anti-establishment comedian who was prone to launching vicious verbal attacks on the government and religious conservatism of the nation of his birth. Sadly Hicks died of pancreatic cancer in the early 90s, yet somehow Jim Davidson lives on.

Again, depressing. What's next...