The Truman Show

I'm assuming that everyone reading this has seen the Truman Show (if not - SPOILER ALERT!!), however I don't know if you well all agree with my opinion that it was one of the most important US films in the 1990s. Not only does the film take the possibilities of 'reality tv' to an as-yet-unfulfilled extreme, but it tells a story about a genuinely good character and celebrates the foibles of humanity (good or bad) in an age where there is genuine apathy in the world.

To me though, the most important part of the film - an aspect that is commonly overlooked - is its role as an anti-religious tract. It's an allegory for the story of Genesis, in which Adam's expulsion from the Garden of Eden is re-interpreted as a victory for the sprit of humanity rather than a fall from grace and ultimate sin.

Truman is Adam, the television studio in which he has lived his life is his own personal Garden of Eden. He is safe, he has friends, he is loved by all and has a wonderful life; but it isn't enough. What he really wants is freedom from his prison, a prison that might be paradise, but a prison none-the-less. At the end of the film he tries to escape by sailing away to an unknown land but ends up hitting the edge of the studio. As a last desperate act to keep him where he is the Truman Show's creative genius and producer speaks to Truman as if from nowhere, his booming voice telling Truman his life inside the studio is perfect in every way while outside the studio lies insecurity and difficult times - the normal trials and tribulations of being human. Truman muses this for a moment before deciding to reject the studio and the voice of God in favour of his own humanity. It's a triumphant moment, one that makes me tingle every time I see it - reproduced here through the magic of youtube.

The Silence of Lorna - pretentious

A lot of people are turned off arthouse cinema. I generally like to be a bit more open-minded, and when I heard about 'The Silence of Lorna' I thought there was going to be a real chance of seeing a great film. The synopsis is simple, but has plenty of potential. The main character - Lorna - is an Eastern European immigrant into Belgium who is trying to obtain Belgian citizenship through a sham marriage to a Belgian loner. She is approached by an underground friend of hers, would she like to earn some extra money by doing the same for a Russian businessman once she has her citizenship confirmed? An interesting premise yes?

Sadly 'The Silence of Lorna' demonstrates why so many people are so fearful of what they perceive to be incomprehensible and pretentious world cinema. The interesting premise is essentially squandered by senseless cuts and holes in the plot, which are probably extremely 'artistic' to people who care - but don't really help with telling a story. One utterly incomprehensible cut shows Lorna chatting to her boyfriend, then in the very next scene she is calmly identifying his body at the morgue. Maybe that's meant to represent the suddenness of death, but it just confused the hell out of me. I even had to check out the message boards on IMDB to find out if I'd missed something or if my DVD was kaput, but it turned out that the director is simply pretentious.

'The Silence of Lorna' embodies many of the things about art house cinema that make it inaccessible to some people and put many others off entirely. I was not impressed, but then I'm probably 'wrong'.

Damages - my current favourite TV series

It's quite fashionable these days to watch boxed sets of American television drama. I became a fan of West Wing and The Wire by watching them long after the release of the original few seasons on DVD rental. I generally like to follow the new televisual releases from the states in the hope of stumbling across a new gem. It was therefore with trepidation that I embarked upon watching a new US series - Damages. After all, I had never heard of this before unwrapping the paper on my birthday - how could a series that none of the literati at the Guardian website had ever told me I needed to watch ever be any good?

The first season of Damages is a story told almost entirely in flashback. The opening scene of the series presents us with a tentative glimpse at the present, of a woman running dazed with blood on her hands is being picked up by the police. We cut to 6 months in the past and are thrown into the life of this woman - Ellen Parsons played by Ross Byrne - as she embarks upon her legal career in New York City working under the ruthlessly efficient prosecution lawyer Patty Hughes (Glenn Close). Ellen is immediately put to work on Hughes' biggest case, a prosecution against the super-rich business mogul Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson). She stars out starry-eyed but soon realises that she is being used by those around her and needs to harden up and play their game.

Far from being a straight drama about a law firm, this is a twisting psychological thriller in which people are used up and spat out by a legal system that cares not for the law, rather it caters to the strengths of the personalities and ruthlessnesses of those who apply it. As the series progresses, small snippets of the 'present' are revealed as the main story edges closer to the time when we know that Ellen's boyfriend will be dead and she will have blood on her hands. What causes these terrible events to happen? How and why is Patty Hughes involved in Ellen's personal life? All questions that are slowly and tantalisingly answered.

Glenn Close is awesome as Patty Hughes, the vicious lawyer and ruthless boss of her own law firm who schemes out the lives of those around her and yet shows moments of weakness when presented with things she knows she cannot control. The first season (all I have seen so far) wraps up most of the necessary loose ends while gathering up those that remain into into an exciting teaser for the next. Clearly the format and plot of the second series is going to be dramatically different, but if the writers of the show manage to tap into the depth of the characters they spent the first season creating I don't see how it can be anything but another astonishing 12 episodes of television.

Watch this space then. If it carries on being as good as this it might be worth an update.

Moon

Finally, finally I got around to watching Moon last Wednesday. Lauded by all as the best science fiction film of 2009 and a throwback to the pensive and introspective science fiction films of the 1970s - it was impossible to not be excited.

There were so many things about this film that I loved. The background music sent me straight into that world of 1970s science fiction like Dark Star or Westworld. The throwback special effects that use actual models for the station and rovers on the moon reminded me of Red Dwarf and an age when science fiction had to rely on stories and characters over whiz-bang CGI. Most of all though, I was captivated by the performance of Sam Rockwell; who plays a man running a mineral production facility on the moon all by himself. It is a lonely job but one in which he is kept sane by the promise of a fat pay cheque and imminent return to Earth when we will be re-united with his wife. It is also a necessary job, made so by the Earth’s endless demand for new and cheap energy sources.

It's a simple premise, one which allows a quite brilliant story to shine. It is hardly a spoiler to state it - since it happens only 20 minutes into the film - so I shall reveal that the science fiction revolves around the main character discovering a second person identical to himself on the moon base. In lesser films this would have been a 'big reveal' moment that required orchestral music and a montage of flashbacks, here though it is an open invitation to explore the psychology of a character who has to deal with this insane situation - and slowly realise what his discovery means for his own life.

The film has a chillingly creepy performance by Kevin Spacey as the voice of the robot that wanders around the moon base helping Sam out (the character played by Rockwell is conveniently called Sam). There was something about the simplicity of the smiley / sad face that this robot uses to express 'emotions' that gave it equal parts terrifying machine-like efficiency and touchingly humanity - a great touch by the set designers. The ease with which the robot keeps Sam in the dark about certain truths while at the same time seeming to genuinely care for his welfare is reminiscent of some king of Orwellian nanny state - all needs accounted for, all fears and emotions mollified.

The film ends up being about sacrifice, secrets and facing up to an untimely unwanted future. Sam Rockwell acts his socks off in scenes where he is talking to himself. Watching the DVD extras afterwards revealed to me that he used to memorise each performance listening to himself on headphones before running through the scene again as the 'other' him. The result is genuinely affecting.

On my original friedgold.co.uk website (still up and running if you fancy a glimpse into my fairly recent past) I used a rating system in which good films got 6/10 and great films got 8/10. I would reserve the hallowed 10/10 for films that were genuine classics, genre-defining or otherwise notable beyond the normal situation in which one would label a film 'great'. I think I only gave a handful of films 10/10 over the course of about 5 years.

Moon - 10/10

The Road - bleak

Old Viggo Mortensen has to be applauded for what he has done to his career since Lord of the Rings. It would have been so easy to go down the Orlando Bloom route of using his new-found stardom to earn piles of cash in a series of god-awful Holywood action tripe-fests; instead he is using his currency as a star earn himself roles in a series intelligent modern mini classics. 'Eastern Promises', 'Good' and now 'The Road' - all films in which the ability to act has been a requirement rather than an added bonus. Viggo has shown himself to fit into the roles demanded of him with ease.

So we know that Viggo's awesome, what of this new film. It's the story of a man and his son, and their journey across an apocalypse-ravaged landscape in search of survival. It's a bleak place with no animals, few plants and where a simple can of coke is a luxury to be treasured. In flashbacks we see glimpses of the man's life before the end of civilisation, moments with his wife and their son before they were separated for good.

The flashbacks posed more questions than they answered though. For example Viggo runs a bath of water when he hears noises and fires outside their house. Now, any survivalist worth his salt will tell you that the first thing you do when the end comes is to horde as much water as you can before the pumps stop working - clever Viggo. But then literally all that's happened to prompt him is some noises and a fire outside his house. Does he react like this every time there's something unsettling going on in his street? Must be a nightmare for the neighbours. So perhaps his character had prior knowledge that the end might be coming? Perhaps that's why he seems to have survived so long after the end? Perhaps there's a sordid back story? Answers to these questions are never forthcoming.

This is a grim film, one in which there clearly isn't going to be a satisfying or overtly 'happily ever after' ending. We don't get anywhere near finding out how much hope is left in the world, indeed we don't even get to find out what it is that caused the apocalypse (although the possible effects of a nuclear holocaust are hinted at). This was satisfying, since it meant that the film focussed entirely on the drama of the man, his son and the people they encounter on their travels, rather than looking at the bigger picture of what was going on in the world. Everything that happens is a picture of hopelessness, of how humanity could turn in on itself if the thin veneer of civilisation was suddenly no longer present.

But then, after all that there is an ever-so-slight glimmer of hope at the end of the film. It's almost as if the cynicism of the past is being washed away by the cleansing affect of the apocalypse. An odd sentiment I know, but it's difficult to describe what I thought about the ending without giving too much away (not that there's much in the way of a twist of course). Probably not essential that you see it in the cinema, but certainly worth a 100 minute investment to see a couple of fantastic acting performances.

Paranormal Activity - Things that go bump...

The hype surrounding this film has been claiming that it is the scariest of all time. Reviews and reviewers are clambering over each other to tell us how they've been unable to sleep since watching the film and that they were literally falling out of their chairs with terror while it was on. Pretty strong stuff, so I went into the cinema with a little trepidation. I rarely jump or get overly frightened by horror films, so I was naturally worried that I might get all wussy with this one – it's a macho thing I think.

Paranormal Activity is a very effective movie, one in which sound and subtle changes in character and ambiance create a terrifying atmosphere. The plot revolves around a couple who live in a house and live with night terrors, the boyfriend decides to film their experiences to record and document the paranormal activity. The girlfriend tells stories of her past in which she has been haunted by demons and calls in a psychic to diagnose her problems. As her boyfriend starts to take matters seriously and begins to call the demon out, the paranormal activity gets worse. From noises to footprints and then to physical presences, we never get to see what's causing the hauntings, but it's impact is constantly present and terrifying.

'Paranormal Activity' is only 80 minutes long, but it has no need to be any longer. The payoff at the end of the film is suitably subtle and unnerving, a fitting end to a film that has been made in the same vein.

It didn't stop me sleeping or have me jumping out of my seat, but 'Paranormal Activity' certainly is one of the most unsettling and effective horror films I have seen in a long time.

The Best Films of 2009

I was going to do this ages ago, but various things got in the way and so it has had to wait until I am at a loose end. A snowy day when I'm 'working at home' is about as loose an end as I can muster, so here it is - my top 5 films of 2009...

5 - An Education
A young girl comes of age at the start of the swinging sixties and learns a lot about life, people, men and her own future in a short space of time. A brilliant performance from Carey Mulligan underlines this touching drama - although the ending could have been a little tighter.

4 - Zombieland
Comedy of the year is Zombieland. Daftness and poignancy go together so well when the script is right, such as it is here. Plus there's the bit with Bill Murray - officially very funny.

3 - Slumdog Millionaire
It may be 12 months now since I saw Slumdog, but the vibrancy of the direction in the film is still with me. I can still remember the moment when I was in the cinema and realised that all the co-incidences that allow Jamal to know all the answers to the show's questions were not irritating plot points - rather they were part of some wonderful fairy tale. The answer to the film's final question - how come this Slumdog can know all the answers to these questions - gives me a warm glow every time I remember it; the answer is 'D: It is written'.

2 - District 9
Sadly I have didn't get around to seeing 'Moon' in 2009 (I have the DVD now though), so Sci Fi of the year goes deservedly to 'District 9'. It is filled with metaphors for South Africa's apartheid past and the difficulties the nation faces in the modern age, as such the film gets away with being part action blockbuster, part documentary and part political satire.

1 - In The Loop
It was a tough call, but for me 'In The Loop's' mix of sweary comedy and biting satire had enough to make it stand out as my film of the year. It pointed out that political conspiracies do not imply smoke-filled rooms of people trying to fake the moon landings, rather they can be real things in which people are simply trying to further their careers by doing what they think their bosses expect. Plus there's all the swearing, here's a quick clip just in case you've forgotten.



So that's 3 out of 5 British films (well, Slumdog was directed by a Briton), who says the British film industry is dead?!