The Witch - an original and creative 'horror' movie

What an absolutely joy it was to watch this stripped-back supernatural thriller.  Written and directed by the completely unknown Robert Eggers, The Witch is set in 17th century rural New England and tells a tale of a puritan family who are expelled from their community and try to live off the land by themselves.  The family are a God-fearing bunch, typical perhaps of the time, with patriarch William (played by Ralph Ineson - who was also Finchy in The Office) opening the film admonishing the elders of their exiled village for being insufficiently pious.  Notions of religion, righteousness and fear are foreboded to be strong themes throughout.

The opening scene of the family going alone shows eldest daughter Thomasin (Anna Taylor-Joy) playing with her young baby brother.  She closes her eyes for a moment, and when she reopens them baby Sam has vanished.  She looks to the woods beyond as the autumn air blows eerily around her, what force could have taken her brother?

For the next 70 minutes the film tells a story that's almost-but-not-quite a straight horror thriller with a devilish coven of witches preying on the innocence of these pioneers.  Almost, but not quite.  The overt super-naturalism of the film is expertly portrayed so as to always permit rational explanation to the outside observer.  Much much more so than a traditional horror thriller ever would.  We are shown a witch luring a teenage boy in the woods.  But are we?  Teenage boys' minds do think in a certain way.  Certain creatures are possessed and act as if supernaturally powerful - but are we seeing this, or are we seeing this through the eyes of a witchcraft-obsessed 17th century peasant?  Seen like this the film is as much exploration of 17th century attitudes to religion, fear of witchcraft, fear of sexuality, repression and stress as it is a horror movie.  Even the film's final 5 minutes - which when seen as a straight depiction of events surely confirms the horror of what has passed before it - are only seen from one point of view.  This is the point of view of a repressed 17th century peasant convinced of the existence of witches and their own piousness before god.  Why wouldn't they see the world like that?

I hope you can tell that I really enjoyed this film.  If it was just the story thought it wouldn't quite be enough to rave as much as I am.  The experience of the film comes from so many elements coming together.  Everything is beautifully lit with natural light.  The framing is as much a part of the storytelling as anything, as we try to separate out what we are being told through the eyes of the characters and what is 'real'.  Even the soundtrack works.  And it really shouldn't when you think about what it is.  If you were ask you to make a slightly lame ghost noise, I bet you would make a noise that's not far from the sound the carries over many of the otherworldly shots of the barren New England forest.  It shouldn't work, but in the context of everything else it works perfectly.

Though the film deals with occult subject matter and is on the surface about witches and demons and the like, it only has a 15 rating.  That's reasonable as at no point are there any jump scares and blood is kept to a minimum.  It's all about atmosphere, lighting, space, mist, austerity and fear of the unknown.  As a non-traditional horror film I would recommend it even to people who perhaps shy away from scary movies.  Really quite happy to have kicked my 2017 in film off with this little gem from 2016.

Rogue One - Star Wars episode Meh

The new reality of the Star Wars 'franchise' is upon us.  Staying true to the mission they set themselves when they first acquired the rights from Lucasfilm, Disney have delivered a second Star Wars film in as many years.  Just as they promised, rather than continuing the narrative arc set up in last year's The Force Awakens, they have dipped into the back story of Star Wars to tell a one-off tale.  Rogue One tells the story of how the plans for the Death Star (that what they used to know how to blow up the Death Star in the original film) came into the possession of the Rebel Alliance.  Could be interesting.  Is it though?

The honest truth is that I am struggling to find anything to say that's hugely positive or negative about Rogue One.  When I heard that they were going to focus on the story of where the Death Star plans come from, I was wondering if we might get some sort of spy thriller.  But instead they put together the most basic of passable action films, with a whole bucket load of fanboy-pleasing nods to the original trilogy.

The Follows Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) on her quest to recover the Death Star plans.  Her father is a scientist who created the Death Star, and out of some remorse for what he's done he gets information to the Rebels that the plans are ripe for stealing.  The story then goes from Point A, to Point B, then to Point C, following a group of bland characters who's past histories and relationships are talked about but never shown, who's motivations are assumed but not established, into action sequences that are technically excellent but rather soulless. It then ends in a way that's hardly in keeping with a 12A certificate.

It's a film that feels like it was made by a committee that wanted to check just enough Star Wars boxes to make the fanboys happy while at the same time telling just enough of a proper story to keep a general audience on board.  It's a very well made film, it's well shot with some nice action scenes, sparse comic moments and a story that moves with a good pace.  However the characters are paper thin and the plot absolutely linear.  More than any major film release I can remember, this feels like it was made primarily for the money rather than primarily to tell a story.  It feels like it was scripted by a bunch of fanboys sitting in a coffee shop in one afternoon, who wanted to heave in as many Star Wars references as possible while counting the cheques for Disney.

Two points here.  One is that I am a Star Wars nerd.  So I do notice things like how when the X-Wings are shooting at the Star Destroyers and the dialogue says they would target their shields, that they're actually shooting at the bits of the ships that generate the shields.  I accept your sympathies.  However that kind of stuff doesn't make Rogue One a good film.  It's the sort of icing on the cake that they should be including as a little Easter Egg for the total nerds amongst us, whereas it felt like that sort of thing was meant to be the whole point.  Second point is that "This is a Star Wars film - of course it should have Star Wars references, what's wrong with that?" - you might say.  On one level that's fair enough, but if that's the focus of the film  then that's extremely limiting on what can be done and everything suffers as a result.  In the end the production team spend too long working on CGI recreations of Grand Moff Tarken and not long enough developing Jyn Erso's character.

What will the next one do (because this time next year the next episode will have been and gone)?  Can they keep harking back so strongly to the originals?  The Force Awakens was a remake of the originals.  Rogue One is a story set around the originals.  Has anything else ever happened in the Star Wars universe other than the force and this bloody Death Star?! There is plenty of Star Wars fan fiction out there that doesn't revolve around the original trilogy, why not mine that for story ideas?  There's a lot of galaxy out there to explore.  C'mon Disney - take some risks!

Dirty Dancing - Why am I reviewing this?

A very good question.  Well I happened to be at a small Christmas gathering last night and someone had the TV on.  Upon it there was Channel 5 (though not in HD on a massive HD TV - what on earth is the point?) showing the 1980s cult classic upon which this blog post will focus.  I have a slightly strange relationship with this film.  My Mum was a huge fan and my recollection is that she watched a VHS recording almost on repeat through a portion of the early 1990s.  Back in those days there was only 1 screen in the house, and as such it formed a small part of the background to my upbringing.  Seeing it again last night, I was surprised at the familiarity of the beats and cues of the film, almost as surprised as I was by the adult themes that had largely gone over my head as a 12 year old.

For those who have been living in a cave for the last 25 years, the premise is thus.  The Houseman family go for their summer holidays at a resort in upstate New York.  'Baby' Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is a young woman who falls in love with the resort's hotter-than-hot dancer Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze).  Citizen Kane it is not.

Sounds simple right?  Well it is.  So why is it so popular?  Well it's a question that on the surface has an obvious answer, but one can go slightly deeper and understand something about storytelling.  The obvious answer is that Patrick Swayze has amazing abs and dances like a god.  Women love dancing and washboard abs - so success is guaranteed right?  Well not quite.  Dirty Dancing is a film with a surprising amount of heart; it deals with issues of abortion, abuse, growing up and - crucially - has a central character in Baby who is the perfect every-woman.  Baby is assertive and confident, but also very vulnerable when she doesn't understand what's going on.  She has a father who is strong, understanding, supportive and emotional; he is a rock when she needs strength and breaks down in tears when she has disappoints him.  Oh and her lover is Patrick Swayze.  Who wouldn't want to be Baby?

This is the thing that so many rubbish films get so wrong.  It isn't enough to just tickle our visual taste buds (I'm talking about guns and action here just as much as I am talking about bums and abs), a film needs to have an emotional connection to make you care.  Don't get me wrong, Dirty Dancing isn't my kind of film, but I can relate to what is going on and I understand why it has come to touch the hearts of so many women (I would say 'people', but let's not kid ourselves eh?) out there in the movie-going world.

Of course there are numerous criticisms that we can legitimately level at the film.  For a start the sound track isn't completely of the 1960s, which is a huge mid-step for a film that works very hard to establish itself in that pre-Vietnam era.  Also it suffers from same as the main problem I have with the Twilight saga, which is that the main character is little more than an empty vessel on to which female viewers are encouraged to cast their own personalities.  I would argue that this criticism has less weight here than in the Twilight saga, here Baby's father and family have crushed her individuality and expression out of her, so we might expect her personality to be a little thin.  However I agree that this is one of the film's major weaknesses.

Certainly no-one is going to be persuaded to watch Dirty Dancing or not as a result of this blog.  These are merely some musings on a cult film that has firmly entrenched its place in the zeitgeist over the last 25 years.  I shall try to get another review in before 2017 - would be a bit weird to end the year on a film that was released in 1987 after all!

Seconds - very Twilight Zone

I honestly cannot remember now what it was that made me seek out this interesting film that's straight out of the playbook of classic 1960s The Twilight Zone, only with a twisted subtext that only gets darker as the plot comes to a conclusion.  Seconds is a minor masterpiece typical of the modernist science fiction thriller genre that was hugely popular in post war US mainstream culture.  John Randolph plays Arthur Hamilton, an aging city banker who is bored of his life and comes upon a secret society that promises him youth and a new identity.  His death is faked and he becomes Antiochus Wilson (played by Rock Hudson), younger, surrounded by youth, opportunity, and a sudden dislocation from everyone and everything he once knew.

If anyone ever wanted to do a study into the impact that direction has upon the tone of a film, then the contrast between the Hamilton and Wilson portions of Seconds provides ample material.  The director uses blocking and framing during the opening 25 minutes to convey the unease of Hamilton's world.  Everything from his dislocation from his wife and career to his fraught attempts to inveigle himself into the secret society - not a word needs to be said to tell us the alienation engulfing him.  Contrast this with the latter half of the film, the camerawork is free and feels more like a pop video at times as it effortlessly describes a world of youth, opportunity and new possibilities.

The film is very much a tale of being careful for what one wishes.  In the great tradition of The Twilight Zone the story presents a character with what the audience knows is a Faustian Bargain, a fact that only becomes apparent to the protagonist far too late.  Some may find the character's ultimately downward trajectory a little too depressing to take, but this is dystopian science fiction at its most pure so I would be shocked if it didn't appeal to a less-than-mainstream audience.  In the end I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in science fiction, especially those who have enjoyed and of the various incarnations of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits or Tales of the Unexpected that have existed over the years.

Son of Saul - Bleak, Art, Important

The sort of film I definitely would have watched in the cinema back when I was at university and hanging out at Nottingham's premier arthouse cinema every week, Son of Saul is a brutal and terrifying depiction of a few days in the life of a Sonderkomando at Auschwitz concentration camp.  As it turned out, I only got around to seeing it a few weeks ago - one of the few films of 2016 I have actually seen in 2016.  One of fewer still that I have managed to blog about.

There is little shortage of depictions of the horrors of Nazi Germany on the silver screen.  The intent of these films is more often than not a message to the post modern world to not forget the horrors that the modern one wrought upon itself.  Sadly though, only 80 years since Hitler presided over the infamous Berlin Olympics, it feels like many Europeans have forgotten how easy it is to allow peace to slip away.  As far right movements once again take hold of populist politics in France, Austria, Hungary and to a much lesser extent here in the UK, it is more important than ever to reminder ourselves where the politics of hate end up taking us.

Which is exactly what Son of Saul does.  The film follows Saul Ausländer, a Hungarian Sonderkomando who is forced to undertake the horrific work of leading people into Auschwitz's gas chambers, and then sorting their belongings and clearing out their bodies afterwards.  The story is told exclusively from Ausländer's perspective, with the camera residing either just over his shoulder or closely in his face.  In this way, the horrors of Auschwitz are presented to us via his reactions rather than directly.  His reaction (or numb lack of reaction) to what we know is going on out of shot easily as effecting as seeing any other brutal depiction of the Holocaust.  The film is about hopelessness and the pain that people can inflict on their fellows when we stop seeing people as people.  If there is a glimmer of hope in the way the film ends, then it is perhaps a nod to the idea fact that the Holocaust did, eventually, end.  The hope was for a new generation to remember, commemorate, and say 'never again'.

It's a film that's deliberately hard to watch.  But that's the point, keeping the peace and working together for the benefit of all isn't easy.  It's something we all have to work for.  Son of Saul does its part to remind us of the perils of taking the path of the scapegoat.  Please Europe - Never Again.

The Green Mile - I read this AGES ago!

In a rare case of me actually having read a book before seeing the film, I saw The Green Mile a few weeks back.  I know this is a film that was made quite a lot of years ago, and I doubt I ever would have watched it had it not turned up on one of the IMDB's top lists during one of my semi-regular attempts to complete the entire list.  But there it was, a thorn in my IMDB completionist side.  It was time to watch.

Made almost 20 years ago, Tom Hanks looks considerably more youthful as our main protagonist - death row prison guard Paul Edgecomb.  Edgecomb's philosophy is simple: society has deemed the men under his watch to die for their crimes, his job is simply to make the entire process as hassle free and painless as possible.  That means understanding, compassion and avoiding confrontation.  Into this environment is brought the man mountain John Coffey (Michael Duncan), convicted of a double murder of two small girls and destined to die.  Edgecomb's initial fears of dealing with Coffey are soon put to one side, as Coffey is found to not only be a gentle giant, but a man of seemingly supernatural abilities apparently unable to have committed the crimes for which he is guilty.

It hardly requires a degree in narrative analysis to understand that John Coffey represents Jesus Christ.  Being condemned to death for a crime he did not commit, possessing of miraculous powers of healing, living in a society that holds deep structural prejudices against him and - of course - holding the initials JC, things are more overt than the allusions for Paul Newman's character in Cool Hand Luke.  It's a simple story that's rather powerful, says something about the history of 20th century America and very much worth the commitment to enjoy.

For a story that is set on death row, it is surprisingly neutral on the morality of the punishment.  Though of course the death of John Coffey is undoubtedly a tragic event, his death is paralleled with the death of Christ.  Since Christian doctrine celebrates the death of Jesus as a moment in which humanity is saved, it is unclear whether ultimately even Coffey's death is considered a sin.  We have the death of fellow inmate Delacroix that hints at the horrors of the death penalty, but even this horror is perpetrated by sadistic guard Percy Wetmore rather than at the system itself.  In fact Delacroix's journey to death on the Green Mile is portrayed as a noble act, that in accepting his fate gracefully he achieves some kind of repentance.  Perhaps the point is to simply make us think about these issues, which the film undoubtedly does.  One to go back into the annals of film and catch up on.

1984 - Made in 1984

My interested in Michael Radford's 1984 was raised recently when it was revealed to me that Mr Radford's kid attends my girlfriend's school.  Having recently introduced her to his wonderful 2004 version of The Merchant of Venice (Al Pacino plays Shylock no less) the school had him come along and give a talk to the kids about his career.  We never got anything like that when I was in school - I can tell you for free.

I'm no expert on literature, but I think 1984 is one of the great works of fiction.  Structurally and narratively is it as good as anything I've ever read.  Its discussion of the use of language, education and social stratification as a way of controlling a population was a grim nightmare when it was written, however in the modern age the people of North Korea really do live in such a world.  Orwell's vision of telescreens that would allow a totalitarian state to continuously keep tabs on a population isn't beyond comparison to a modern snooper's charter.  The language from 1984 has seeped into the everyday idiom - phrases like "Thought Police", "Big Brother", "Room 101" and "Doublethink" need no explanation.

Anyway - it's my favourite book.

A film adaptation would always be troublesome since so much of 1984 happens in the internal monologue of our main character Winston Smith.  We experience the world from his point of view. Since film-making from a first person viewpoint is almost impossible, and over-use of internal monologue tedious, Radford (who wrote the screenplay) does an excellent job of world-building without resorting to it.  A number of flashback scenes that go to Smith's childhood, mentioned briefly in the book, are expanded upon here to build the nightmare world of Orwell's envisioning.

John Hurt plays Smith, and he does it with a painful strain that conveys everything we know about the character from Orwell's words.  In one of his last ever roles, Richard Burton plays the enigmatic O'Brien, who Smith initially believes to be an operative of the underground movement, but soon reveals himself to be an apparatchik of the state.  His performance is calm and methodical, his character is equally happy sitting discussing politics as he his administering torture.

Having been worried that this adaptation wouldn't be able to do justice to my favourite novel, I came away from watching it fully happy with what I had seen.