Brighton Rock

Wanting to like a film is an interesting phenomenon. It's a better thing to do then wanting to dislike a film which is just unnecessary negativism. But it becomes like a solipsistic version of when you recommend a film to others. You're really keen for them to enjoy it and you're not fully concentrating because of that.

I was really keen to like Brighton Rock. Because it was British. Because it felt like an underdog piece when up against the American Oscar run, the King's speech juggernaut and even the star power of Never Let Me Go. Because it just seemed so unfair that the film came out now and will get buried under the competition when it would have done well in October.

So I almost don't know how I feel about it. There's a part of me that thinks it's a fantastic film and yet I have no courage in my conviction.

It is slightly overdirected. But often done so expertly, visual, tense and beautiful.

There are some extraordinary clunkers of dialogue and scenes which fizz or leave you feeling your insides tighten.

There is a clunky Catholicism that never feels anything more than an add on. The sense that Pinky is going to hell and knows it, just trying to put off the inevitable, is palpable. Yet none of the scenes or conversations about catholicism feel authentic. When you compare it to Of Gods and Men it's laughable.

Yet I remember how I felt in the last scene at the dread and sadness I felt at what was about to happen and the true ambiguity I felt about what I think would be better to have felt. And I definitely feel I was watching a film that had me, that had got under my skin and made me really care about a character who doesn't exist.

Rose is the defintion of pathetic. Both definitions. You want to shake her and put her to rights for being so stupid, so blind, so hooked into a false destructive belief in romance (it was an interesting choice of film for Valentine's day) and half the time you're ready to give her up because frankly she deserves it.

And yet you want to protect her, a girl broken down by her mousy downtrodden life and given a chance to be a romantic heroine. Someone who if you can get her out of there she can live. She might one day thrive.

Which is more than can be said for pinky. It's pretty common for gangster flicks to get you routing for a criminal to escape. It's a little more to have you half routing for a boy who seems to pump cold malice through his system.

You hope for his redemption. You hope for his escape. You hope that when his friend claims that he's doing something honourable with Rose he's right. That speaking into a record player that he hates her is the conflicts of a scared and damaged soul. Not just a simple malice.

But you know you're kidding yourself. You're copying Rose in giving him strengths he doesn't possess. And you know that Rose would probably drive you to, if not the hate he feels, but a disgust at her total projection and detachment from the reality he's desperately trying to manage.

They are two really strong performances. Tragic youthful romance made more tragic by the presumption on her part that tragic youthful romance is a magnificent thing rather than pathetic drisly miserable.

So yes I think it's a film which deserves more attention then it's getting. And I hope the people who made it are recognised as talent who should be allowed to do tales of such scope again. And that the distributor have learnt not to try and go toe to toe with the Fox Searchlights of this world.

Two postscripts: I loved the backdrop of fights between mods and rockers. It worked brilliantly.

A lot of the big films of the last year seem to be about young people. This may be the first time I've started to consistently see films about people younger than me.