The Adjustment Bureau
Something I would not recommend to say as you're going into the cinema with someone is 'Nick I don't think I'm going to like this'. Can make you a little nervous.
Naturally expectations being the game it is, I came out frustrated and she came out pleasantly surprised.
But then she thought she was being taken to see a Bourne rip off and I thought I was going to see a modern Matter of Life and Death.
So first, the Bourne bits. Matt Damon is very good at running. If you've seen a Bourne film you'd know that. But it bears repeating. Most people would look ridiculous but he manages to pull it off. Which is just as well as he does a lot of it.
My worry is that he is the reason why there is so much running. It's a film which is trying to mix a number of things: fantasy, romance, action film and political thriller. And it could probably have succeeded if it had just tried three. I'm just bit sure which three.
Fantasy has to be kept. It's the best bit. There's a wonderful world created of trilbies, transporting through doors and highly bureaucratic angels. It's well conceived, fun and nicely executed. With the exception of the man Damon who can't pull off a trilby at all, everyone looks very snazzy and it gives a great feel to it.
Romance doesn't quite work. I don't really like Emily blunt in it. Partly I don't like her in it, she doesn't quite have the charm. Partly their scenes togetheraren't that well written.
They're not terrible. But not sparkling.
But mostly the problem is that she is a cipher. She doesn't have her own plot. She just is chased first by mr Damon in a nice way and then by the trilbies in a nasty way. Afterwards we were talking about how much more interesting it would be if she was the one who could be a great president and he had to decide whether to risk sacrificing that. Or if her fiancée was actually the person that really mattered and they needed her to support him. And finally they just simply didn't spend enough time together for it to feel right. They needed to have at least spent one night together before he gets too obsessed.
Action: as I said he's very good at running and it gives the film a pace that makes it refreshing given the rest of the subject matter. The director is no Paul greengrass though so while it's fine, it's nothing to write home about.
Political thriller. The first sequence, with him campaigning through to him giving a speech about how everything is focus grouped is really nicely put together. You get the feeling this is one of the bits which the director felt most assured with. And given the amount of
The Democratic party establishment who turn up in the first 10 pages, it's probably the bit he knows best. But they seem to drop it. He's told that they've manipulated his life to make him driven to be President. And that's set up as a bad thing, a cruel piece of social engineering which denies him his chance of happiness. Which is obviously true but I don't think it's considered much of a dilemma. The sense of duty, that the world might need him to be president, is shrugged aside very quickly in a way that I think makes the final decision somewhat unsatisfying.
So I'm not sure what bit i'd drop. I'd just like nearly all of them to be better. It's a great idea and so many details are great and imaginative. But it doesn't quite take the subject matter by the scruff of the neck. It, like so many of my own ideas, doesn't fulfil the promise of the premise. But at least his made a film.
Showing posts with label Film reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film reviews. Show all posts
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Born Romantic
Not a self-description (my great discovery of my mid-20s was that I'm not really, i just like Hollywood movies)
It's the name of a bad movie I watched on Monday on the old iplayer. I don't normally review stuff watched at home (I'd just end up getting behind on my reviews again) but I feel like this film is a useful failure from someone trying to do similar things to me.
Those things:
Make London a character like Paris and New York so often are
Be intelligently mainstream and romantic
Look at Londoners as I think of them- in their 20s/30s, mostly from elsewhere originally, not struggling but never going to look right in a Richard Curtis movie
And moreover I suspect it's weaknesses are similar to ones I can see myself making. I'll review it and then pick up on this.
It's got a very weak title sequence with unexciting scenes of that most exciting of dances, Salsa. It then produces its setup of three men pursuing three women all rotating around a salsa club in London. They are shepherded by a ubiquitous and all wise taxi driver played by Adrian lester who somehow manages not to be really annoying, something he deserves great credit for. There's also a poor Greek chorus of misogynistic cabbies which is trite and not worth talking about.
It's a confusing film to watch because I watched it saying to myself that if It wasn't any good I'd turn it off. Then some point after the first act I found myself saying 'this is good' and determined to keep watching it. From then on it was like watching the wheels slowly and safely come off. There was no car crash just the eventual realisation that it's not going to get you there.
So what was good? Catherine McCormack plays a neurotic weirdo who tends graves for those who can't get to them. It's a genuinely interesting idea and I think for the most part she plays her well. Highly highly neurotic but with a warmth and interest in others to go with her vulnerability
They play her off a puppy eyed idiot who steals for not very clear reasons. It's not because he's good at it. It's declared at the end that he's getting off the rush but he doesn't seem to succeed enough for that to be worth it. His one redeeming feature is that he takes care of his dad with alzheimers but he doesn't even seem to do that with much warmth.
And that's a little bit the problem throughout. The girls have very clear flaws in big type: one's neurotic, one's cold and rude and won't let anyone in, one's a massive slut hiding her pain in booze and blokes.
By contrast the flaws with the men are basically that they're not very impressive. One's a thief, one's a failed musician and one I'm not sure but he seems to have had some money now sinking with his ex wife and his decaying house. But the key problem is that they're idiots, obnoxious and apparently all they have to do to change is learn how to salsa.
It seems unequal and this is something I often find to be the case with rom-coms and something i worry might be the case with Advanced Fun.
I'm trying to figure out what Lois's flaws are. She's not very good at letting go, she likes things to be planned. But spontaneity isn't beyond her.
She fails to notice that Mark isn't loving the fun. She doesn't have any feminine intuition. Well certainly not more than Toby.
She's one for distracting from her problems- she thinks she's falling for her flatmate so she goes on a date. She thinks she's lonely so she goes on a quest for fun.
I'm not sure if that's enough. But I do know the flaws have to be the little ones people have, misjudgements, lapses in selfishness not a one liner like in born romantic.
It's the name of a bad movie I watched on Monday on the old iplayer. I don't normally review stuff watched at home (I'd just end up getting behind on my reviews again) but I feel like this film is a useful failure from someone trying to do similar things to me.
Those things:
Make London a character like Paris and New York so often are
Be intelligently mainstream and romantic
Look at Londoners as I think of them- in their 20s/30s, mostly from elsewhere originally, not struggling but never going to look right in a Richard Curtis movie
And moreover I suspect it's weaknesses are similar to ones I can see myself making. I'll review it and then pick up on this.
It's got a very weak title sequence with unexciting scenes of that most exciting of dances, Salsa. It then produces its setup of three men pursuing three women all rotating around a salsa club in London. They are shepherded by a ubiquitous and all wise taxi driver played by Adrian lester who somehow manages not to be really annoying, something he deserves great credit for. There's also a poor Greek chorus of misogynistic cabbies which is trite and not worth talking about.
It's a confusing film to watch because I watched it saying to myself that if It wasn't any good I'd turn it off. Then some point after the first act I found myself saying 'this is good' and determined to keep watching it. From then on it was like watching the wheels slowly and safely come off. There was no car crash just the eventual realisation that it's not going to get you there.
So what was good? Catherine McCormack plays a neurotic weirdo who tends graves for those who can't get to them. It's a genuinely interesting idea and I think for the most part she plays her well. Highly highly neurotic but with a warmth and interest in others to go with her vulnerability
They play her off a puppy eyed idiot who steals for not very clear reasons. It's not because he's good at it. It's declared at the end that he's getting off the rush but he doesn't seem to succeed enough for that to be worth it. His one redeeming feature is that he takes care of his dad with alzheimers but he doesn't even seem to do that with much warmth.
And that's a little bit the problem throughout. The girls have very clear flaws in big type: one's neurotic, one's cold and rude and won't let anyone in, one's a massive slut hiding her pain in booze and blokes.
By contrast the flaws with the men are basically that they're not very impressive. One's a thief, one's a failed musician and one I'm not sure but he seems to have had some money now sinking with his ex wife and his decaying house. But the key problem is that they're idiots, obnoxious and apparently all they have to do to change is learn how to salsa.
It seems unequal and this is something I often find to be the case with rom-coms and something i worry might be the case with Advanced Fun.
I'm trying to figure out what Lois's flaws are. She's not very good at letting go, she likes things to be planned. But spontaneity isn't beyond her.
She fails to notice that Mark isn't loving the fun. She doesn't have any feminine intuition. Well certainly not more than Toby.
She's one for distracting from her problems- she thinks she's falling for her flatmate so she goes on a date. She thinks she's lonely so she goes on a quest for fun.
I'm not sure if that's enough. But I do know the flaws have to be the little ones people have, misjudgements, lapses in selfishness not a one liner like in born romantic.
True Grit
I turned on Beth after this. It's not a shallow sound but even in its well crafted melancholy it's not out of body.
That's not a problem. I still get a lot from it. But the last three films I've seen before this had a visceral sense to them. Of having been a little torn up. But I'm not feeling that now.
Nor do I think this was in anyway the aim. It's funny as you'd expect it to be. There's something of dickens (but not necessarily dickensian) about the side characters they create. Comedic, eccentric and with most of the jokes slipping in as you're riding off (literally in one case). Their sense of the absurd is spot on. And I think is far more powerful for finding its way into a western.
And as I've come to expect the action scenes are tense and immaculately directed. There's a great scene when an entire confrontation is filmed from the point of view of Jeff Bridges and a girl up on a ridge. You can't hear what's going on and the action consequently has a removed quality which feels far fresher and more exciting than another Sub greengrass flurry of steadycam rushes.
And the performances are good. I liked Matt Damon's role. He was a man with some sense of old school chivalry but neither the bravery or the smarts to totally pull it off. He's flawed in that light not too remarkable way most of us are. It was refreshing after the many highly driven creatures with big flaws I've been watching recently.
Speaking of driven: The girl's fantastic. Her precociousness somehow never grates. Partly because it's a true precociousness- she happily admits that there are things she can't do as well as others. She's not afraid to be scared.
But she does suffer from a terrible over assurance. SPOILER. Although to be honest all my reviews are pretty spoiler heavy.
She pays a heavy price for her pig headed determination. She is so smart and canny and bossy she might well have struggled to find a suitable mate in the wild west regardless. But I think the trip, the trauma, the loss of the arm, the stories that went with it, guaranteed it.
Her strength, her brains, her courage allow her to go off and do something remarkable but when she is so young that she doesn't see why the consequences may not be worth the actions. That the results are fairly derisory for a price that you sense is any chance of enjoying the rest of her life.
Telling that familiar tale of vengeance at a terrible price through a teenage girl does work but I'm struck that it took a bit of time for me to feel it and even as I write this, I'm wondering if I'm overdoing the effect it had on the rest of her life.
Certainly I didn't come out of the cinema thinking about the price of venegence particularly.
I think that's mainly because it ends weakly. Like a History of violence it takes a story with strong characters and psychological needs and gives it a straight action ending. It's enjoyable and there are a couple good surprises to the third act but it feels lacking in substance.
And then there's a epilogue which is distinctly unsatisfying. Much of the conjecture I've been talking about comes from that. Much of what makes it more than just a cowboy romp. But they're poor scenes. Undramatic, unengaging.
So good. Very good. But I'm not sure if it wanted to be just purely enjoyable or strived for more than that and so ended up with an end which for my money fell between two stools.
That's not a problem. I still get a lot from it. But the last three films I've seen before this had a visceral sense to them. Of having been a little torn up. But I'm not feeling that now.
Nor do I think this was in anyway the aim. It's funny as you'd expect it to be. There's something of dickens (but not necessarily dickensian) about the side characters they create. Comedic, eccentric and with most of the jokes slipping in as you're riding off (literally in one case). Their sense of the absurd is spot on. And I think is far more powerful for finding its way into a western.
And as I've come to expect the action scenes are tense and immaculately directed. There's a great scene when an entire confrontation is filmed from the point of view of Jeff Bridges and a girl up on a ridge. You can't hear what's going on and the action consequently has a removed quality which feels far fresher and more exciting than another Sub greengrass flurry of steadycam rushes.
And the performances are good. I liked Matt Damon's role. He was a man with some sense of old school chivalry but neither the bravery or the smarts to totally pull it off. He's flawed in that light not too remarkable way most of us are. It was refreshing after the many highly driven creatures with big flaws I've been watching recently.
Speaking of driven: The girl's fantastic. Her precociousness somehow never grates. Partly because it's a true precociousness- she happily admits that there are things she can't do as well as others. She's not afraid to be scared.
But she does suffer from a terrible over assurance. SPOILER. Although to be honest all my reviews are pretty spoiler heavy.
She pays a heavy price for her pig headed determination. She is so smart and canny and bossy she might well have struggled to find a suitable mate in the wild west regardless. But I think the trip, the trauma, the loss of the arm, the stories that went with it, guaranteed it.
Her strength, her brains, her courage allow her to go off and do something remarkable but when she is so young that she doesn't see why the consequences may not be worth the actions. That the results are fairly derisory for a price that you sense is any chance of enjoying the rest of her life.
Telling that familiar tale of vengeance at a terrible price through a teenage girl does work but I'm struck that it took a bit of time for me to feel it and even as I write this, I'm wondering if I'm overdoing the effect it had on the rest of her life.
Certainly I didn't come out of the cinema thinking about the price of venegence particularly.
I think that's mainly because it ends weakly. Like a History of violence it takes a story with strong characters and psychological needs and gives it a straight action ending. It's enjoyable and there are a couple good surprises to the third act but it feels lacking in substance.
And then there's a epilogue which is distinctly unsatisfying. Much of the conjecture I've been talking about comes from that. Much of what makes it more than just a cowboy romp. But they're poor scenes. Undramatic, unengaging.
So good. Very good. But I'm not sure if it wanted to be just purely enjoyable or strived for more than that and so ended up with an end which for my money fell between two stools.
Thursday, 17 February 2011
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.
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.
Friday, 28 January 2011
Black Swan
Now that's a visceral experience.
I enjoyed 127 Hours. It had a lot going for it. But ultimately it was saying relatively little exceptionally well.
This is a story which throws all the cinematic tricks at you, which makes you follow intensely a character who is in nearly every shot of the movie, who makes you come out feeling as if you've just been through the whole ordeal she has. But also feels as if it will stay with you, because it was about something.
What is that something: obsession, discipline, repression. The ability of your self to put you through intense pain.
That sentence should be the other way round but it feels right that way. I'll try and have a think why that is.
I've just watched this film. Came out pumped, playing The National full blast and going through a buzzing Friday night in Soho as if the people weren't really there.
Although half of me was worried that they were looking me. I felt slightly out of control. A little like Nina in this film.
And it took me almost all the way back to calm down.
It's a film that spends a lot of time looking at pain. The first act feels quite a lot like The Wrestler. The same obsession with bodies which are simultaneously being worshiped and destroyed. That sense that if your body is the vehicle for what you want to do then you make it suffer. You're both completely dependent on your body and yet strangely divorced from it. Able to bring pain upon it so that it does what you want it to do.
But while for Mickey Rourke's character it was only the body that suffered that kind of concerted pain (his mind was taking plenty of hits but not in a controlled or entirely self-inflicted way), Natalie Portman's character is doing the same thing to mind.
I'm not going to give spoilers although to be honest I'm not sure there's much that's not revealed by the trailer. The trailer suggests it's a horror film but while it is undoubtedly horrific in places you realise early on that this is a film in which what she is doing to herself is far more metaphorical. The confusion lies in that, like her, you are unable to distinguish between what is definitely real and what could be but might not be.
After a Red Shoes esque opening with ballet dancers becoming their characters, it takes a surprisingly gritty turn. The handheld cameras, slightly scratchy sound and dull colours of her world with her mum surprised me after the high style of the trailer and I liked it. For a film that is in many ways about suffocation, it lets you breathe at the beginning.
And from that you get a good sense of her character. What's wrong with her is explained quite explicitly by her maestro Vincent Cassel. Her pursuit of perfect technique has left her frigid, solitary, awkward in company. She can play virginial better than anyone else. But she cannot also be sensual, seductive.
We see why. She has an obsessive single mum who feels that she never got to be a great ballerina because she got pregnant and is determined to see her little girl go one better. That means early nights and hard work. But it also most definitely means remaining a little girl. No sex. Just being tucked in in a room full of fluffy teddies. Pinks and whites. Nothing black.
Setting up so heavily the motif of black vs white makes your set design easier. Vincent Cassel's flat is laughable in its obsession with this. But it's a simple effective way of building the idea and letting us know whether Nina is turning black or staying white.
I have a feeling that there are no black faces in this film. There are certainly none among the cast of the ballet. I imagine that's reasonably accurate of the ballet world, moreover I think putting Natalie Portman up against a black character, even a small one, would have distracted it from its motif. It would have complicated the dynamics in a way that would have taken us out of Natalie Portman's increasingly crazed head.
I feel like there's lots more to say but I want to say just two things. Firstly Mila Kunis is very good in a role that I think gets under noticed. She plays two roles really, she's half of Nina's black swan. And she's a girl called Lily. And it's as Lily that I think she does something very important. In a very stylised flick, she plays normal in a way that both feels it but doesn't interrupt the feel of the film. The fact that everytime we see her we're not quite sure whether she is the relatively normal Lily or the black swan helps to keep that edge. But I think it's hard to give off the warmth she does in a film like this and remain likeable. I think it's exactly the kind of performance that makes a film and never gets noticed. It's not as exceptional a piece of work as Natalie Portman's and doesn't the deserve the massive acclaim that Natalie's correctly picking up. But it's the kind of role that makes sure a movie is more than just an actress's tour de force.
Secondly, there's a sex scene in her which really feels dynamic, erotic and absolutely part of it. You don't get many of them. Broadband and the total accessibility of porn has killed off the token soft core scene to fill out a movie but in a way I hoped it would make sex scenes work better because they're no longer partly as use as porn. They can be more erotic than that. Here it works and it works because it's happening to a character's whose head you're inhabiting.
Final note, I watched it in a freezing cinema, (i'm still really freezing) and with a desperate need to go to the toilet through most of it. I think that added to the experience as it made me feel suitably on edge. Also I can't imagine seeing this on a small screen, not least for the surround sound. There are a couple times when it feels like Vincent Cassell is talking behind you and I nearly looked round for his approval. This film really got under my skin.
I enjoyed 127 Hours. It had a lot going for it. But ultimately it was saying relatively little exceptionally well.
This is a story which throws all the cinematic tricks at you, which makes you follow intensely a character who is in nearly every shot of the movie, who makes you come out feeling as if you've just been through the whole ordeal she has. But also feels as if it will stay with you, because it was about something.
What is that something: obsession, discipline, repression. The ability of your self to put you through intense pain.
That sentence should be the other way round but it feels right that way. I'll try and have a think why that is.
I've just watched this film. Came out pumped, playing The National full blast and going through a buzzing Friday night in Soho as if the people weren't really there.
Although half of me was worried that they were looking me. I felt slightly out of control. A little like Nina in this film.
And it took me almost all the way back to calm down.
It's a film that spends a lot of time looking at pain. The first act feels quite a lot like The Wrestler. The same obsession with bodies which are simultaneously being worshiped and destroyed. That sense that if your body is the vehicle for what you want to do then you make it suffer. You're both completely dependent on your body and yet strangely divorced from it. Able to bring pain upon it so that it does what you want it to do.
But while for Mickey Rourke's character it was only the body that suffered that kind of concerted pain (his mind was taking plenty of hits but not in a controlled or entirely self-inflicted way), Natalie Portman's character is doing the same thing to mind.
I'm not going to give spoilers although to be honest I'm not sure there's much that's not revealed by the trailer. The trailer suggests it's a horror film but while it is undoubtedly horrific in places you realise early on that this is a film in which what she is doing to herself is far more metaphorical. The confusion lies in that, like her, you are unable to distinguish between what is definitely real and what could be but might not be.
After a Red Shoes esque opening with ballet dancers becoming their characters, it takes a surprisingly gritty turn. The handheld cameras, slightly scratchy sound and dull colours of her world with her mum surprised me after the high style of the trailer and I liked it. For a film that is in many ways about suffocation, it lets you breathe at the beginning.
And from that you get a good sense of her character. What's wrong with her is explained quite explicitly by her maestro Vincent Cassel. Her pursuit of perfect technique has left her frigid, solitary, awkward in company. She can play virginial better than anyone else. But she cannot also be sensual, seductive.
We see why. She has an obsessive single mum who feels that she never got to be a great ballerina because she got pregnant and is determined to see her little girl go one better. That means early nights and hard work. But it also most definitely means remaining a little girl. No sex. Just being tucked in in a room full of fluffy teddies. Pinks and whites. Nothing black.
Setting up so heavily the motif of black vs white makes your set design easier. Vincent Cassel's flat is laughable in its obsession with this. But it's a simple effective way of building the idea and letting us know whether Nina is turning black or staying white.
I have a feeling that there are no black faces in this film. There are certainly none among the cast of the ballet. I imagine that's reasonably accurate of the ballet world, moreover I think putting Natalie Portman up against a black character, even a small one, would have distracted it from its motif. It would have complicated the dynamics in a way that would have taken us out of Natalie Portman's increasingly crazed head.
I feel like there's lots more to say but I want to say just two things. Firstly Mila Kunis is very good in a role that I think gets under noticed. She plays two roles really, she's half of Nina's black swan. And she's a girl called Lily. And it's as Lily that I think she does something very important. In a very stylised flick, she plays normal in a way that both feels it but doesn't interrupt the feel of the film. The fact that everytime we see her we're not quite sure whether she is the relatively normal Lily or the black swan helps to keep that edge. But I think it's hard to give off the warmth she does in a film like this and remain likeable. I think it's exactly the kind of performance that makes a film and never gets noticed. It's not as exceptional a piece of work as Natalie Portman's and doesn't the deserve the massive acclaim that Natalie's correctly picking up. But it's the kind of role that makes sure a movie is more than just an actress's tour de force.
Secondly, there's a sex scene in her which really feels dynamic, erotic and absolutely part of it. You don't get many of them. Broadband and the total accessibility of porn has killed off the token soft core scene to fill out a movie but in a way I hoped it would make sex scenes work better because they're no longer partly as use as porn. They can be more erotic than that. Here it works and it works because it's happening to a character's whose head you're inhabiting.
Final note, I watched it in a freezing cinema, (i'm still really freezing) and with a desperate need to go to the toilet through most of it. I think that added to the experience as it made me feel suitably on edge. Also I can't imagine seeing this on a small screen, not least for the surround sound. There are a couple times when it feels like Vincent Cassell is talking behind you and I nearly looked round for his approval. This film really got under my skin.
127 Hours
So a new year. A new attempt at blogging. I'm going to try and review films I see in the cinema but not bother with others to make it more manageable.
127 hours made me think of the Social Network. Both of them have brilliant and i think not sufficiently remarked upon performances which capture brilliant young men and the emotional limits that tend to come with Being one of them.
More importantly make fine, watchable films out of not particularly obvious cinematic ideas. As Simon Beaufoy said in the creative screenwriting magazine interview, 'It's one guy, down a canyon, on his own and he doesn't move. Great cinema.'
And it is. From the exhilarating dynamism of the short first act, through the brilliant first day of him trying to figure out what he'a going to do, the interview where he cracks up pretending to be a chatshow host to the extraordinary scene where he takes the knife to his arm, it is great cinema. I can't imagine being half as effective on the small screen.
It is what I think of as experience cinema. Other good examples include United 93 and Hunger (maybe it should be considered a British specialist genre). There is a conscious effort to try and make you understand what the people on screen are going through. I guess it's kind of a highbrow version of horror. The point is that the glory of it is in its viscerality rather than the scope of the tale or the acuteness of the observations of humanity. It tells us as much about ourselves as any of those would.
But it does it in a way that is definitely cinematic. I consider Hunger and United 93 two of the best films of the last decade but I'm not sure I'd think it if I'd seen them on DVD. They look amazing, mesmerising with strong visuals that require the darkness of a room that gives you nothing else to look at.
And I think crucially it requires surround sound. The sound editing is extraordinary particularly at the end. It fools you into thinking you're seeing things you're not and mean even as you look at away, you're still there, feeling, experiencing.
It has a hallucinatory quality and not all of the 2nd act quite gets you over the fact nothing's happening but it's taken you along far enough that you feel the beats with him. You need to dream and think of other place when he does. You get scared by his hallucinations. And when he gets to cutting, you're ready in the same way he is. Yes it's going to be excruciating but it's time for a heave.
That's not to say watching it is equivalent to cutting your arm off but you follow his emotions well. And like him, when he comes free, you feel in shock.
like social network I'm in awe of the people who made it and remember more than I normally do of a film. And yet, it doesn't really really resonate. There's a tiny bit of 'that was interesting'. Hell of a thing to say about two young men who made a billion and a social phenomenon on the one hand and cut off the other hand. But there you go. I don't think i'm alone in thinking it.
127 hours made me think of the Social Network. Both of them have brilliant and i think not sufficiently remarked upon performances which capture brilliant young men and the emotional limits that tend to come with Being one of them.
More importantly make fine, watchable films out of not particularly obvious cinematic ideas. As Simon Beaufoy said in the creative screenwriting magazine interview, 'It's one guy, down a canyon, on his own and he doesn't move. Great cinema.'
And it is. From the exhilarating dynamism of the short first act, through the brilliant first day of him trying to figure out what he'a going to do, the interview where he cracks up pretending to be a chatshow host to the extraordinary scene where he takes the knife to his arm, it is great cinema. I can't imagine being half as effective on the small screen.
It is what I think of as experience cinema. Other good examples include United 93 and Hunger (maybe it should be considered a British specialist genre). There is a conscious effort to try and make you understand what the people on screen are going through. I guess it's kind of a highbrow version of horror. The point is that the glory of it is in its viscerality rather than the scope of the tale or the acuteness of the observations of humanity. It tells us as much about ourselves as any of those would.
But it does it in a way that is definitely cinematic. I consider Hunger and United 93 two of the best films of the last decade but I'm not sure I'd think it if I'd seen them on DVD. They look amazing, mesmerising with strong visuals that require the darkness of a room that gives you nothing else to look at.
And I think crucially it requires surround sound. The sound editing is extraordinary particularly at the end. It fools you into thinking you're seeing things you're not and mean even as you look at away, you're still there, feeling, experiencing.
It has a hallucinatory quality and not all of the 2nd act quite gets you over the fact nothing's happening but it's taken you along far enough that you feel the beats with him. You need to dream and think of other place when he does. You get scared by his hallucinations. And when he gets to cutting, you're ready in the same way he is. Yes it's going to be excruciating but it's time for a heave.
That's not to say watching it is equivalent to cutting your arm off but you follow his emotions well. And like him, when he comes free, you feel in shock.
like social network I'm in awe of the people who made it and remember more than I normally do of a film. And yet, it doesn't really really resonate. There's a tiny bit of 'that was interesting'. Hell of a thing to say about two young men who made a billion and a social phenomenon on the one hand and cut off the other hand. But there you go. I don't think i'm alone in thinking it.
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