LONDON CITY NIGHTS

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

'Birdman' (2014) directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Tuesday, December 9, 2014 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

In Birdman Michael Keaton, an actor who achieved superstardom by playing a rubber-clad superhero in the early 90s and whose career has since faltered, plays an actor who achieved superstardom by playing a rubber-clad superhero in the early 90s and whose career has since faltered.  Yup, it's going to be one of those movies.  

Iñárritu's first foray into comedy turns out to be a feature length debate about the worth of creative endeavour.  Various questions jostle for attention; the cultural worth of cinema v theatre, the notion of the 'death of the author', what comprises truth in art and the relative value of criticism.  It's densely intellectual but not cold; very quickly you sense that Iñárritu's passion for his artistic philosophy.

We first meet Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) floating serenely in midair.  He sways and bobs as he meditates, coolly observing that his dressing room "smells like balls".  He's nestled within a Broadway theatre that's staging Thomson's own adaptation of Raymond Carver's short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.  This play is Thomson's last throw of the dice, betting his fortune, his reputation and his health on its success.  After a career in shallow blockbusters and shitty comedies he craves the artistic respect that only legitimate theatre can apparently provide.  Thomson has a lot on his mind; financial, production and performance worries, not to mention the sinister voices in his head.

Thomson thus finds himself as the volatile sun at the centre of a theatrical solar system. Caught in his orbit are Jake (Zach Galifianakis), his best friend and producer of the play; Sam (Emma Stone), his fresh out of rehab daughter; Laura (Andrea Riseborough) his girlfriend and co-star, Lesley (Naomi Watts) a nervy first time Broadway actress; and Mike (Edward Norton), a method-actor prima donna.  These characters run like rats around labyrinthine backstage corridors, their egos and neuroses clashing to hilarious effect.

Their interactions are beautifully observed but, refreshingly, Birdman is as much about form as it is about narrative.  Save for two brief opening and closing scenes the film is structured to appear as if it's one single shot.  The lens glides smoothly through the building as if viewing it from the perspective of a curious ghost.  We follow characters around the corridors and onto the stage, swooping around time and space in ways obviously impossible for a physical camera.

You can almost taste the tang of the blood and sweat that's gone into making a movie like this; I'm getting a headache just thinking about the technical logistics and what you're demanding of your cast. Fortunately it pays off gangbusters.  Aided by Emmanuel Lubezki (one of the best DPs in the business) this style quickly creates a tense, appropriately theatrical, atmosphere.  The performances are shot through with electricity as we subconsciously understand that there can be no second-take, that what we're seeing is somehow realer than typical cinema.

Of course this is an illusion: perversely the naturalistic atmosphere is the result of digitally knitting together a huge number of elements.  But importantly it's an illusion that's easy to overlook.  Iñárritu's quest for some heightened state of acting truth is reflected in his character's compulsions; nearly all actors striving to inject genuine feeling in their performances.  Birdman approaches this primarily through Keaton's Thomson, who frets throughout that he just doesn't have the chops to pull off the role. 

With such a rigorous examination of  technique the film would come completely unravelled in the presence of a single iffy performance.  But everyone is great; so great that there's a decent argument this represents a career best for everyone involved.  An  obvious highlight is Edward Norton, who transmutes being a massive prick into vulnerability while simultaneously being hilarious.  But this is unquestionably Keaton's film.  Every one of his distinctive performative tics becomes a method of communicating inner turmoil to us. Much of the story is told on his expressive face, every sling and arrow hurled at him cranking up pressure which is released in increasingly bizarre (and visually fantastical) ways.

The only place the film truly comes unstuck is Iñárritu's bitter fixation on critics as instruments of destruction.  He creates a pretty flimsy strawman in a demon badguy critic who promises to destroy Thomson's play purely on the basis that she doesn't like him.  She explains that her review is the one thing that decides any New York theatrical success; a dramatic device that feels ripped more from 1930s Broadway musicals like 42nd Street or Footlight Parade than anything relevant to 2014.  Her presence gives rise to a drunken tirade in which Keaton's character lets loose his views on critics, views so strongly expressed that I can only assume they're Iñárritu's own.  

The whole sequence stinks of sour grapes, of Iñárritu is getting revenge on some critic who's disparaged him.  Brad Bird's Ratatouille trod similar ground thematic ground to Birdman and similarly featured a ferocious critic as antagonist.  Yet whereas Ratatouille's Anton Ego finds happiness through an artistic rekindling of why he enjoys food so much, Iñárritu's critic ends up having to eat her words in an unlikely front-page article where she's forced to admit that Birdman's hero (and by extension, Iñárritu) is a genius.

Maybe Iñárritu is a genius, but even so there's something nauseatingly vain about creating flimsy characters that exist only to grudgingly praise you.  Thankfully Birdman is so performatively and structurally excellent that it's easy to overlook this.  There's an embarrassment of cinematic riches tucked away in here; from the spine-tinglingly good moments of magical realism, to the emotional intensity, to the gobsmacking technical accomplishments, right through to the jazz drum solo score.

It's not quite perfect, but it comes painfully close. If you have any interest in cinema, performance and culture in general it's a hands down must see.

★★★★

Birdman is released January 1st.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Oblivion (2013) directed by Joseph Kosinski

Wednesday, April 10, 2013 - by londoncitynights · - 2 Comments

If only Tom Cruise would stick to being in bad films my life would be a lot easier.  A constant drip drip of stinkers like the atrocious Jack Reacher, or Rock of Ages would be easy to avoid.  But oh no, he's got the arrogance to go and be in good films as well.  The bastard.  There's an absolute embarrassment of riches in Oblivion, the only fly in the ointment being Cruise.  It's a film that succeeds despite Cruise starring in it, rather than because of his presence.

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Wednesday, March 13, 2013

‘Welcome to the Punch’ (2013) directed by Eran Creevy

Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Putting Hot Fuzz in the same sentence as Welcome to the Punch is a horrendous disservice to Edgar Wright’s brilliant comedy, yet it’s a comparison that must be made.  Welcome to the Punch is, disastrously, pretty much Hot Fuzz played straight.  At the core of Punch is a reasonable enough idea, let’s make a gritty, glossy, action-packed US style crime caper, but set in the heart of London.  With a cast made up of hot British talent like James McAvoy, Mark Strong and Andrea Riseborough, you’d have to try pretty hard to screw this up.  Yet screw it up writer/director Eran Creevy does!  Quite spectacularly too.

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Friday, August 24, 2012

'Shadow Dancer' (2012) directed by James Marsh, 24th August 2012

Friday, August 24, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

'Shadow Dancer' is a film full of people making difficult choices.  Choosing between logic and emotion, between their family and their politics and ultimately between sacrifice and preservation.  Primarily set in Belfast (though filmed in Dublin) in 1993, we follow the story of Colette McVeigh (Andrea Riseborough), and her involvement with both the IRA and MI5.  Born into a staunchly republican family, she's fuelled by passion and grief as a result of seeing family members killed in the conflict.  In the opening scenes she's involved in an abortive attack on the London Underground and subsequently captured by Mac (Clive Owen), an MI5 agent.  He offers her a stark choice, work for us, or spend the rest of your life in prison.

It is the consequences of this decision that propel the rest of the film forwards.  Marsh maintains a fairly close focus on Colette, and we watch as she's silently torn apart by guilt, fear and anger.  Andrea Riseborough portrays this turmoil raging inside her very effectively, and our complicity in her situation ratchets up the tension.  Every conversation or intimate family moment is shot through with the fear of discovery.  

Mac (Clive Owen) and Colette (Andrea Riseborough)

Almost from the off, Colette is stuck between two worlds, and her allegiance to both of them is tenuous.  Whilst her family is firmly and actively involved in the IRA, it seems that her passion for republican politics has cooled upon becoming a mother.  Her son is her emotional weak spot, and both sides exploit it for all its worth.  While she has absolutely no allegiance to the British Government, Mac as an individual seems like a kind and caring man, who assures her that none of his informers have ever come to harm.  He also dangles the possibility of a witness relocation programme and a new identity for her and her son in front of her.  A tantalising prospect for someone who seems unavoidably entangled in the social web of the IRA.  The film is notable by its absence of father figures; both Colette's father and the father of her child are conspicuously absent and on some level, Mac seems to become the nearest thing she's got to a supportive male in her life.  He's the only person she can confide in, and the only person she can now speak to without worrying about what she says.

Watching a conflict that takes place in a recognisably British social landscape, with red telephone boxes, British police uniforms and terraced housing seems to ground this conflict.  When we see a family sitting around in a recognisably British house discussing an assassination attempt, or being shouted at by armed British policemen with machine guns it forces us to remember that these events took place on British soil.  It's an incredibly intimate conflict.  As writer Tom Bradby told us in a Q&A after the film, "this is a conflict between people that spoke the same language, ate the same food, watched the same TV shows".

James Marsh seems to have gone out of his way to create a restrained, austere film.  The film is almost unbearably slow-burning at points, although Marsh maintains an undercurrent of tension throughout through long tracking shots and the use of mobile handheld cameras.  In a wonderful sequence at the beginning we see Colette boarding a Tube in London, and the camera remains fixed on her blank face as she travels through the tunnels.  Where is she going?  What is she doing? What's in that bag? Is that someone following her?  As she winds her way through a maze of tunnels and deep into the infrastructure of the London Underground we hear muffled evacuation warnings.   A shot in this sequence, of Colette gazing up from the dirty, dark underworld at the clear blue sky high above her, inaccessible and covered by a grate seems emblematic of her story.

The events of this film are inexorably propelled forward by politics, although they seem extremely distant.  Occuring faintly in the backdrop, glimpsed on television news is the Downing Street Declaration, jointly declared by British Prime Minister John Major, and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, Albert Reynolds.  This declaration affirmed the right of the people of Ireland to self-determination.  It's a momentous political moment, and provided the impetus for the ceasefires of 1994.  But, this all takes place far in the background, and seems very distant from the emotional conflicts of our characters.

Colette and her family, Gerry (Aiden Gillen), Connor (Domhnall Gleeson) and Ma (Brid Brennan)

Bradby declared in the post film Q&A that he and director James Marsh had sought to "drain the politics out of the film".  It's an interesting decision to take, and one which they've done with almost too much gusto.  The ideology and philosophy, even the basic goal of the IRA - to create a united Ireland - isn't spelled out at all.  This leaves the film with a vacuum at the centre.  It would be difficult for British audiences to come into this film without any knowledge of the conflict in Northern Ireland, but I can't help but wonder what international audiences would make of it.  The rationale for this decision to scrub any direct political discussion from the film is that this is a character drama, and not an analytical argument about politics.  Marsh and Bradby go out of their way not to take sides and paint both the IRA and MI5 as being equally murky, each with little regard for an individual human life in the 'big picture'.

While watching the film, I was repeatedly reminded of 'The Battle of Algiers' (1966).  In both films we see an underground revolutionary force taking on the might of an established military power.  We see politics and warfare invade the domestic sphere, and the consequences of asymmetrical warfare on both sides.  There is a famous sequence in the '66 film that shows women carrying bombs through security checkpoints and detonating them in public places that is strongly reminiscent of scenes in 'Shadow Dancer'.  I see 'The Battle of Algiers' as the superior film, as it manages to marry politics successfully to a character-based narrative.  'Battle' was controversial on release, and was intensely criticised for the sympathetic treatment of the FLN revolutionaries in a conflict that took place a decade before the film's release.  So, after twenty years, is it too soon to try and address the ideological conflict at the heart of the Northern Ireland conflict?  The character-based drama in this film is gripping and intense, but without exploring why tensions are so high it feels ever so slightly shallow.  

Kate Fletcher (Gillian Anderson)

Despite my uneasiness at these important yet unexplored aspects, this film does work amazingly well as a thriller.  There are several high-tension scenes where Marsh expertly ratchets up the tension by cutting around to show simultaneous events.  One of them almost approaches a Hitchcockian atmosphere.  We cut between Colette desperately and quietly trying to get through to Mac on a room, while an IRA gunman she's working with tries to find out where she is.  We're not quite sure where in the small house Colette is, and every door he opens could be the one she's hiding behind.  Another credit to the director is his trust that the audience is paying attention, and can be trusted to connect the dots themselves without things being spelled out.  There's an interrogation scene mid-way through the film, and as we're led through the corridors we glimpse a man rolling a plastic sheet out on the floor in one of the rooms.  After the interrogation we see him rolling it back up.  The implication is clear; if the wrong answers were given the verdict was a quick death.

These sorts of moments occur quite frequently in the film, and it rewards a viewer that pays attention.  Often we will be shown documents that both camera and character will glance at, and we'll be expected to draw our own conclusions.  The fact that we both reliably deduce what the important information is, and what the character's reaction to it will be is a credit to the Bradby's script and Marsh's direction.  There are surprising twists and turns in the plot, but they always feel like a logical and appropriate direction for the story to take.

While Riseborough and Owen are both excellent, the film is buoyed by some fantastic supporting performances.  Two stand-outs are David Wilmot as IRA enforcer (and torturer) Kevin Mulville.   The aura of menace that surrounds him is palpable, and even before we know what his job is we feel repelled by him purely as a result of the way the central family react to his presence.  He's treated like a bad smell, is repeatedly verbally abused and ordered out of houses.  What Wilmot manages to do here is to imbue this violent, repulsive man with an essential sadness.  His presence silently standing outside the house is an omen of death, and yet while he's torturing suspected MI5 informers he never takes an iota of sadistic pleasure from it.  You get the feeling that he sees his job as unpleasant, depressing and cruel, but ultimately a necessary evil.  It's his cross to bear, he acts like he feels that if he wasn't doing this job, it could be someone far worse.

Taking a similar role on the side of MI5 is Gillian Anderson's Kate Fletcher.  She, like the IRA enforcer is a utilitarian realist.  Both of them like to think they keep the bigger picture in mind, and if individuals have to die to further these goals it is sad, but for the greater good.  The difference between the character's couldn't be more visually different.  Fletcher is surrounded by computers, in a relatively clean and modern (for 1993) office.  When we see her home it is, as one audience member described it, 'like a Barrett showhome'.  Stepping into her personal world is a bit jarring; the rest of the film is set in grubby, run down council housing and disused condemned flats.  This difference in surroundings emphasises the detachment and ultraprofessionalism of Fletcher.  She genuinely sees this as a job, and  seems to consider herself free of ideology.  Anderson scarily conveys this self-assurance, and the way in which she effortlessly rids herself of emotion even when weighing up the lives of people is quite chilling.

One factor in the film that was mentioned during discussions afterwards was the bright red coat that Colette wears throughout the film.  In a washed out colour palette this coat jumps off the screen, making her stand out in nearly every outdoor scene.  Logically, it'd be a bit silly to wear such a recognisable coat if she's engaging in clandestine behaviour, she stands out like a sore thumb from a distance.  I think Marsh was conscious of this, and decided to make this item of clothing an external representation of the character's fractured psychology.  As she informs on friends and family she begins to feel increasingly exposed, and this costume decision visually outlines that for the audience, explicitly painting her as vulnerable and as a target. 

I deeply enjoyed this film as a straight, tense thriller.  On those grounds it works brilliantly, all the characters are neatly defined and manage to act unpredictably, yet in retrospect, consistently. A difficult writing trick to pull off.  The direction is always confident, relying on an attentive, intelligent audience willing to emotionally engage with the leads.  But, in a film where so much revolves around the effects of politics and policy, it suffers from the decision to excise any examination of it.  It's a frustrating criticism to make, as a shift in focus onto ideology would necessarily detract from the focus on character and arguably make the film worse narratively.  But "draining" the film of politics seems to me like the easy way out; a way to pre-emptively defuse any controversy about the wider implications of the film's events.  I'd rather see a film that attempts to tackle big issues at the expense of the narrative, rather than one which ignores them and, as a result succeeds.

With this in mind, though the film thrills and entertains, it ultimately feels slightly hollow.

'Shadow Dancer' is on general release from the 24th of August 2012.