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Showing posts with label David Oyelowo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Oyelowo. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
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Over the last few months I've suffered through (among many others) The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game and (ugh) American Sniper, all self-important sludge cinema where important people have important conversations while a string-based score gently swells in the background. Occasionally the lead will gaze off into the middle distance and pronounce something so impossibly wise that, just for a second, the very world appears to revolve around him. I'm so damn tired of this thunkingly portentous rubbish.
Everything I'd heard about Selma led me to think it'd be the antidote to my severe case of biopic-itus. Most tantalising was the idea of zeroing in a few crucial months in the life of its subject, the exact tactic that made Spielberg's Lincoln surprisingly digestible. Also bolstering my enthusiasm was the Academy's racist snubbing of what by all accounts was a masterclass performance by David Oyelowo and ace direction by Ava DuVernay. Yep, Selma's gonna be the film for me - the cinematic mouthwash that's going to banish the foul taste of its biopic brethren. How could it possibly let me down? Well...
Set in 1965, Selma chronicles Dr Martin Luther King Jr's (David Oyelowo) organisation and participation in voting rights activism. The town of Selma, Alabama is infested with virulent racists, ruled with an iron rod by thuggish cop Wilson Baker (David Dwyer) and governed by segregationist dinosaur George Wallace (Tim Roth). The stupidity and violence baked into the town makes it the perfect stage for Dr King, whose philosophy of non-violence is most powerful when contrasted with petty-minded barbarism.
What happens in this insignificant town soon comes to define the entire protest movement, with national news filled with dramatic footage from Selma of peaceful demonstrators falling under the cop's billyclubs. Dr King's tactics crank up the pressure on President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), whose delaying a bill on removing voting restrictions begins to look more like cowardice than prudence.
To get this out of the way early on; Selma is a good film. DuVernay chronicles these events as if she happened to be present with a camera, taking us from the front-lines of the marches, to the back rooms of churches where tactical discussions take place and right up to high level political discussions in the Oval Office. There's a easy confidence in way we follow Dr King through the various spheres he occupies, simultaneously playing father, husband, politician, preacher, leader and icon. Similarly there's a careful eye for emphasising violence - though the camera cuts away from the moment of impact - excellent sound work and editing emphasises the repulsiveness of the cop's brutality.
She's aided by an impressive cast who're obviously conscious of the importance of their roles. Stand-outs in the supporting cast are the (always excellent) Wendell Pierce as Rv. Hosea Williams, Carmen Ejogo's embattled yet dignified Coretta King and Oprah Winfrey (whose acting skills are often overlooked) as Annie Lee Cooper. The film is peppered with cameos from excellent actors; with Cuba Gooding Jr, Martin Sheen and Dylan Baker all popping up for a scene or two and impressing.
Great as the cast is, it's bound together by the considerable gravitas of David Oyelowo's Martin Luther King. It's difficult to imagine any other actor coming at this role as successfully as Oyelowo does. During his thunderous speeches, which combine revolutionary rhetoric with evangelical preaching, we get a taste of his intense charisma, making it easy to understand why he among many others took leadership of the civil rights struggle.
But outside of the speeches Selma's Dr King is a frustratingly distant figure, hemmed in by the demands of a script that (quite understandably) can't help but beatify him. This leads to sequences where other characters talk at or about Dr King while he remains quietly statuesque. This comes to a head in two scenes; the first where his wife is confronts him on his infidelities and he takes a long pause before confirming that he only loves her and the second when he decides, after the police have cleared a path for his march, to turn around and walk back to the church.
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| Oyelowo's Dr King with Tom Wilkinson's LBJ. |
In both scenes he remains quiet and Sphinx-like, the film making no effort to inquire on what his thoughts might be. This extends to his private conversations, practically all couched in slow, thoughtful, statesman-like language. Real people simply don't talk like this, resulting in overcooked conversations that bristle with too much extra-narrative gravitas. It's absolutely understandable for the film-makers (and anyone else for that matter) to be in awe of Dr King, but reverence doesn't lead to incisive cinema.
This makes Selma 'merely' an excellent historical recreation. Taken on those grounds it's an undoubted success: the obvious care and attention lavished on every frame of the film makes it an educational watch. But simply portraying events as they happened makes the film a straight history lesson, content to teach the established facts rather than make new enquiries of its own.
So, sadly, Selma lands squarely in traditional biopic territory, stuffed full of self-consciously important conversations between actors doing impressions of politicians while a string-based score ensures that the audience is feeling particular emotions at particular times. Admittedly it's a very good example of the biopic genre - quite a bit ahead of The Imitation Game and way, way ahead of The Theory of Everything and American Sniper - but unfortunately it's still mired in the same old conservative genre trappings.
★★★
Selma is released 6th February
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
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It's 1969 and temperatures run high in Florida. Nicole Kidman is a trashed up nymphomaniac obsessed with mega-sleazy swamp pervert John Cusack. Matthew McConaughey is a gay masochist with a nasty habit of having his face mutilated. David Oyelowo is a smart talking, snappily dressed Londoner who refuses to take any shit. Zac Efron is muscular, young and spends an unfeasible amount of time in his underwear. It’s a red-hot tale of out-of-control libidos shot in faux Kodachrome and riddled with queasily gross imagery of death, decomposition and disembowelment. There’s already a notorious scene where Nicole Kidman pisses all over Zac Efron! On paper this sounds great. On film? Kind of dull.
That a film with so much strangeness in it becomes rapidly uninteresting is strange. It’s certainly not because of lack of visual flair, Daniels textures the film with surrealistic flashbacks, dreams and fantasies, and the slightly blown out colour palette gives the film a appropriately lurid sheen. It’s not because of the performances either; many of these actors, (especially Kidman) go for broke, slamming the pedal to the floor and making a beeline for the outer limits of believability.
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| Nicole Kidman as Charlotte Bless |
The plot concerns two journalists, Ward Jensen (Matthew McConaughey) and Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo) who are setting out to exonerate Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack). He's a man on death row for the crime of gutting a corrupt local sheriff. This is a homecoming trip for Ward, and so he employs his younger brother Jack (Zac Efron) as driver and general gofer. Thrown into the mix is the unpredictable Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), who's fallen in love with Van Wetter despite never having met him. The four seek to prove Van Wetter’s innocence before his execution can be carried out.
That’s the skeleton of the plot, and from that description it seems pretty straightforward where the drama is going to lie - whether our heroes can free this man from prison. The problem is that no-one in the film seems to care. Perhaps the constant beating down of the sun has sapped the energy from them, but they doze around lethargically, sweating and having minor flare-ups with each other. Not even the condemned man seems particularly bothered about his situation, being more concerned with how Charlotte is dressed than his innocence or guilt.
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| Matthew McConaughy as Ward and Zac Efron as Jack |
If the characters don’t seem to care, then why should I? The lack of urgency wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if our characters were compelling, but they’re essentially a collection of tawdry quirks rather than believable human beings. Only Nicole Kidman impresses as the trash-queen extraordinaire Charlotte and I suspect her success is largely down to the fact that she’s playing against her glamorous real-life reputation. The other cast members seem a little lost at sea, either hitting one successful note over and over until the character becomes stale like Oyelowo or retreating into makeup in lieu of character development like McConaughey. Particularly miscast are John Cusack and Zac Efron. John Cusack never looks comfortable or believable playing a weirdo par excellence swamp hillbilly. He manages mere eccentricity rather than the balls to the wall bonkersness the role deserves (Nicholas Cage could have knocked this out of the park). As for Efron, here he always seems out of his depth, even while playing a naive, mimboish, horny Ken doll.
The biggest problem with the film is that it doesn’t have the guts to be full bore weird. Aesthetically it references the kitsch Americana that John Waters takes such joy in, but you sense a restrictive hand on the shoulder of the director. I usually ignore BBFC ratings, but it’s notable that this is a 15 rated film. While the characters work themselves up into an erotic fever it’s all strangely antiseptic, even with the sweat surrounding them. For all that’s suggested in the film the characters remain fully clothed throughout, with nary a tit nor cock to be seen.
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| John Cusack as Hilary Van Wetter |
The result is a film obsessed with sexuality, yet one that's slightly puritan, lots of titillation yet unable to actually show us anything. There’s a violent sex scene late in the film in which Kidman’s character is bent over a washing machine, Daniels intercuts this with footage of dead animals, blood dripping from their noses. In any other film this would be a neat bit of exploitation cinema, but I see this film as a very, very distant cousin of something like Pink Flamingos. Viewed in this light, it all becomes a bit tame. Similarly, in the sequences where we meet the hillbilly swamp dwellers, I want Harmony Korine style Gummo grotesques rather than the very mild freakiness we get here.
The Paperboy disappoints on two counts. It’s neither interesting enough for us to invest in its story, nor weird enough to keep us wondering what they’re going to do next. The characters inconsequentially float through the plot, the dream sequences and fantasies become increasingly desperate in trying to keep our attention. I suspect it’s all but impossible to both create a bizarre midnight movie cult film AND have Nicole Kidman star in it, if you cast such big names you attract studio attention - the death of a cult movie. It’s clear that The Paperboy really really wants to be surrealistic and trashy, but it ends up at a neutered, slightly cowardly kind of trash and therefore, sadly, is pretty pointless.
**/*****
'The Paperboy' is on general release from 15 March 2013
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