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Showing posts with label dull. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dull. Show all posts
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Thursday, March 20, 2014
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Back to the Garden is a serious test of cinematic patience with scant reward at the end. This micro-budget drama is so austere and so deliberately paced that Sanders seems to be daring his audience to keep paying attention. A film being boring isn't necessarily a death knell for its quality, on a masochistic level I enjoy films like Jeanne Dielman, Satantango or Wavelength - films where for long periods nothing much happens. Back to the Garden comes from a similar kind of place; slamming on the brakes and forcing you through excruciatingly dialogue scenes.
The plot is essentially an English The Big Chill doped up on valium. A man has unexpectedly died and his friends gather in a secluded house to scatter his ashes in the garden. The group is white, middle-class and obviously reasonably financially secure; yet each is experiencing their own subtle depressions, the death of their friend dredging up dormant fears of mortality and what they're doing in life.
What this entails is long still shot after long still shot of two characters talking in a rather normal garden. The end credits inform us that the dialogue is improvised, so conversations meander and drift, often dancing around what they really want to say for minutes on end before whoever's speaking confesses what's on their mind. This makes up perhaps 90% of the film; so if faintly miserable middle-aged people mumbling in gardens is what cinematically turns you on you're going to be in hog's heaven.
As for me, much of this film was about as interesting as paint drying. Even taking into account the miniscule budget, visually this really isn't up to much. There's the odd artfully composed shot, yet they're spoiled by digital photography that suffers from very noticeable interlacing problems: meaning straight lines suffer from 'jaggy' edges. This makes the film look far cheaper than it should, often resembling the cheap and nasty look of 90s television. (Although if this interlacing was merely a problem on the version screened please comment and tell me.)
I could overlook all that if the film was a powerhouse showcase of acting talent, but it's not. For the most part these performances are competently alright but there's nothing here that's going to set the world on fire. These rather thankless roles require the actors to behave like they've been shot with tranquilliser darts, slowly moping their way from long shot to long shot in an Eeyorish daze. There are brief moments where glimmers of passion poke through the surface of this stagnant pond - moments you grab onto like a drowning man clutching a life ring - but they're fleeting and quickly pass.
That said, there is one notable highlight among this troupe; Bob Goody's Jack. In a film with Death hovering just above proceedings the cast have mostly become corpselike in response. It's only Goody as Jack who provides anything close to a compelling character, enjoyably bumbling his way through a doomed, unrequited love affair and pondering over whether there's any point continuing his marriage. Of the the cast it's Goody that seems most at ease with the improvisatory style of the film, able to naturally digress a bit in a pretty seamless way.
Another one for the 'positives' column is the nice score by Douglas Finch. The film actually begins pretty promisingly, with some Terrence Malicky shots of stars, rivers and spiderwebs all underscored by a beautiful piano led score. Throughout the film there's the odd musical interlude between scenes; these short bursts of music doing a far clearer job of conveying mood and tone than the muddled dialogue ever does. Though I was eagerly awaiting the credits to roll so I could find something more interesting to do, I stuck around for them purely because some twinkling stars and Finch's score was much more compelling than nearly all of the film that preceded it.
What's perhaps most frustrating is that in the middle of the final sequence the film briefly does something actually interesting. Up to the end of the film there's been no obvious reason why the film wouldn't work as a 'Play of the Day' on Radio 4, yet for one brief moment there's a subtle bending of space and time that is easily the best bit of the film. Even more impressively this goes by completely unremarked, Sanders trusting that his audience is paying sufficient attention to pick up on it.
Despite these few slivers of positivity this film, quite simply, is boring. Even with a mercifully short 90 minute run time it drags on and on, exploring the inner-world of characters we're given no reason to care about. Stylistically Sanders approaches Dogme 95 levels of filmic austerity; the improvised dialogue, dodgy technical aspects and really low-key story leading me to suspect that Sanders is attempting to capture some kind of 'reality' on screen, a filmic world shorn of mainstream narrative pretensions. On that front I suppose he's succeeded because Back to the Garden absolutely captures what it's like to be trapped at a crap party with a load of miserable people.
★★
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
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The year: 2051. The place: NeoLondon. I emerge from my Sl33pPod and blink, disorientated in a halogen haze. Hopping onboard an automated BozBike I navigate the glittering zero-g spires and head to the gently pulsing TwitterPleX. I've been looking forward to tonight - this is Kanye West's big comeback tour - his first in years. Sure at 74, his flow isn't quite as slick as it once was, the autotune is being worked to an even more ridiculous degree, he's put on a bit oworkef weight and lost a bit of hair. But dammit, this is Kanye West, father of President North West, Nobel Prize winner and the first artist to perform on the surface of Mars!
With some annoyance I note that the TwitterPleX is only two-thirds full, entire rows empty - "what is wrong with people that a gig like this hasn't sold out?" Kanye takes to the stage to a smattering of applause, launching straight into POWER. I'm fondly remembering the time I lay in sunny London Fields surrounded by lost friends listening to this on an iPod dock. But my reverie is soon distracted by some punk kids a few rows away. "Fella! Vine tha' corpse quinty shavebox!" I don't quite understand their futureslang but just the tone of their voice tells me they're making fun of Kanye. Making fun of Kanye?! My heart sinks, and in a crowded room I suddenly feel very old and alone.
So what the hell does any of that have to do with Mott the Hoople? Well on Friday night Mott the Hoople was that 74 year-old Kanye, and the guy making fun of the dinosaur on stage is me. Mott the Hoople were rocking back in the early 1970s, long-hair swaying in the Kodachrome breeze as their one bona fide all-time classic All the Young Dudes (penned by David Bowie) sang from radios. After this brief flash of success album sales declined, and the band broke up in 1976, the members reforming into other bands with limited success. In 2009 they reformed and played 5 rapturously received nights in the Hammersmith Apollo. Now, once again they're back, this time in the biggest stadium in the country.
The first thing you notice is that the place isn't exactly full. I have an entire row of seats to myself and though filling two-thirds of the o2 is nothing to sniff at, there's a sense that perhaps Mott the Hoople have over-estimated their popularity. The audience is made of bald or balding middle-aged men in dodgy leather jackets, guts shyly peeking over tightly belted blue denim. They call themselves 'Hooplites', which to be fair is pretty clever. In its own way the band and crowd are on the same page; both used to be with it. Then they changed what "it" was. Now, what they're with isn't it, and what's "it" is weird and scary.
What Mott the Hoople play and how they play it isn't particularly important. The audience's mind isn't on the stage or the sound; it's on their own lost youth. As the band launch through another song big in 1972 the crowd plaintively remembers the first time they touched a girl's chest, smoking dope in the back of a friend's van and getting yelled at for growing their hair long. For this crowd seeing Mott the Hoople is an affirmation of lost youth, a proof that you were once cool, young and vibrant before the anvil of age, family and responsibility crushed you flat.
On the other hand to anyone not young in the 1970s, you're watching five old guys you don't know sleepwalking through music most accurately described as dad-rock. The first five or so songs are identikit plodders, the kind of music you'd expect to find on compilations titled things like 'The Best Truckin' Songs in the World... Ever'. Compounding this drudgery is that lead singer Ian Hunter's precise impression of Bob Dylan's vocal technique. Unfortunately that's 2013 Dylan, so blasting through the giant amps of the o2 is a rasping, strangled yelp - songs sounding like they're being sung by a poorly maintained Vespa.
My heart sank as I realised I was in for two hours of this. For most of the first hour the only movement of note in the crowd was dribs and drabs of people making their way to the exits. It's difficult to get into a rock and roll spirit when people are leaving in droves, apparently preferring quiet public transport and an early bed to the show.
This exodus was a shame, because to be fair things did get a bit better towards the end. The welcome addition of backup singers softened the sound on stage, and some piano-led numbers added some desperately needed variety. I wouldn't exactly say I started enjoying the gig, but I certainly stopped not-enjoying the gig. Still, when they launched into the opening bars of All the Young Dudes there was a palpable sigh of relief as the we realised that this must herald the final moments of the gig. And you know what - All the Young Dudes was fun to listen to - though it's telling that a song written by David Bowie was head and shoulders above all their other material.
There's a sense of weariness that extends throughout the show, from the desultory audience interaction to a largely ossified band to the late 90s looking CG video displays and, unfortunately, right through the audience. As a memory trip this is probably great; a way to remember the time when you strutted atop the world, when pretty girls loved you and 'the man' was there to be fucked. Now you're what the cool kids despise and rebel against. And the most depressing thing? It'll happen to me too!
See you at Kanye West in 2051 folks!
Photos by Steve Goudie
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Thursday, August 15, 2013
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About Time is a film devoid of curiosity, wit and intelligence yet stuffed to the gills with unbearable schmaltz, whiny acoustic guitar music and cutesy dull rubbish. This is about as crap as it gets: two hours of not much happening to not very interesting people. Every moment the plot looks like it might head somewhere interesting the film shrugs its shoulders, does a U-turn and makes a beeline right back to Dullsville. I lost count of the times I muttered "for fuck's sake..." under my breath and sunk into my seat as the film obstinately refused to end.
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