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Showing posts with label jack o connell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jack o connell. Show all posts
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Thursday, October 2, 2014
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Private Gary Hook is trapped deep behind enemy lines. Hunted, chased and beaten, he's a rat in a maze, his only hope for survival to make it back to home base. In his way lie hardened, ideologically obsessed men - all desperate to claim his scalp. You might imagine a story like this taking place in Kabul or Fallujah: a white Western soldier vs the savage horde in a semi-sequel to Black Hawk Down. But '71 takes place entirely within the UK - Belfast , 1971, is tearing itself apart in a frenzy of sectarian violence.
From the off Yann Demange's demonstrates an admirably streamlined economy of narrative. Gary Hook (Jack O'Connell) is fresh out of training and faintly uneasy about being sent to Northern Ireland for his first assignment. Very quickly he's out on a routine patrol to uncover some weapons. Angry crowds form at the sight of the British Army on republican streets and the pressure heats up, threatening to spill over into a full blown riot.
Hook and another soldier are separated from the main group and abandoned in the confusion. They're beaten by the furious crowd, then a gun emerges from the chaos and blows the other soldier's head off. Hook runs. By the time he stops running he's been shot at, blown up, double-crossed, strangled and stitched together without anaesthetic. Even by Belfast's standards this is a pretty rough night out.
'71's propulsive narrative, tense chase scenes and frantic editing, combined with the short run time, combine to make a film that sometimes feels like a trip through an IRA themed amusement park ride. Hook's commander initially presents Belfast as a black and white world of good Protestant nationalists and bad Catholic republicans, areas clearly demarcated into safe and unsafe. Suspicions begin to bubble away that '71 is using the Troubles as a mere backdrop for an action film.
Thankfully the second act introduces some much needed blurring of the lines, outlining the generational disputes within the same sides, showing us the manipulations of undercover officers and how even veteran IRA commanders might find themselves protecting their ideological enemies. This tense knot of pragmatist double-crossing vs zealous devotion to a cause reminded me a lot of James Marsh's 2012 film Shadow Dancer, which similarly probes the murkier edges of the conflict.
Demange neatly exploits the sight of British soldiers being deployed on British soil. These scenes are chilling; the rows of red brick houses, telephone boxes and familiar traffic signs could be anywhere in the UK. We can't help but empathise with the anger of the outraged residents as they're ordered off their street at gunpoint and bullied into submission. This is effective dramatic territory, leading us down a train of thought that eventually arrives at empathy with civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan.
That Demange eventually arrives at a progressive, anti-militarist viewpoint is a relief, especially as the opening sequence, with its over-cranked footage of big n' burly sqauddies doing big n' burly things in the Brecon Beacons, looks exactly like a propagandist army recruitment campaign. But as we progress through the film the idea of soldiering as a noble cause is slowly stripped away to reveal the rotten core of the British military; using young, poor working class bodies as human shields for upper class diabolical political manipulations.
Thus, Private Hook's journey isn't just through sectarian Belfast, it's through the veil that divides propaganda from reality. He has his eyes forcefully opened to the way things really are and realises that he's signed up to be a protector of the weak - and ended up as a paid killer.
Jack O'Connell is on a fantastic run in 2014, staking his claim in March to being one of Britain's best young actors with a powerhouse performance in Starred Up. Here he's not given quite as depth - his background spelled out in a pretty crap scene where we watch him cutely play football with a precocious orphan. But O'Connell is talented enough to define the bulk of Hook's character purely through physical performance rather than exposition - you learn more about him when he's cowering in an outhouse than through any of his dialogue.
There's a hell of a lot to like in '71. This is Demange's debut feature film and he demonstrates considerable directorial skill in an early adrenaline-fuelled chase scene that rivals Greengrass' work in the Bourne films. He's similarly excellent at geographically defining the boundaries of the action, during a 'hide and seek' sequence in a block of flats we always know where the characters are - key to gradually notching up the tension.
With a willingness to avoid easy answers and resistance to demonising either side, '71 is very much a worthwhile watch. It's not perfect; the Machiavellian knots these characters tie themselves into are occasionally a bit too confusing, there's the odd moment of cliché and occasionally the budgetary limitations show. But when it's good it's really good - I eagerly await to see what Demange will do next.
★★★
'71 is released on 10 October.
Demange neatly exploits the sight of British soldiers being deployed on British soil. These scenes are chilling; the rows of red brick houses, telephone boxes and familiar traffic signs could be anywhere in the UK. We can't help but empathise with the anger of the outraged residents as they're ordered off their street at gunpoint and bullied into submission. This is effective dramatic territory, leading us down a train of thought that eventually arrives at empathy with civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan.
That Demange eventually arrives at a progressive, anti-militarist viewpoint is a relief, especially as the opening sequence, with its over-cranked footage of big n' burly sqauddies doing big n' burly things in the Brecon Beacons, looks exactly like a propagandist army recruitment campaign. But as we progress through the film the idea of soldiering as a noble cause is slowly stripped away to reveal the rotten core of the British military; using young, poor working class bodies as human shields for upper class diabolical political manipulations.
Thus, Private Hook's journey isn't just through sectarian Belfast, it's through the veil that divides propaganda from reality. He has his eyes forcefully opened to the way things really are and realises that he's signed up to be a protector of the weak - and ended up as a paid killer.
Jack O'Connell is on a fantastic run in 2014, staking his claim in March to being one of Britain's best young actors with a powerhouse performance in Starred Up. Here he's not given quite as depth - his background spelled out in a pretty crap scene where we watch him cutely play football with a precocious orphan. But O'Connell is talented enough to define the bulk of Hook's character purely through physical performance rather than exposition - you learn more about him when he's cowering in an outhouse than through any of his dialogue.
There's a hell of a lot to like in '71. This is Demange's debut feature film and he demonstrates considerable directorial skill in an early adrenaline-fuelled chase scene that rivals Greengrass' work in the Bourne films. He's similarly excellent at geographically defining the boundaries of the action, during a 'hide and seek' sequence in a block of flats we always know where the characters are - key to gradually notching up the tension.
With a willingness to avoid easy answers and resistance to demonising either side, '71 is very much a worthwhile watch. It's not perfect; the Machiavellian knots these characters tie themselves into are occasionally a bit too confusing, there's the odd moment of cliché and occasionally the budgetary limitations show. But when it's good it's really good - I eagerly await to see what Demange will do next.
★★★
'71 is released on 10 October.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
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Prison is a fascinating place in cinema. Good directors use it as a microcosm - a hermetically sealed bottle where frustrations, resentments and violence that bubble under the society's surface come to the forth, usually in a torrent of swearing and brutality. My genre favourites are Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped, Hector Babenco's Kiss of the Spider Woman and Alan Clarke's Scum - all of which are politically and psychologically incisive. It's the last of these that Starred Up most resembles: both films are gritty, foul-mouthed and vicious.
We follow the young Eric (Jack O'Connell) as he's "starred up", the slang term for a prisoner moved from a young offenders institution to regular prison. Eric is not a very nice man. He's Alexander DeLarge crossed with Charles Bronson; capable of dishing out and receiving beatings, taking a psychotically masochistic pleasure in causing as much havoc as he can. Almost from the moment he's placed in his cell he lashes out, fracturing another inmates skull, fighting off body-armoured prison guards and threatening to chew off a guard's testicles. It's difficult to say he's a "hero" (or even an antihero really) we don't like him, we don't want to see him succeed and we certainly don't want to see him released or escape.
Eric is a blunt instrument but he's at least honest about it. Less so are the complex tangle of interpersonal relationships between guards and inmates - his arrival throwing a wrench into the smoothly running machine of low-level drug-dealing, casual violence and entrenched social hierarchies. Prime among his difficulties is that he's incarcerated on the same wing as his Dad, Neville (Ben Mendelsohn). Though Neville's been in prison for most of Eric's life the two are clearly cut from the same cloth - both men quick to raise their fists. Further dramatic fuel is added by the intervention of Oliver (Rupert Friend), an anger management counsellor who runs a group for violent offenders. Oliver is a bit of a puzzle, mixing a weird class guilt with an affinity with these men - the only non-inmate who genuinely seems to care about rehabilitation.
I visit prisons in a professional capacity and though this obviously don't give me any insight into what it's like to live there - I can at least say that McKenzie captures the dreary Victorian institutional squalor perfectly. Paint peels from the walls, the bars shabbily wear their 11th coat of paint since they were installed, the markings on the floors bear the scuff-marks of ten thousand miserably plodding prison-issue shoes. You can almost smell the disinfectant (with the faintest whiff of piss and vomit underneath) that characterises life at her Majesty's pleasure. Perhaps it's not really surprising that the location looks so realistically downbeat - the film was shot in the disused Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast - once known as "Europe's Alcatraz".
But you can't just shoot inside a prison and expect the location to do all the heavy lifting. McKenzie knows this, exploring the space with an immaculately minimalist style, the most efficient weapons in his arsenal long tracking shots along the cell block and repeated closeups of eyes glaring through slats in the doors. This precise and controlled style reflects the carefully ordered institutional world these men live in. The repeated close-ups induce a state of claustrophobia - subtly giving the audience a taste of what it's like to be stuck in a place like this.
The excellent sound design also contributes, the omnipresent sounds of metal doors slamming shut, burbling conversation, faint abuse and alarms ringing almost down the corridor. It was so expertly done that in an early scene I thought one of the alarms we were hearing was the cinema fire alarm going off. The violence also has a visceral *thwak* to the blows - when these men hit each other you hear the brittle crack of bones breaking and flesh thudding against the floor.
Technically its quite marvellous, as are practically all the performances, particularly O'Connell in the lead role. So what does all this add up to? Writer Jonathan Asser (who I gather the counsellor character is a dramatised version of) clearly has something to say about the Her Majesty's Prison Service, but, amidst the beatings, blood and broken bones, what is it?
Prior to Eric's arrival in the prison, life seems to exist in a state of uneasy peace. The warden conspiring with high-status inmates to get drugs into the prison, thus allowing a miniature gangland to develop. The pecking order this creates means everyone knows their place, so life goes on under a cycle of addiction, fear and respect. Eric's arrival throws everyone for a loop - he doesn't respect any of this, battling against every entrenched power structure he encounters - be it the prison itself or the organised crime within it. Like a seed introduced to a saturated solution his behaviour crystallises the hidden violence that keeps the whole system going.
Underneath all this lies the question as to whether prison should be a place for punishment or rehabilitation - the film firmly coming down on the side of rehabilitation, or at bare minimum behavioural management. What Starred Up ultimately concludes is that the prison system is institutionally violent and that the behaviour of the inmates is symptomatic of the cruelty of the system they find themselves inside. While there's a few good eggs within the ranks of the guards, they primarily exist to torment the prisoners - even to murder them if they cause a big enough stink.
It's a pretty cynical outlook, though one with undeniable roots in reality. You only have to look at how many suspicious deaths in police custody are ruled as suicides to realise how scarily easy it would be for guards to 'arrange' for them to happen. In the cinema I was in this clearly touched a nerve; one woman spontaneously yelling out "fuck the system!" during a particularly unpleasant sequence.
Noble though revealing this is there's an uneasy sensationalism to the film. Though obviously intended to condemn the violence is both cathartic and brutally satisfying to watch. Like Romans watching gladiators go at it we eagerly await the next clash of bone and muscle, taking homoerotic pleasure in watching "well 'ard" men go at each other. These opposing forced make Starred Up is a difficult film to classify, ultimately lying somewhere between socially conscious messaging and lurid exploitation - but though it often falters this is never less than compelling, smart cinema.
★★★★
Starred Up is on general release from March 21st
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