FiLMSiSNiCE

LOST AND FOUND - PIGS (1984)

(Originally published in Sight & Sound Magazine’s May 2019 issue) 

From the windswept hills across Man of Aran (1934) to the jaunty pubs of Leap Year (2010), the representation of Ireland on the silver screen has been a bottomless coddle of dubious accents and smouldering scoundrels. These pictures, numbed by nostalgia, have conjured a lasting screen romance between camera and country. “Everything's all green!” complained studio head Herbert Yates upon reviewing John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952). Little did he know, the director’s emerald dreamscape would go on to strike a major chord with American audiences, shaping an everlasting cultural image within the global imagination.

In Pigs (1984), Cathal Black tears up Ford’s postcard splendour, swapping the national colour of green for the endless grey of Dublin’s pavement slabs. Now a town for penniless beatniks, dealers and pimps, Black marches us through a tour of rubble where landmarks are tucked behind the city’s crowning blisters of social unrest. Still, for all its fire and fury, Pigs remains one of the most romantic Irish films ever made, yet hardly ever seen.

Black was part of a flurry of indigenous filmmakers in the late 1970s and 80s who sought to challenge Hollywood’s creaky cliches of Irish identity. Now referred to as The First Wave, films like Bob Quinn’s Poitín (1978) and Joe Comerford’s Traveller (1981) – written by Neil Jordan – told homegrown stories with a searing political consciousness. Not exactly crowd pleasers, these films went mostly unseen by mainstream audiences but nevertheless provided the impetus for the government to establish the Irish Film Board (IFB) in 1980, finally giving Irish filmmakers the chance to bring projects to fruition through unrestrictive state support.

Taking place inside a dilapidated Georgian mansion inhabiting a motley crew of misfit squatters, Pigs represented a highpoint for the newly established IFB. Slinking by the concrete debris of urban neglect, the film opens as if excavating the remains of an ancient ruin. We move past a jagged horizon of broken buildings, down to the streets below where Jimmy (Jimmy Brennan) breaks into an abandoned house. Creeping through the dark he soon manages to spark a lightbulb overhead before providing the picture’s first words, “home, sweet home”.

The light quickly attracts an assortment of giddy vagabonds looking for shelter. Ranging from hapless to deranged, these lodgers initially appear as types, two dimensional cut-outs dressed in quirks rather than fully fleshed out characters. It’s a perspective not exclusive to the audience as Jimmy also comes to realise “they're all nuts!”. These early comic encounters inevitably give way to the doomed realities of social circumstance seeping through the cracks in the wall.

It’s through those concrete wounds the film strikes a dizzying blend of politics and poetry. Cinematographer Thaddeus O’Sullivan elevates what could have been a bland exercise in social realism to a city symphony cunningly spiced with impressionistic light. Windows often overflow with coloured glows, flooding every shaded nook and cranny with a subtle reminder of the threats waiting outside: violence and incarceration. We become wanderers under the camera’s skilful direction, catching our breath within the quiet shots lingering on Dublin’s decayed decor.

“Pigs is something I did when I was a bit dark and angry” Black recently admitted. Upon its release the feature was met with a mixed reaction, mostly written off as a grim study in urban isolation, critics seemingly ignored its haunting lyricism. Cast adrift following the shutdown of the IFB in 1987, it would be 11 years until Black was given the opportunity tooffer a follow up with Korea (1995). During that hiatus, the new wave of underground filmmakers seemed to crash against a fresh globalised economy. With the worldwide success of My Left Foot (1989) and The Crying Game (1992) Irish cinema pivoted outward in the hope of drawing upon an international market.

The socially critical filmmakers of the 1980s were now slowly drifting through the quiet fringes of Ireland’s cinematic consciousness. The IFB– reactivated in 1993 –was beginning to lean more towards international co-productions while adapting trodden conventions, which although commercially viable, tended to “reinforce rather than challenge the inherited stereotypes of the Irish in the cinema” argues film scholar Kevin Rockett.

Ullmann & Bergman: Redefining The Muse

Published by The Quietus

With the release of Jane Magnusson’s Bergman: A Year in a Life, we take a look at one of cinema’s most prolific partnerships and consider where the myth of the muse fits into 2019.

‘Behind every good man is a great woman’ is a phrase that hasn't aged well. Overlooked and undervalued, these wives, lovers and discounted companions all stand, shadowed by that figure in front. The politics of art have always favoured men: From the ubiquitous nudes of the renaissance to Lucien Freud’s blotched beauties, women were – and still very much are – positioned to be looked at. Like the armless pillar of flesh that is Venus De Milo, women have been handicapped and stripped for millennia. If they ever do discover her marbled limbs it would seem fitting to find them sporting le bras d'honneur.

To have a muse has mostly been a male privilege. A symptom of artistic genius, its role, according to the feminist academic, Germaine Greer, is ‘to penetrate the male artist and bring forth a work from the womb of his mind’. It’s a rather captivating interpretation where gender roles are flipped and power is forever shifted. But when we start to unpack its baggage we find a lack of autonomy beneath the glamour. An icon without the ‘I’.

“You are my Stradivarius” the great Ingmar Bergman once told his ‘muse’, Liv Ullmann, who, up until his death in 2007, shared over forty years, twelve films and a child with the auteur. Their kinship was one of cinema’s most fruitful and fascinating alliances. Part time lovers and life-long friends, their turbulent relationship often bled onto the screen, smudging the borders of reality and fiction into a scalding blend of Scandi sensuality. Now, Ullmann, tired of the crooked politics of being a female director, can be found trekking through festival retrospectives, documentaries, memoirs and interviews, all the while accounting for a man’s genius.

But by no means does Ullmann begrudge the muse moniker, she embraces it as a gift. “Being seen by Ingmar Bergman changed me”, she told CBC Radio. “I found out that there is more to me, there's more in who Liv is, and what she understands.” Though it wasn't just Ullmann’s life which was altered, Bergman’s work with the Norwegian actress represented a shift in perspective. At first he looked from above, with moral fables like The Seventh Seal (1957) and The Virgin Spring (1960), but soon glanced up to the heavens with the spiritual quandaries of Winter Light (1963) and The Silence (1963). It was only after the introduction of Ullmann that Bergman began to look inward, a self-reflexive meditation spanning decades.

With Persona (1966), as noted in his 1990 book, Images, Bergman ‘touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover’. One of those secrets is undoubtedly Ullmann, with her mute performance quietly simmering beneath vampiric desire, we can’t help but fall under her spell. Sucked into a vortex of gazes, we swim between two shores, two women who embody the tangled conscience of Bergman’s cinema. If Bibi Andersson represented a forgotten innocence then it’s through Ullmann we endure the trails of adulthood, the complexities of human connection.

“So many of Ingmar’s movies are about a little boy looking for safety”, Ullmann told TIFF director, Piers Handling at last year’s festival. This echoes the lasting image of Persona, that of the bespectacled youth caressing Andersson’s projected face as it morphs into that of Ullmann. As if a glimpse into the future, these few seconds encapsulate a forty-two year relationship. Trapped behind a blurry backdrop and caged inside a frame, Ullmann would go on to become an on-screen vessel of infinite neurosis. “He didn't know who I was”, the actress told an audience at BFI Southbank, “But I understood one thing, I was Ingmar.”

Forever defined through a lens, the muse must abandon all sense of self. It’s only then will they become the blank canvas on which to project the male fantasy. When first introduced to Anna Karina – another great ‘muse’ of the 20th century – in Le Petit Soldat (1963), we don't see her, instead Godard describes her. She’s “chic” and “has a mouth like Leslie Caron”. Who is this woman? This Frankenstein of fantasies. Even when she appears on screen she’s kept from view as Godard teases us into a game of peek-a-boo. Then, the eagerly awaited close-up in which she shakes her hair lose and with it unfurls a frenzy of sensuality. With one orgasmic motion, Karina flexes the freedom and style of La Nouvelle Vague, sealing herself into the everlasting memory of cinema.

Karina’s career stretched beyond Godard’s grasp yet will be forever tethered to his genius. A pop-star, novelist and director, it could even be said that as an actress her role in Rivette’s La Religieuse (1966) towered over anything she encountered with Godard. Similar to Karina, Ullmann left Bergman’s herd in 1970, swapping the misty mounds of Fårö Island for the Hollywood hills. Her efforts however went largely unnoticed as films like Lost Horizon (1973) and 40 Carats (1973) proved critical and box-office hiccups.

After returning to Europe, landing a string of successful roles, Ullmann stood behind the camera for Sofie (1993). It’s a directorial debut searing with a unique sensitivity throughout, a quality largely overlooked at the time. ‘Inevitably’, wrote Stephen Holden of the New York Times, ‘Sofie, has a strong Bergmanesque ambiance…Like Mr. Bergman, Ms. Ullmann has a particular fascination with people's eyes’. Constantly comparing and contrasting her work with the Swedish maestro, it seemed the world wasn't ready to recognise Ullmann as an artist in her own right.

Faithless (2000), arguably Ullmann’s finest outing as a director, shuffles memories of life and art into what Ebert calls, “the kind of truth seeking that movies and life rarely allow”. Penned by Bergman himself, the production offers an intriguing power reversal. It might be his words, but it’s Ullmann’s story to tell. The film in many ways is Bergman’s confession, making strong allusions to the pair’s rocky past, it weighs the price of heedless passion, a price that only time can measure.

Now in 2019, time has rendered the ‘muse’ defunct. With the #MeToo movement highlighting the uneven power structures across the media industry, such antiquated terms of objectification seem like rusted relics of a bygone era. The once associated glamour has turned to grime, the metaphor for creativity now a broken tool of male control. And although dozens of articles lazily attempt to corral such pairings – like Keaton/Allen or Thurman/Tarantino –  under the muse/artist banner, the term holds little meaning for these actresses. “It's great if he finds me inspiring”, Thurman told a Rolling Stone reporter in 2004  “But it [the muse label] doesn't really relate to what I did."

Carefully unpicking such tired terminology, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread (2017) weaves a playful deconstruction of male power. We align ourselves with Alma (Vicky Krieps), her wants and desires, her need not to be looked at but listened to. It’s through her we become an accessory to obsession, suffering the polite violences of fixated stares and domestic ritual. The film threads mainstream myths through a feminist perspective, asking us to consider the psychological cost of being placed on a pedestal.

Poppins & Politics 

Published by HeadStuff

Squawking umbrellas, enchanted banisters and a concerning variety of tweed, it can only mean one thing: Mary Poppins has descended from the heavens upon jolly Ole London Town once again.  Disney’s follow up to the 1964 classic sees our beloved airborne nanny return to the Banks family 20 years on.  Though with Jane and Michael all grown up, it’s his three kids who are now in need of babysitting.

With new songs and mostly new faces, the sequel is set up to be the perfect accompaniment to the seasonal tsunami of tinsel and eggnog.  Though between the chim cher-ees and chim-cher-oos, where tuppence be the word among many a well fed bird, there’s something in the air this time around, not a kite nor a cloud, but a fog to be found.  “There’s things ‘alf in shadow and ‘alfway in light” and much like Britain’s own national strife there’s them to the left and them to the right.

When our small screens are ever aglow with Brexit debate, mishap and setbacks, it’s the cinema screens which seem the perfect portal to find refuge.  But no film – no matter how escapist its intent- is created in a vacuum. ‘Film’ by its definition is a reaction: that which occurs when a celluloid strip is exposed to light,  but it also applies to the work itself, a product of the culture in which it’s made, a reaction to the light of day.

Coming off the success of Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast, Mary Poppins Returns is the latest Mouse House property to get the reboot/rehash/reheat.  Directed by Rob Marshall and penned by David Magee, the sequel proves a faithful retelling of the original – perhaps to its own detriment – with superficial tweaks worked in.  There’s dapperly dressed penguins, bottomless bubblebaths, and cobblestone streets chirping with cockney witticism, but in today’s climate, it’s a reading of the film’s political undertones that resonate the most.  Unintended or undercover yet somehow unavoidable, the implications echo in our heads longer than any tune could hope.

In the film’s closing crescendo which sees the Banks family race against the stroke of midnight in order to save their family house from repossession, it’s Lin Manuel Miranda’s band of merry lamplighters who attempt to scale and pull back the hands of Big Ben.  But of course it’s Mary Poppins – in full Union Jack coloured attire – who leapfrogs ahead, floating atop the iconic landmark to literally turn back time.  As we learn during the film’s opening, this is more than just a house at stake, it’s their home, and has been for as long as Michael and Jane can remember.  Filled with the intimacy of memory, 17 Cherry Tree Lane is a sanctuary, a source of the family’s historical identity and not to mention its place in our collective childhood as viewers of the original.

As if a reflection of the Brexit mood through American eyes, the film evokes a national nostalgia which is then foregrounded by its climax:  A reversal of power takes place where Britain’s upper class are refused the right to dictate others’ identity.  The payoff sees Jane and Michael not only retain their family home but inherit a small fortune along with it.  In the final sequence which soon follows, we witness the Banks family, no more the ragamuffin quintet we saw first but now decked out to the nines with smiles to match.  It’s a happy ending by means of a monetary reward, the family have leaped to the upper echelon of society and bonded as a result.  Not only have our characters got what they needed – love and the wonder of imagination – they’ve gotten exactly what they wanted.

Taking all that into account, the film’s morals could be said to explore and reinforce the hopeful narrative that was once promised to ‘Leave’ voters: take back control, preserve your nation’s identity and the future will be bright.  And by turning back the clocks to an idealised past, we get just that. “Big Ben is finally on time”, chimes Admiral Boom in a moment of wistful pride as his nation finally ticks to the right tock.

2018: Faces of Resilience

Published by Headstuff

Reflecting over the top films of 2018 we trace a thematic through-line revealing a greater cultural context.

In a year that began with “Fire and Fury”, which saw national boarders rise and patience wear thin, cinema offered a pulpit of expression.  From primal screams to jaded sighs these pictures articulated the wounds of the world through flickers of pain and everlasting warmth.  It was a year for the outsiders, filling our screens with faces of resilience that refused to be forgotten long after the credits rolled.

As 2017 ended, a conversation began.  Revelations of mistreatment, rape and everything in between plagued an industry built on the suspension of disbelief.  With prominent media figures disgraced and departed it seemed Hollywood was regressing back to the days of studio moguls, tight fisted and fueled on gin and terrorism.  #TimesUp was a call for change, for inclusivity on and off screen, far more than fitting feminism with a crowbar or plastering posters with token ethnicity, the movement urged an industry to its knees in laying down the foundation of a new vision for the future, wide angled and in focus.

Indeed, the industry’s abuses of power were symptoms of a global disease: Controversial elections and national votes caused a seismic shift in attitude and highlighted a growing culture of isolation and tension. It was in 2018 where these political tremors crept inside the cinema screen.

Seen rumbling the nursery walls of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, our protagonist (Cleo) surveys the aftermath of a different kind of earthquake, a literal one.  Ceilings caved, windows rattled and nurses pouring in to save wriggling infants.  But left behind, an incubator doused in rubble houses the most helpless of newborns, bandaged with lungs fluttering for survival, here the fragility of humankind is encapsulated into one shot. With this, Cuarón evokes the true measure of any society: how it treats its most vulnerable, and no where is that more evident than in a time of chaos.

But like the eye of a storm, Roma centers around an interest of quiet power.  Cuarón often places Cleo in crowded places, busy streets and noisy households, but as the film continues distraction peels away, inching us ever closer to our heroine. After the film’s most traumatic scene, where one would expect to find Cleo guarded in numbers or hidden from view, we’re finally given a close up, on eye level, a servant shot like a queen. It’s in these quiet moments where her power lies, a fearless compassion matched with a steely resolve conjure a wordless wonder of deafening strength.  

The idea of summoning power from pain can render itself in subtle ways too.  It’s a theme literally sewn into the fabric of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther in which our hero’s suit weaves a sci-fi world into a richer context.  A bodysuit designed to convert pain into power marks a creative touch embodying a history of oppression and struggle.  The black experience as told by Coogler is one skewed by western ignorance.  For most of the characters on the outside, Wakanda is a third-world country but as we fly into the African plains, pierce through its hologram projection and emerge into a shimmering metropolis, our understanding is forever redefined.  

And like Coogler, both Spike Lee and Jon M. Chu strive to reshape identity by shattering mainstream myths. Crazy Rich Asians gives us a nuanced representation of Asian Americans where Hollywood’s vision evades the usual cultural clichés and racial stereotypes.  Furthermore, the lasting images of BlackKklansman are not that of fear but the defiant faces of African Americans:  In a scene where a Black Power speech charges the room, members of the crowd are singled into empowering closeups.  It’s as if the film takes a breath between the static of terror to share a moment of bliss for characters we’ll never see again.

‘Infiltrate hate’ is Lee’s slogan with love being the weapon of choice.  And like many love stories, the couple in Cold War must negotiate human desires within doomed circumstance.  Pawlikowski’s swooning soviet saga is one of bitter heartbreak, a seeming hopelessness in stark contrast to Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. A warzone of racial politics, Jenkins imbues his frame with a lush variety of colour, the use of light radiates an optimism soaring between the invisible forces of horror.  But while Jenkins’ characters find hope in a hopeless world, Cold War’s Wiktor and Zula share a love that transcends the physical.  In a final act of defiance we enter a spiritual realm untouched by society’s fate.

Snarling against a faceless future, Rev. Ernst Toller too seeks salvation from an imploding world.  First Reformed, like many of Paul Schrader’s films deals with a lost soul in a body shaking, thrashing, pounding against a city slumped in a capitalist comatose.  The Trump era is one of total dissonance and like many of us in 2018, Toller has become disillusioned with humanity as a result.  Perhaps his cure lies in the edges of Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, here faith resides within the kindness of strangers, truckers and makeshift communities rebuilding a broken America from the outside in. 

If 2018 taught us anything, it’s that there is no power greater than a community’s will to survive.  Think of the ‘family’ from Shoplifters, or the pack of button nosed mutts from Isle of Dogs.  Societal outcasts cobbled together from a landscape of disarray these characters unearth a global vulgarity beneath a veneer of civility.  Intriguingly it’s the live-action characters who have their lives controlled by unseen hands until finally torn apart.  As though an afterthought needling its way back into the conversation, Kore-eda reminds us of the forgotten families desperately trying not to slip through the cracks of existence.

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

published by Film Ireland

‘A Spoonful of Sugar’, ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee’, and of course. the merciless tongue twister that is ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’, these are not songs, but anthems, their notes drop like anchors into the rock-bed of our cinematic memory.  As if preprogrammed before birth, we could hum, whistle ‘n’ toot each melody before mastering our ABCs.  But ‘Mary Poppins’ (1964) wasn’t just a hit with kids, it was hugely critically adored, setting the record for Disney’s most Academy Award wins for a single film.  Practically no other Disney live action film before or since has even come close to the critical and lucrative triumph that ‘Mary Poppins’ was.

So it’s somewhat surprising that The Mouse House waited this long too cash in on the original’s success with a sequel.  It seemed as though Poppins neatly sidestepped fate while ill-conceived revisions such as Freaky Friday (2003) and Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005) crammed the bargain pits of video stores around the world.  But now with Disney’s Stalin-esque 5 year plan to renovate our childhoods, we’re told to quietly stand aside while our memories are systematically peeled back like worn floorboards. With the success of ‘Jungle Book’ (2016) and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (2017), it was only a matter of time before Mickey & Co knocked on the door of 17 Cherry Tree Lane. 

Cue, Mary Poppins Returns (2018), taking place 20 years after the original with both Jane and Michael all grown up, it’s his kids who are now in need of the enchanted brand of babysitting only Miss Poppins can provide.  And for all the nail biting preconceptions one might have, the pitch seemed promising:  A stellar cast, all new songs, and even a rumored Dick Van Dyke cameo were on the cards, it’s as if Hollywood were about to adapt my letter to Santa Claus before my very eyes.

It’s a pity then, that the final product seems a half-hearted attempt to re-conjure what magic its predecessor inspired.  A sequel wavering between a reboot and rehash, it’s as though Disney reheated the leftovers of the original and left us to wade through the flavourless slab of familiarity.  What the film does offer is a series of superficial tweaks that do little to spur our imagination.  And although it’s unfair to compare the titles, it’s inevitable, especially when we’re constantly being reminded with winks, nudges and nods so frequent you’d swear someone’s head would fall off.

Thankfully Emily Blunt (with head still attached) makes matters bearable.  A refreshing take on Poppins, her tough love approach is in stark contrast to Julie Andrews’ portrayal, and sits more closely to PL Travers’ source books.  It’s Lin – Manuel Miranda’s Jack who – acting as a stand in for Van Dyke’s Bert – seems let down by a poor script and stranded on screen as a result.  In giving a more earnest sensibility to his character, his doe-eyed expressions lack the anarchic glint that made the role so beloved.  We soon find ourselves yearning for the giddy limbs of Van Dyke, a vibration of sublime silliness the film desperately needs.  

There’s no doubt though that Miranda is a song and dance man, his ‘Trip A Little Light Fantastic’ might be the most memorable tune in a film of instantly forgettable hooks.  There’s pretty wordplay and intricate phrasing throughout the film’s numbers but it all serves to make monotonous melodies that strive to echo the Sherman Brothers’ original arrangements.  It’s a good thing then that there’s plenty of sights to distract us from the film’s many sounds.  London town is blaring with colour, it’s clear to see that a great amount of work has gone into it’s design.

It’s the film’s garbled politics however that are hard to ignore.  In what seems like a series of checked boxes ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ pretends to reject notions of inequality without ever leaving its orbit.  In an ending where our characters get, not only what they need but – on top of that – exactly what they want (if not more) we’re left scratching our heads at a world view that would make Boots Riley shake his fist.

                                           If Beale Street Could Talk

Published by Scannain

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” -  James Baldwin

Maybe it’s the light, the light that bathes these bodies in fonts of colour, sculpting skin into marble and characters into monuments of love and resilience.  Maybe it’s the camera, though restless and hungry it too can pull a face into focus, from faces of grace to those that provoke us.  And just when we feel the chorus of strings lifting us toward an indescribable splendor it’s the sound of brass that rumbles, sinking us into melancholy’s familiar melody.  If Beale Street Could Talk seeps into the soul in such inexplicable ways.  It’s a film which doesn't shout yet is undeniably clear in what it wants to say.  It may not be as bold as its predecessor but daring in its nuanced delicacy where it’s within the expressions of light we find an everlasting warmth.

There’s a certain tenderness radiating through Barry Jenkins’ work to date.  From his assured feature debut, Medicine for Melancholy (2008), to his electrifying chronicle of masculinity in Moonlight (2016), the director’s cinema crafts an open hand grasping for a grip in the dark, where characters and audiences alike seek to find a solace in its enchanted embrace.  If Beale Street Could Talk (adapted from Baldwin’s book of the same name) continues this approach, taking us all the way back to 1970s Harlem where we follow Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James), childhood friends who fall in love as young adults.  Inseparable and unwavering, their bond is tested when Fonny is falsely imprisoned for rape.  Pregnant with his child, Tish, along with her family, must rally to prove his innocence.  

To focus on the film’s plot is to swim against the lyrical current sweeping undertow.  It’s only by detaching oneself from the broad strokes that we begin to revel in the many subtle touches rippling throughout the film and soak in the resonance beneath the text.  As simple as a knowing glance or a perfectly placed prop, there’s an ever-glowing intimacy flickering between light and shade, one which imbues the camera with a richness of spirit through history’s haunted memory.  Our characters are trapped, not only in the cell of circumstance but in the sliver of liberty a shallow depth of field can provide where the frame can seal periphery alongside a familiar fate.  Pools of autumn hues fill the screen with cosy palettes of red, gold and green.  But the sense of an approaching winter needles through the narrative, and while characters insulate their souls we’re reminded of the inevitable struggle to find hope in a hopeless system.

The score too weaves a bittersweet trance, strings and horns conjure sounds as if forgotten harmonies you’d swear you've heard before.  But it’s the cast that hit the highest notes, and much like Moonlight, it’s the supporting players whose performances resonate the most. Colman Domingo, as Tish’s father is a joy to watch while Brian Tyree Henry, with only a couple of scenes manages to echo in our minds long after the credits roll.  Faces of quiet strength is what we see again and again, closeups that lock eyes and throw away the keys. The way Regina King or KiKi Layne can hold our gaze is both powerful and paralyzing, as if we've been drafted into a scene only to miss our cue and all we can do now is look and listen, peeking into the infinite depths of the human face.

Though mesmerizing the film can remain too faithful to the novel at times, leaving dialogue sounding like dialogue, constructed and at odds with the emotional pull of a scene.  At Its best it works as a collage of shuffled memories slipping back and forward through time to untangle our preconceptions.  When introduced to Fonny we’re not told exactly what crime he has been accused of, Jenkins doesn't allow us to label him as a criminal but asks us to connect with the boy, the artist, the soon to be father.  

Published by Film Ireland

Barreling down boulevards as if a deranged dodgem on the lam, skipping curbs, stubbing toes, just the sight of orange hair skating over the horizon was enough to make any pedestrian cross the road.  With four wheels pointed straight and a joystick stuck in accelerate John Callahan made his name from spinning wheels and rolling eyes.  And like how he charged his wheelchair through Portland’s populated pavements, his satirical cartoons never put on the brakes.  With acerbic wit nipping all in his path, from clergymen to the Klan, no one was safe when there was a marker in hand.

When it came time to tell his story, it was Robin Williams who first optioned Callahan’s autobiography – from which the film takes its title – in 1998.  With Williams to play the lead and Van Sant on board to adapt/direct, the idea seemed the perfect followup to the mainstream success of ‘Good Will Hunting’ (1997).  But as years turned into decades and drafts turned into more drafts the project never left the page.  Following the deaths of Williams and Callahan himself in 2010 there seemed little hope for the biopic to ever get made.  That was until Amazon Studios picked it up after Joaquin Phoenix was brought in to don the tangerine fringe. 

‘Don’t Worry, He Wont Get Far On Foot’ follows the artist from his giddy days as a Portland layabout, guzzling gin and chasing girls, only to have his life severely altered after a car crash left him quadriplegic at the age of 21. The rest of the film trails Callahan’s rocky road to sobriety, loosely framing the action around the AA 12 step program.  The resulting film is a sweet, surprisingly sober and somewhat patchy affair where strong performances are hampered by an underwhelming script stuck between two tones.

Van Sant’s directing style has always lent itself well to performances and here is no different.  Actors are given the space to skip though scenes with a refreshing playfulness, making it hard not to let out the occasional smile.  The same spirit carries over to the camerawork which gently shuffles through Portland’s nestled curiosities, giving the film a great sense of place.  And while although predominantly set in the 70s, the movie never strains itself in reminding us.  Where other films are too busy shoehorning an era’s cultural cliches into view, ‘Don’t Worry’ paints a clearer picture by subtler means, from costumes to camera zooms we get to soak in the senses of time.

It’s a shame then that the film never feels comfortable in how to handle its story.  Straddling between moments of irreverence and sentiment we find a film struggling to find its voice.  We get the sense Van Sant is more interested in sifting through the familiar routines of recovery then exploring an artist at odds with civility.  The worst instance being the introduction of Annu, (Rooney Mara) appearing almost as an hallucination of delicate divinity – think Florence Nightingale with a dab of the Virgin Mary – there purely to pluck our protagonist from his post-operative blues.  The dark delights of Callahan’s scribbled anarchy seem diluted in convention, becoming a foot-note to surrounding emotional hurdles.

The film excels through its performances where Phoenix effortlessly tumbles through countless emotional states, from anguish to forgiveness, dippy, dumb and daft, it’s a home brewed charm both restless and skillful.  The supporting cast too boasts a collection of colourful characters, take Callahan’s fellow AA members, from Beth Ditto to the ever eerily enchanting Udo Kier, we see a sideshow unhinged in all the right places.  But it’s Jonah Hill who gives the most memorable performance as Donnie, Callahan’s sponsor turned quasi guru.  It’s quite a new look, with honey coated hair and a penchant for finer things the actor echoes a saintly Tom Petty, wafting through scenes with a tender glow.  in fact, the moments he shares with Phoenix are some of the film’s best.

Published by Film Ireland

The lasting images that echo through my mind during the end credits of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman aren't those of the homegrown terrorism stampeding through every scene, it’s the faces of African Americans blooming from darkness, each as dignified and dazzling as the next. It’s a series of closeups Director Spike Lee uses during a Black Power speech.  As a soaring oratory charges the room our screen is lit by a spotlight sculpting extras into icons. It’s as if the film takes a breath between the static of hate and shares a moment of bliss for characters we’ll never see again.

Spike Lee Joints have always spotlighted the African American experience, his films explore and empower the marginalised while eroding the skin-colour hierarchy of Hollywood in the process.  In BlacKkKlansman, Lee sets out to make a “contemporary period piece” based on the true story of Colorado Springs’ first black police officer, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), who in 1973 successfully infiltrated and exposed the Ku Klux Klan.

Although set in the 70s and shot on film there’s a timeless tangibility to these images.  They’re clean and grainless as if this memoir, wrapped in a modern gloss was smuggled through time without a crease.  It’s a subtle touch in a film blaring its messages from start to finish.  Unfiltered by metaphor, undiluted by allegory, Lee employs a design which leaves nothing left unsaid. It’s an approach which at times seems fierce as well as clumsy. Parallels are drawn from past and present, spelt out, underlined then highlighted.  

The film shines through its performances.  With a catalogue of playful smirks and knowing looks Washington’s cute charm disarms the most hotheaded of cops and klansmen.  It’s a portrayal which plays nicely against Adam Driver’s Zimmerman, a role which may prove to be the film’s most nuanced.  “Why you acting like you don’t have skin in the game?” Stallworth asks his partner who undergoes a growing acceptance, embracing his jewish heritage after seemingly ignoring it his whole life.  Identities shift and switch in BlacKkKlansman, voices are mimicked and mannerisms are mirrored as characters fashion different guises enabling them to heard.

Lee too uses a guise, one allowing him to connect to his audience.  The film’s shuffled genres breed a political discourse packed inside borrowed conventions of palatable pastiche.  From Buddy Cop capers to Blaxploitation flicks Lee references known frameworks to engage his audience in a rooted subject matter.  The genre play is then deftly distorted as the cinematic dialogue is pried open even further where Hollywood classics like Gone with the Wind (1939) and Birth of a Nation (1915) are put into a startling new context. It’s a shame then that the film’s clunky script undermines so much good intention.

Much of our time is spent revelling in the bigoted buffoonery of the Klan’s members, an oafishness which ultimately neuters any sense of real threat.  Evil is caricatured by a slack jawed impotence blundering through the film and it’s only in its final sequence do we feel doom knocking on our door.  What transpires is an inspired sequence right out of Lee’s playbook which sees our characters catapult through time while stood still in a world rapidly changing around them.

Published by Film Ireland

Paul Schrader’s First Reformed doesn't simply begin, it bleeds into consciousness.  Blooming from darkness our eyes creep through time where a divine relic looms large.  A simple yet striking design, this white washed steeple sits quietly detached from its surroundings as twig-tipped trees strike silhouettes against the churning sky. The camera ushers its audience as if a stray procession seeking refuge from the toppling clouds above yet we cant help but feel a sense of doubt as the church contorts with every yard gained.  Is this building a shelter for the stranded or salvation’s snare?

For Schrader, cinema is that shelter and together we tiptoe into his church.  Dreyer, Bergman and Bresson make up the three wise men and their gifts brought and borrowed embalm each frame with a meditative stillness.  It’s a transcendental cinema of ritual and routine where form shapes content into a flickering genuflection.  It’s what Schrader calls the ‘scalpel of boredom’, time unspooled and sculpted into an existential itch out of reach. There’s a silent fury boiling behind the camera, frothing the vocabulary of a collective anxiety.  It’s an unease that can be traced back through the mottled diary of Travis Bickle where apocalyptic predictions pry open the blistered boroughs of Taxi Driver (1976).

Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) too keeps a diary, but what starts out as an exercise to keep his thoughts in order, soon becomes a document of spiritual malaise.  Toller oversees the aforementioned Church, more a tourist pit stop than a place of worship this parish is on the verge of celebrating its 250th anniversary.  Toller is soon approached by Mary (Amanda Seyfried) to lend spiritual counsel to her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), a radical environmentalist wrought with despair.  Expecting their first child Michael can’t bear the thought of introducing a new being into a world teetering on the edge of oblivion.  The Reverend’s heartfelt words do little to stir Michael from his misery, instead a reversal occurs.  Like an infection Toller contracts a sickness of the soul and soon festering concerns seep across diary pages with the ominous mantra ‘Will God forgive us?’. 

Toller has become disillusioned not with God but with humanity.  While he preaches to half empty pews congregations crowd Abundant Life, a nearby megachurch run by Pastor Jeffers (Cedric ‘The Entertainer’ Kyles), a corporate Christian whose disarming warmth represents the modern faith Toller rejects.  Schrader grinds his camera against the mounting tension between faith and politics to explore what hope can be held in a hopeless world.

It’s a tension that lies ever present across Toller’s face.  The narrow crease cutting between Hawke’s eyes externalizes a lacerated soul, a mind torn in two.  Hawke quietly tinkers behind a face of numbed expression to internalize a soul screaming to be heard.  An actor whose giddy limbs and casual charm oozed his way to stardom, now seems a shadow slipping through scenes to elude our grasp.  

A stark shooting strategy is incorporated which echoes the reverend’s torment where static shots linger in a tight aspect ratio smothering any sense of relief.  It’s a style that harks back to the European greats, a nostalgia that seems at odds with the film’s lifeless digital format, where images appear crisp and cold.  A tug of war ensues, where even the film’s form is wriggling in its own skin. Schrader nudges us adrift in time only to find ourselves lost behind a modern lens.

The dissonance in design spills over to the film’s dressing where just a kitsch lamp is enough to unbalance an uncluttered composition. There is no comfort to be found.  With every camera move, every slow push in and pan we sense a whispering menace, we’re being simultaneously pushed and pulled, passively asphyxiated to the point where even Toller’s church begins to look like a courtroom, where judge, jury and executioner make up the Holy Trinity.  

Published by Film Ireland

‘The Shape of Water’ opens with an opening of its own.  Tunneling through sunken corridors as if narrow chinks of the mind the camera gently slips us beyond the gilded gateways of slumber.  It’s here in this boundless bliss where lamps and tables tip-toe and drift, a clock overhead, a chair undertow, untethered, unhooked, untucked and let go. We too soon find ourselves upended and utterly immersed into the realm behind closed eyes where a “princess without a voice” can be heard without a sound.

Our “princess” is Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute janitor whose routine of mopping floors in a government research lab plunges into the extraordinary as she becomes mysteriously drawn to their latest top-secret “Asset”. Tall, athletic and gorgeously gilled this ancient creature turned captive might just be the edge the USA need to push them ahead in the ongoing space-race.  As a bond blossoms between them, Elisa soon realizes the creature’s survival may entirely rest in her hands.  Teaming up with her neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins) and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) a plan is hatched to save the otherworldly creature from a looming government autopsy.

There’s no doubt that Guillermo Del Toro has a fierce finesse for engineering visually stunning environments and ‘The Shape of Water’ makes no exception. From the opening score’s pirouetting notes we are effortlessly nudged afloat into a world bathing in rusted greens and deep-diving blues.  Elisa’s home appears almost submerged in an oceanic palette where apartment antiquities form curious clusters of knick-knacks, freckling floors like barnacles clinging to shore.  Down below, a derelict cinema pulses flickers of fantasy through Elisa’s floorboards, a tempting invitation to a world of wonder. A wonder that can often be smothered between the functional and formidable dank walls of the government facility. But it’s here where we first meet our captivating creature, an enchanted combination of performance and costume.  His taut physique ripples with slippery sounds, from fluttering gills to guttural gasps; this “monster” is truly alive.  

Del Toro’s delicate designs aren't just left bobbing at the surface, they stem from a colour coded labyrinth emanating from the film’s centre. However, the way in which the film conveys its core ideas are anything but subtle.  Heavy handed messages and symbols are underlined and foregrounded leaving little for audiences to digest. At his best Del Toro’s films have always opened up a dialogue between the past and present and in ‘The Shape of Water’ the director takes us back to 1962 to explore ‘the moment where America crystallizes the notion of a dream that never came to be’.  Jet finned luxury Sedans, a coca-cola bottle in hand and a television in every home, this is the American dream brought to you by Budweiser.  It’s a mythologized era that echoes through people who vow to ‘Make America Great Again’.  The film offers to wash away that myth, peeling back its varnished layers to reveal a rust festering beneath, the rampant racism, the homophobia, the Russian threat, the impending death of cinema and asks the question, has anything changed?

The film’s main characters are outsiders, world weary wanderers living out of step with time.  Each person tries to carve out an identity, negotiating their own existence with a world bent indifferent. Each suffer in silence as voiceless as Elisa.  Michael Shannon’s unhinged charisma is neatly packed into Strickland, a callous government agent whose surface of certainty soon gives way to rot.  Prowling corridors, clutching a stiff cattle prod by his side one can’t help but think he may be compensating for something.  Sally Hawkins proves again why she is one of the best actors working today.  Her subtle expressions skip along the spectrum of human emotion with such transcendent ease it becomes quietly mesmerizing.  Not only is Elisa courageously curious in her endeavors, she also expresses her sexuality with a brazen honesty.  Del Toro strips the sensational from the sensual and leaves us with something far more satisfying.

The film works at its best when following Elisa’s courtship with the sinewy specimen. A symphony of glances and gestures swim through silences where timid connections are made.  Each speak a universal language both dizzy, daring and strange, from light jazz records to hard boiled eggs we sense an intimacy simmering between the two.  Unfortunately, the moments of magic only last so long as we’re catapulted through a rushed second half where the film tries to reach towards the profound, only to pull a muscle.  It wants us to let go, allowing the current to carry us away but at certain points (one in particular) I found my self resisting its reverie.

Favourite films of 2017

1. A Ghost Story

Unlike anything I’ve seen all year, David Lowery’s elegant meditation on grief gorging through time proves both subtle and bold in equal measure.

Moving deftly between flickers of absurdity and pain the film’s minimalist approach appears simple but never simplistic.  Its tender score like blossoming bruises, seeps into the frame whose tight and rounded edges seem to usher us through scenes of forgotten home-movies as if held captive to memory’s carousel.

2.  Call Me By Your Name

A charming chemistry coupled with an exquisite sense of time and place.  Luca Guadagnino latest film is a quietly radical love story which floats on a breeze of sensual delight.

3.  It Comes at Night

Patient and precise. Trey Edward Shults’ second feature curdles with festering paranoia and explores elusive truth making it the perfect cinematic post mortem on Trump’s America.

4.  Good Time

The Safdie’s neon odyssey brims with wonderful performances, pulsating sights and sounds while exploring the politics of race in a way that seems both provocative and poignant.  

5.  Ex Libris

Only Frederick Wiseman could make a 3 hour film about the New York library system so engrossing.  Now 87, Wiseman is still peeling back institutions to unearth something utterly profound.  His camera lingers in corners, reshaping libraries into havens of cultural exchange.

Honorable mentions

Cameraperson. (Kirsten Johnson)

On Body and Soul. (Ildikó Enyedi)

Thor: Ragnarok review.

It’s amid meadows of scrap metal, rusted relics both dated and defunct where we shortly find our God of Thunder. Left stranded on a cosmic junkyard in Thor: Ragnarok this butterscotch prince now seems a forgotten action-figure destined to spend eternity buried in an attic box among chipped stationary and childhood clutter.  After two films of Shakespearean sludge Thor is in need of a makeover and thats exactly what director Taika Waititi has in mind as he plucks him from the lost-n-found shards of Sakaar.  Armed with his signature kiwi wit and a box of Crayola, Waititi blows off the dust and clears cob webs making Thor: Ragnarok a refreshing take on a tired formula.

The plot mainly adheres to that same formula where this time Thor is faced with a prophesied apocalypse known as Ragnarok threatening to destroy his homeland.  If things couldn't get worse, Hela, (Cate Blanchet) a returning sister claiming the Asgard throne banishes Thor to a galactic dump known as Sakaar.  Hammerless and imprisoned he must scheme an escape in order to save the Asgardian civilization.

Intentions are clear from the outset as Led Zeppelin’s battlecry splinters the soundtrack.  “The hammer of the gods, we’ll drive our ships to new lands” Plant howls, echoing the director’s quest to set sail toward the unknown.  The most notable diversion is in the film’s tone, striking a delightful harmony of sublime silliness and bold design.  Waititi looks to undermine the loftiness of the previous films with a smattering of camp sensibility throughout.  At one point we’re even shown a small stage play taking place in Asgard, a shot for shot mirroring of Loki’s death in The Dark World (2013) which draws a subtle line in the sand, a full stop to what was.  Waititi’s ticklish intent manages to smuggle countless chuckles through the Bifröst Bridge and although comedy is a key element, the unfolding action never yields to a gag.   Instead the film adopts an impromptu levity which neatly threads each chortle and grin ‘tween handsome heroics.

Thor has been ransacked and refurbished in Ragnarok.  Just as he redefines his own identity within the narrative arc, audiences too are forced to abandon symbols of the chiseled crusader so to reimagine a caricature stripped of familiarity.   Waititi erases defining features,  looting hair and hammers in an effort to chip away at the stiff and statuesque savior we've come to know.  Hemsworth even brings a surprisingly relatable quality to the cape clad God.   Through charmed buffoonery his performance chirps a casual comfort which has always eluded the role up to now.

Along with its whimsical wanderings what sets Ragnarok apart from the Marvel masses and DC deluge is its playful art design. The film borrows and bestows from the kitsch sci-fi films of the 80’s a candy coloured cosmos blushing across every frame.  This is at its most vibrant after we plunge into the makeshift metropolis of Sakaar, an elastic hive humming with flexed colours contorting from every angle.   Touches of Jack Kirby’s artwork can even be found slipping between backgrounds, peppered along jagged skylines and soaking into walls evoking comic book panels. Even costumes blare with shimmering finesse and delicate detail, stark contrast to the leeched palettes trending previous superhero films.

A wicked endeavor lacquered in leather with looks that strut between Siouxsie Sioux and Maleficent, Blanchett’s Hela prowls with seething menace.  it’s clear the actress relishes playing The Goddess of Death in all its genocidal glee.  Though once the story splits in two, flipping between Asgard and Sakaar, we find our interest may lie with the latter.  Moments spent with Hela on Asgard soon become exhausted routines of evil where as Sakaar’s bright and bizarre locals keep steady grip on our funny-bones.  Goldblum is in full bloom playing The Grandmaster, detached and petty, his bebop patter slinks through scenes like a jazz band out of tune.  Waititi himself lends his voice to Korg, a mild mannered mound of rocks whose childlike witticisms undercut simmering drama with polite panache.  And as Valkyrie, the Han Solo of the group, Tessa Thompson shines, both surly and resourceful she acts as the perfect straight-woman to the quibbling riffs of Hemsworth and Ruffalo.

Published by Film Ireland

In Captain Fantastic Director Matt Ross smuggles his audience beyond the bosky banks and redwood rows of the Pacific Northwest, indoctrinating us into a baby-faced tribe armed with clenched fisted salutes that ‘stick it to the man’. Baptised through the blood and mud of the opening scene, we become part of a family unplugged from society. Our adoptive father presents an idyllic way of life where The Swiss Family Robinson meets The Communist Manifesto. It’s a life of fashioned patchwork quirks, where books are stacked as high as the trees that chirp. ipads are traded in for IQs. Self-reliant and self-sustained, a harmony is struck between human activity and the grandeur of nature. Days are spent enduring harsh physical drills while the night sets stage for impromptu singalongs by firelight’s flicker.

It’s not soon after our introduction that tragedy hits, shunting the ‘kumbaya’ lifestyle out of tune. News comes through of the family’s mother, Leslie, who after leaving the forest to undergo mental health treatment commits suicide. This fatal blow catapults Ben and his six children back into modern civilisation with a mission to ensure Leslie is given the Buddhist cremation she always wanted albeit against her parents’ wishes. Throughout their journey cracks start to appear across our utopian family’s grand design. Kids that were trained to question everything begin to ask questions of their captain. The film’s simple premise explores what life would be like if you devoted every waking moment to your children. It aims in making us question our own parental choices, and re-evaluate our hopes.

Matt Ross is a director who is seemingly more interested in ‘character’ over anything else, which is no surprise considering his successful acting career. “I fundamentally believe that most people’s experience with a film is through the actors. It’s a way to connect with our fellow human beings” Ross told DP/30. This belief is delicately threaded through each aspect of what makes Captain Fantastic an enjoyable film. Shot by the very talented Stéphane Fontaine—who previously worked on such films as A Prophet (2009) and The Beat that my Heart Skipped (2005)—brings his organic touch to the screen once again. Fontaine’s cinematography crafts character in a film that could have easily turned into an over stylised farce. His frame pulls the actor’s ability to the foreground, highlighting quality performances throughout. Each of the six children puts on a stellar show from start to finish. They initially approach us like mechanized parrots, squawking back Ben’s anti-capitalist credo, “Power to the people / stick it to the man” but soon realise that the ‘man’ in question might be their own father.

Viggo Mortensen nimbly tiptoes the line between ‘best dad in the world’ and cult leader. Ben’s approach to his family may be somewhat dangerous and deluded but we can’t help but admire his undoubtable devotion to his children. Scenes of negligence and theft trespass our funny bones, tickling all the right places. We shouldn’t be on his side but that’s where we find ourselves. Mortensen’s prowess lies in his close-ups, using subtle glances and nuanced gestures to peel through the layers of thick skin, revealing a single father’s desperation to preserve the memory of his wife.

Though the film is not however without its flaws. Ross seems relentless in tugging on our heartstrings, daring them to snap. Family jam sessions turn lilting sentiment towards schmaltz and for all of the ‘edginess’ on the surface, Captain Fantastic finds an all too neat ending which left me sadly unconvinced. The comedy, though abundant, mostly centres around the same (fish out of water) joke: the family’s inability to comply with the social norms of the outside world. It’s an inevitable gag that works well initially but soon grows tiresome. The comedic moments that really work see the family grow closer as a result. In one memorable scene taking place in the Family’s dilapidated bus named Steve, the children have to think quickly when conning a police officer. The officer hops aboard poking around and asking questions only to be met by a surrounding chorus of evangelical preaching. Mistaking them for Christian fundamentalists, he quickly burrows back into his squad car, never to be seen again. It’s a funny and unexpected turn that shows the children are always at hand to help one another out.

The character of Leslie’s father, Jack (Frank Langella) who initially appears to be the film’s antagonist, a wealthy, upper class fat-cat hell bent on sinking his claws into Ben’s family, but we soon come to hear him as a voice of reason. Though he might be the antithesis to Ben, essentially they both want what’s best for family. In what seemed at the outset a film facing off the left and right wings of America, it ultimately fuses both by focusing on the bigger issue. How should we raise our children?

Published by Film Ireland

Our eyes are opened, distorted and deprived, delved deep beneath boundless colours blurring textures and shapes, burying light into shade onto undefined space.  From the first image audiences are challenged to find clarity, to piece together a tune from the hovering, cluttered chords of misinformation.  How can one seek something from nothing? The question put forward by director László Nemes, daring to peel back the worth of his own language, prodding for a purpose and probing for cause, all too aware of its limited vocabulary in articulating pain beyond belief.  If the Holocaust was the loss of meaning, how can cinema attempt to translate it?

From the bleary backdrop we were presented, a lone figure steps into focus.  In Son of Saul (2016) Nemes seeks to abandon the grammar of mainstream cinema which serves to obscure the essence of the Holocaust.  Where other films hazed our sights aiming to capture the enormity of evil, Nemes' frame is fitted for the 'individual'.

Saul Auslander (Géza Röhrig) ushers us 'tween the doleful shades of mankind's memory.  He is part of a selected group of prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau called the Sonderkommando, victims made complicit in their own murder.  it was their duty to lead fellow Jews to gas chambers, burn their corpses and scatter the ashes.  A demonic burden which as author Primo Levi notes 'deprived them of even the solace of innocence'.  Saul slinks in the shadows between the living and the dead, occupying a body hollowed out and fused with the grinding gears of streamlined genocide.  His face has been rinsed, beaten and battered numb as the terror of evil dissolves into the humdrum.  Lifeless limbs blotched blue and grey streak along the outskirts of the frame while the preceding thuds and screams are pitched past the pitch of grief.  It takes a young boy's dying gasps to breathe life into Saul's existence, resuscitating his soul with a stubborn purpose.  After smuggling the boy's body from incineration we follow Saul as he trails a network of whispered bargains determined in finding a rabbi to ensure a proper burial.

Nemes employs a technical strategy that conscripts our imagination to construct the horror as an unnerving balance is struck between visual deprivation and auditory bombardment.  He restricts his camera from escorting us through the muddled garble of swastikas and salutes while refusing to make a spectacle out of human suffering.  Any bodies seen are often squashed into the familiar and forgotten corners of routine.  Above, the air is clotted with fear, dense layers of churning clanks weld with cries of distress, a corrosive compound of horrific harmony. It's a soundscape which refines the smeared glimpses of agony into tangible terrors, colluding with the mind's eye in prying open the tight boundaries of the frame, making seen the unseen.

Always in the center of this perceptive assault is Saul, rationing a sliver of focus in order to make sense of a background befogged by barbarism.  We become his sewn witnesses watching humanity unspool through his eyes, every step is tracked , each turn is trailed only to be lost in a waltz choreographed by chaos.  Catapulted into confusion it's Saul we cling to, and it's a grasp which never looks to loosen.  The clever use of academy ratio evokes the intimacy of a portrait, tune tailored for one man.  This is a man undone, trying to keep grip onto the last tender shreds of decency.  What fuels this quest is an urge to seek spiritual symmetry in a world shunted askew.  Unlike the other Sonderkommandos, Saul's moral pursuit transcends flesh, reaching to another realm of hopeful salvation.  Though his actions to get there are questionable, risking lives and potentially jeopardizing his squad's uprising, “ we'll die because of you ” one barks, to which Saul replies “ We're already dead ”.  It's a rare remark in a film of scant of conversation, making Röhrig's performance even more mesmerizing, managing to convey character through gestures of subtle defiance.  It's in his eyes where a gentle tension lies, a noble vocation chimed with deranged determination, a victim of the victims falls victim to ambition.

Help! I’m in a filmmaker crisis, and the more i read for help the more I become lost, confused and cranky.

Published by Film Ireland

Buried beneath a chromatic cluster of harmonic cries and timbered growls, lay the syncopated scattered sounds swelling across phrases that endlessly daze us. These vice-tight fists grip sticks stirring cauldrons of scuffled licks, with punches and kicks that beat the beat outta beatniks, on taut skin, taught to discipline dual-wielding squatters and double-time swatters. The pursed brass that play catch up jazz are delicately bludgeoned in time as each pipped note is hounded and pounded to peek past perfection, where the words “good job” are pitched past a mention.

Damien Chazelle, with baton in hand attempts to slash through these sophisticated slabbed jabs of jazz in his second feature film Whiplash to uncover the cost of excellence.  A story about Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), a promising young drummer at Manhattan’s Shaffer Conservatory who becomes the latest student to endure the corrosive charisma of Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), a professor who recruits dulcet squeaks and toots in the pursuit of perfection

In the opening scene Chazelle enrols his audience with a military drum as we march toward Neiman’s nook, slowly being ushered into a frame of mind crammed with pulsating dread. ‘I wanted to make a movie about a different side of music, about the fear and anguish of it’ the director tells Hollywood Reporter.  Each shot is injected with anxiety; even New York’s dazzling skyscrapers are remoulded into looming towers that suffocate.  For Woody Allen, Jazz elevated New York City’s charm, varnishing each scene with fetching finesse, a gallery where audiences were being politely shuffled ‘tween trinkets of crafted pride.  Chazelle has no interest in showing off his city, instead he smuggles us into multiple crevices, tucked away from lauded landmarks. The music infiltrates, stalking Neiman and scraping along concrete. It’s a soundtrack that rinses a city of comfort, leaving in its place a frenetic tension which swells to the size of Dizzy Gillespie’s cheeks while waiting for a prick to pop.     

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Most of the action takes place in Fletcher’s rehearsal room where he prowls in search of his next victim armed with a seductive menace hinging on psychotic.  But it’s psychosis with a purpose.  He is a man seemingly honed to seek greatness.  He spends no time loitering, in what he says, what he does, even his appearance is a reminder that no energy is lost on the mundane rituals of choosing clothes or hairstyles.  All his concentration is invested in detecting musical excellence, and what Neiman might lack in talent he makes up for with a demented desire to be “one of the greats”.

Neiman soon becomes obsessed in adopting Fletcher’s relentless tempo as rehearsals turn into gruesome bouts of assault and subtle manipulation. The essence to Whiplash is held within the exchanged glances that Neiman and Fletcher throw at each other.  There comes a point where all Neiman sees are Fletcher’s eyes beaming from underneath an ornately creased face as everything else in the frame and from his life become pushed past periphery.  Niemen becomes utterly possessed in feeding perfection’s malignant appetite. His body, one of many donations soon becomes a mottled palette of self-abuse.  The charm associated with Miles Teller from films such as 21 & Over (2013) and Project X (2012) become relinquished and what starts off as a likeable character becomes one so trapped within his own obsession that he not only pushes his loved ones away but the audience also.  Even Teller’s appearance seems to flicker between cute and a boxer, battered beyond recognition.

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The role of Fletcher could have easily turned into a one dimensional drill sergeant lost in his own noise.  Thankfully J.K. Simmons finds the right tone, a ferocious seduction that keeps audiences guessing.  One second he’s peppering his jaded ensemble with acidic wry quips, the other he’s catapulting chairs across classrooms.  Simmons manages to delightfully devour each scene without chewing the scenery.  There’s a subtlety to the fury, a cerebral malice that murmurs between the currents of hardboiled rage.  Though rarely, Fletcher at times can reveal a softer side, but through these inviting glimpses, our eyes can only make out the tactics and tricks that add to a greater vocabulary of manipulation, leaving audiences as tormented as his students.

Whiplash, like so many of recent films including, Mr Turner (2014) and Birdman (2014) deal with the perils of the artistic drive. However Whiplash takes a more brutal approach. What starts off as a student/mentor story quickly becomes a blistering blitzkrieg of be-bop jabs and backbeat hooks. A film that at times slips into a cautionary tale but neither condemns nor condones the way in which characters seek to achieve.