REVIEW: Un Prophete (dir. Jacques Audiard)

Cast: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif

Jacques Audiard is perhaps the only filmmaker working today whose cannon of films can be uttered in the same breath as those of Melville and Chabrol. Like those giants of the Nouvelle Vague, Audiard is a master of the thriller/ crime genre and has spent the best part of his career unpicking its tightly knit conventions and tropes to create some of the most affecting and unforgettable films of the past few decades.

‘A Prophet’ tells the story of Malik (Rahim), a French Arab of North African descent embarking on a six-year sentence in a French jail. The prison is ruled by Cesar Luciani (Arestrup) and his Corsican gang; so when they approach Malik with an offer to accept him into the gang if he murders an unruly Arab inmate, it is clear that this is not an offer he can refuse. Malik is made a lieutenant in the gang after committing the gruesome act – and we are not spared a single detail, from Malik’s agonising attempts to conceal a bare razor blade in his mouth to the pathetic gurgling screams of the unfortunate Reyeb.

Things do not improve for this unfortunate outsider, however, as he is slanted by the Corsicans (who call him ‘Arab’ and suggest he is only fit for belly-dancing and house-work), berated by the Arabic community in the prison for siding with the enemy, and haunted by Reyeb’s ghost as he lies alone in his murky cell. Malik teaches himself to read and, by carefully studying Cesar and the gang, learns to speak Corsican and slowly picks up the ins-and-outs of the gang’s operations. He also makes an ally in Ryad, a softly spoken man with the cold, dark eyes of a killer.

Malik works his way up the chain of command to become Cesar’s right-hand man and most trusted ally in the prison; and when Cesar organises for him to be released for one day (to check on Cesar’s interests on the outside) he uses the opportunity to start up a side-business moving vast packages of hasish with Ryad (who has since been released) between France and Spain. As Cesar becomes a more desperate and alienated figure in his cell, and powerful adversaries work up the courage to confront him, Malik benefits from all the new connections he is making.

One of the founding tenets of the Nouvelle Vague was an admiration for American film noir, and a mystical ability to inject that rigid genre with a flowing, intuitive, philosophical dimension. Melville, Chabrol, Godard, et al were open about their worship of Humphrey Bogart, John Huston, and the other legends of Hollywood noir; but they were all cineastes and academics who knew that the ‘camera-stylo’ could be used for so much more than Dashiell Hammett adaptations.

In ‘A Prophet’, Audiard has created an accessible and stomach-churning prison drama that the most cautious American viewer could enjoy. All the genre tropes are there – gang initiation, deceit, loyalty, criminal codes, corrupt authorities, car chases, gun battles – but these comforting and visceral moments only exist as sharp jabs to the stomach in what is actually a flowing, complex study of loneliness and masculinity. There is no attempt to validate Malik as a hero, he, along with every other character in the film, is a victim of the brutality they were born into. There is no hope, just a daily fight to survive and make tomorrow’s fight a bit easier. When Ryad develops a terminal disease, there is no despair or sadness shared between these two close friends, just an understanding that Ryad will be released from his bondage slightly sooner than Malik.

Having worked with some of the biggest stars in French cinema (namely Jean-Louis Trintignant, Mathieu Kassovitz, and Vincent Cassel) Audiard has chosen a relative unknown to lead this brutal character study. Tahar Rahim’s performance is without a doubt one of the most infecting and memorable performances of the year. He creates a perfectly conflicted and tragic figure in Malik: he is cold and toughened by a lifetime in the penal system, but he has a child-like vulnerability and a need for human connection. His friendship with Ryad is perfectly portrayed… a deep affection that can never be admitted by either party.

This is undoubtedly one of the finest films of the year. It is an inspiring proof that the genre conventions of American story-telling can be fused with the mystifying explorations of the human condition more present in European independent cinema, to create films that perhaps rise above both camps purely because they are capable of fulfilling the highest aims of culture and communication… to inform, educate, and entertain.

REVIEW: Fantastic Mr. Fox (dir. Wes Anderson)

Cast: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Defoe, Michael Gambon

Adapting a Roald Dahl story is not an easy task. Born in a rural Welsh village to Norwegian parents in 1916, Dahl struggled through the strict British boarding school system during the inter-war years before joining the RAF for World War 2. It was only after this action-packed and dynamic life, when he had settled in a rural village in Buckinghamshire, that he began to write his children’s books; and every story he has written is infected with his confusing and multi-faceted character.

His Scandinavian heritage was the source of a zany passion for storytelling and the epic myths of Germanic folklore; but he was also a product of the British public school system, and his views on the world were precise and often caustic. He never lost his childlike love of sweets and creatures and discovering new words for the first time; and yet he lived through many tragic incidents that tempered his frivolous passion for life.

All of these things are cloaked behind Twits and Snozzcumbers in his books, but any artist wishing to adapt his work into a new medium must be willing to deal with the intricacy of his vision, or they will find themselves floundering under the criticism of the legions of Dahl lovers across the world. Quentin Blake had a unique understanding of his cherished friend’s work, and his illustrations are now as much a part of Dahl’s stories as the words are.

But when Wes Anderson first called Dahl’s wife to ask for permission to adapt Fantastic Mr. Fox into a film, it was the first time an artist with such a famous and recognisable visual style and auteur sensibility had tried to take on a Dahl story. Now, a decade after that first phone call, Anderson’s film is ready to burst out into the wider world.

This is Anderson’s first foray into animated filmmaking (aside from a few snippets in ‘The Life Aquatic’); and may also be his biggest budget too date, which means he had to answer to more powerful and involved studio executives. It has also come at a time when Anderson’s status as an infallible filmmaker is being questioned. After early works like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson was the darling and the lynchpin of US indie cinema. But in recent years, after The Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Ltd., many critics have voiced their concern over his ability to maintain, never mind build upon, his early promise and vision.

An animated adaptation of an adored children’s story is certainly one way to silence those critics, but the potential for disaster is also frightening. There were negative reports leaking from Three Mills Studios in Hackney, where much of the film was created, that suggested Anderson was not cut out for animation. He was often unavailable through the gruelling months of stop-frame filming, choosing instead to direct the film via email from Paris and LA. And so there were many people who worried that the film would lack Anderson’s unique, complex and detailed style.

Well, as an adoring Anderson fan who owes his passion for cinema partly to those early films, it gives me great pleasure to report that Anderson has pulled it off with his usual understated panache and sly, hidden confidence.

For anyone who worried that the animation would cloak or unravel Anderson’s famous visual style, you needn’t worry at all. This is a Wes Anderson film right down to the carefully composed, symmetrical framing, the almost theatrical depth of field, and the colourful, choreographed movements. If anything, the stop-frame animation has allowed Anderson to rediscover his early inspiration for this unique style, and it feels as fresh as it did in Rushmore and Bottle Rocket all those years ago.

The animation is far from perfect, and takes a while to get used to., but it is fun and playful and I picture Quentin Blake (the eyes through which we all read Dahl’s stories) thoroughly enjoying it. Dahl and Blake never aspired to technical perfection, so why should this film?

For anyone who worried that directing a children’s film for a studio would cloak or unravel Anderson’s famous authorial themes and expressions, you needn’t have worried either. This is a Wes Anderson film right down to the deft comedic touch, the witty and caustic dialogue, and the obsession with domestic crises and troubled parental figures.

Anderson seeps through into the story, dialogue, and quirkiness of the project; and his unofficial troupe of actors (Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman specifically) ensure that his bitter but somehow earnest and hopeful comedic touch is stamped on every moment of the film. Without giving too much away, Mrs. Fox is now a dedicated landscape painter who can’t help painting the destructive forces of nature (lightning, tornadoes, etc) into her pieces. This is classic Wes Anderson: creating a dark and unusual character foible and then leaving it to fester in the subtext of the story world, without ever forcing its way into the narrative.

The real success, though, is that while the film is undeniably ‘Wes Anderson’ throughout, he has also stayed true to the real message and tone of Dahl’s vision. This is not so surprising because Anderson is an avowed Dahl fan and I imagine the two would have got along famously had they ever met; but it is nevertheless impressive. Anderson may have dispensed with the verse and rhyme of the original story, but a film adaptation should never simply be a carbon copy.

The world of the film is certainly less quaint and English; Mr Fox now has a sulking teenage son, Ash (Schwartzman), who attends high school and is green with envy at his more athletic cousin. Mr Fox is now a ‘newspaper man’ (a la Cary Grant) after packing in his spiv lifestyle, and the animal community has a much more clearly defined, twentieth century feel to it (estate agents, lawyers, sports coaches, etc.) But there is still that playful edge that was ever present in Dahl’s writing; that sense that he was enjoying a joke that he never quite revealed to his readers. That is something that Anderson excels at, and it works perfectly here.

I suppose it would be unseemly to ignore the leading man, and one of the most recognisable names on the planet, George Clooney. I went in to the film wishing that Anderson had used an established ‘Anderson troupe’ member (one of the Wilson brothers perhaps, or Adrian Brody) who could have brought an extra level of quirky pathos to the project. But I realise now that Clooney was the only man for this role. This is his first animated feature, and while it hardly an earth-shattering performance, he is technically faultless, and he constitutes a solid anchor around which the rest of the cast can deviate. While Brody or the Wilsons would have created a brooding and pathetic Mr. Fox, Clooney is the very embodiment of Cary Grant (Anderson’s inspiration for the role): quickwitted, confident to the point of being brash, but utterly charming and roguish.

This film may not silence Anderson’s critics; it is not perfect and there are plenty of weaknesses to tear away at. But nobody can deny that this was a Herculean task, and Anderson has succeeded where so many filmmakers would have failed. He has not sold out to those who wanted a children’s film, he has not retreated into the depths of art cinema, he has not sullied the great name of Roald Dahl, and he has not lost his authorial touch. For all of these things, I applaud the irreplaceable Wes Anderson.

REVIEW: The Men Who Stare At Goats (dir. Grant Heslov)

Cast: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges

After yesterday’s spectacular opening gala film, Wes Anderson’s ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’, the London Film Festival came crashing back down to earth today with a screening of the distinctly average ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’. There is nothing really wrong with the film (Ewan McGregor’s unfailingly awful American accent aside), but it lacks depth, beauty, or any of the artistic flourishes that would justify its position as a gala film.

This year’s festival plays host to Werner Herzog, Wes Anderson, the Coen brothers, and extraordinary debut features from artist Sam Taylor-Wood and designer Tom Ford; so the BFI have really let themselves down by embracing this vacuous studio tripe while under publicising some of the wonderful auteurs and home-grown talent on offer.

The film follows Bob Wilton (McGregor) a cuckolded small-town American reporter, as he travels to the Middle East to prove himself as a journalist and a man. While there he runs into Lyn Cassady (Clooney) a former member of the New Earth Army - a covert faction of the US Army founded by Bill Django (Bridges), a sort of Timothy Leary for the military, who researched mysticism, parapsychology, and narcotics in the 70s in an attempt to build an army that diffused conflict rather than creating it. Lyn, it transpires, was the poster-boy for this operation, with uncanny psychic and paranormal abilities.

We learn this history of the New Earth Army in flashbacks while Bob and Lyn are travelling into Iraq. After crashing the car, the pair are kidnapped by terrorists, and this sets into motion a chain of hapless and almost screwball events that sees the unlikely duo escaping from terrorists and imbecilic US security forces before eventually ending up at a secret military base run by Lyn’s arch-nemesis, Larry Hooper (Spacey).

Hooper, who was always more interested in the dark potential of the New Earth Army, is now a private contractor to the US military. Bill works for Hooper at the base, but he is a shadow of his former self having lost his passion and found the booze. Lyn cannot stand to see his idol falling so far from grace, and he gives up all hope of succeeding in his mission and helping Bill. It therefore falls to the previously sceptical Bob to spur Bill into action and prove to Lyn that the Jedi spirit lives on. They lace the powdered eggs at the base with LSD, set free all the goats and Iraqi prisoners, and escape in a helicopter, leaving Bob to tell their story to the world.

Evidently, then, the story is not terrible, and there is plenty of room for raucous comedy and entertaining performances. The characters are funny, and the unquestionable talent of the American actors ensures that there are some unforgettable moments and well-delivered lines. It is certainly a fast and entertaining action comedy with almost faultless pace and a well-polished structure. But ‘polished’ is not a word that necessarily fits within the remit of a festival gala film. ‘Revolutionary’, ‘memorable’, ‘divisive’, ‘completely unwatchable’; these are all words that should be applicable to a festival headliner. ‘Polished’ just means it is an easy Hollywood money-spinner that stays well clear of any boundaries; and Hollywood does not need any help from the BFI in marketing their films.

There are other qualities of the film that make it unsuitable for a festival gala. McGregor is characteristically wet, dull and useless; and I was left once again wondering how he has managed to spin out one decent performance as a heroin addict into one of the most startlingly undeserved careers in Hollywood.

Perhaps the most indefensible element of the film is the credit sequence, which shows images of the US invasion of Iraq with cheesy, upbeat American pop music playing over it. These are still some of the most unsettling news images in existence, and those events constitute one of the most heinous and indefensible atrocities and acts of terror ever perpetrated by a nation state. At a time when more and more Americans are coming to terms with the paralysing guilt they feel over these atrocities, I would love to know why Grant Heslov feels he is in a position to poke fun at the whole affair. Nobody should be allowed to create such a thoughtless and idiotic comment on the Iraq conflict, least of all a two-bit actor from Pennsylvania.

David O. Russell proved in Three Kings that you can make a funny film about the Middle East that is still socially responsible, aesthetically original, and gives plenty of space for an ensemble cast (including George Clooney) to show off their considerable talents. Rookie director Heslov has not reached this level of filmmaking, not even close, and it is a great shame that the second gala screening of the festival was wasted on this irresponsible, predictable, multiplex movie.

‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ is released nationwide on 22 January 2010

REVIEW: Kicks (dir. Lindy Heymann)

Cast: Kerrie Hayes, Nichola Burley, Jamie Doyle

‘Kicks’ centres around Nicole (Hayes), a lonely girl who has been forced to grow up very quickly in financial and emotional poverty. Her only passion is for Lee Cassidy (Doyle), Liverpool’s star midfielder, who also happens to be single. While waiting outside the gates of Anfield to catch a glimpse of her lothario, Nicole meets Jasmine (Burley), a WAG-in-training from a considerably more wealthy part of the city. Despite their cultural and class-based differences, the two hit it off immediately due to their shared passion for Cassidy.

As the girls try, in vain, to access nightclubs, VIP areas, and apartment blocks to feel closer to their obsession, so their friendship and trust for each other tightens. It is an uplifting story of how the seemingly unconstructive and much maligned institutions of premiership football and the cult of celebrity can actually bring two separate souls together despite their troubled backgrounds, loveless parents, etc .

The characters are entirely believable and their actions sincere to a fault. Anyone with a daughter or younger sister will know what it is to see a teenage girl zip through this fleeting and defining period of their lives with the same wild swings of emotion and unexpected surges of kindness that these well-drawn characters embody. Nicole’s emotionally barren and impoverished background, with a criminal brother and invisible parents, is teased out subtly in Hayes quiet but powerful performance. And similarly, Burley’s upper-middle class, ‘nouveau riche’ princess, Jasmine, is brash and shallow (for her, Lee is more a flavour of the month than a reason for living), but she is still a caring and thoughtful individual who sees past Nicole’s lack of glamour.

Heymann’s direction, for the most part, has a great feel for the pace and tone of the story it is telling, and also manages to relay this in its visual tone. But sadly, and not for the first time in this festival, the story is inherently flawed and undeserving of cinematic exhibition. The fatal bow occurs about an hour into the film, when the girls decide to kidnap Cassidy and force him at gunpoint to stay at Liverpool after reports he is leaving for Madrid.

This is an absolutely absurd, insincere turn of events, and it destroys the emotional gravity and the genuinely uplifting tone underlying the idea of the film. There is a desperate attempt to find a natural situation in which this turn of events could occur; they meet Cassidy drunk outside a hotel after an argument with a team mate, and his decision to go with them is admittedly quite believable. But this is all rendered useless by the simple fact that these girls would never act in this way, and they certainly wouldn’t be so casual about it.

This honest exploration of the unlikely friendship between to lost youngsters is lost forever in the quagmire that ensues: a static and meandering half hour during which they almost have sex with him, almost kill him, almost ruin his career, and almost destroy themselves. In the end, though, none of these things happen, and the only truly tragic thing about the ending is how detached and callous it feels when compared to the fantastic story that preceded it.

REVIEW: She, A Chinese (dir. Xiaolu Guo)

Cast: Lu Huang, Wei Yibo, Geoffrey Hutchings

“She is Mei, an enigmatic young Chinese woman raised in a backwater but longing for a different life.” This is the basis for Xiaolu Guo’s fairly well anticipated feature film, ‘She, A Chinese’. The story follows Mei from her rural Chinese village to a larger city, and then on to London. Unfortunately, this physical journey is not accompanied by any emotional or thematic growth within the film.

From the moment we meet Mei, scowling outside her shack watching youngsters play pool, she is already a bitter and uninspiring character. She starts dating a flashy, motorbike-owning young man from Shenzhen who introduces her to a life of karaoke bars and neon lights; but when she refuses to sleep with him, he dumps her and returns to Shenzhen. This is evidently the catalyst for her decision to leave her village in search of a larger world, but you would never guess it from her response. She remains cold and detached from her surroundings, and we are no closer to empathising with her as a character.

Mei starts spending more time with a burly truck driver, who eventually rapes her. It is at this point that Mei decides to run away to the city. She is fired from her job at a shirt manufacturing factory (although she doesn’t seem to care) and starts working at a hair salon/ brothel. There she falls in love with a gangster, but when he is murdered she uses his secret stash of money to escape to London. Once again, Mei seems almost completely unaffected by these events. I won’t bore you with the rest of the synopsis, but suffice to say she marries an aging Englishman, gets bored of him, moves in with an Indian man who gets her pregnant, runs away again, and ends up on a beach somewhere outside London.

The unavoidable and damning fault in this film is the fact that it is filled with potentially dramatic events and situations that are rendered mundane and nebulous due to the filmmaker and lead actress’s inability to delve into the conflict at the heart of these events. Mei is raped, abused as a worker, marries an old Englishman just so she can stay in Britain, becomes pregnant by a man who runs away, etc. But at no point do these events seem to affect Mei on an emotional level. She remains aloof and detached, and so there is no drama or conflict or emotional growth. The viewer is expected to simply sit and stare at an episodic and meaningless series of events, and this is not a sound or responsible basis for a feature film.

The only interesting thing about this film is it’s partial location in a world that is foreign to most westerners. But no film deserves to be praised purely on the basis of its “exotic” location, as any location would seem interesting to someone who hasn’t been there. Rural China has been represented in a much more interesting way recently in films like ??????, and many of these films also manage to weave a fascinating human story into their representation of specific locales.

There are, perhaps, moments of emotional purity that help to redeem the film. At one point, when her Muslim Indian boyfriend explains that he can’t eat pork because Allah said it was dirty, Mei explains that she washed it in the sink. There are moments like this dotted throughout the film that help us to empathise with Mei slightly, and they fortunately work within the limited emotional range of the fairly stilted and one-dimensional lead actress.

In conclusion, this was a promising film with an intriguing premise. The idea of following a young woman on her journey from a rural Chinese village all the way to London is certainly an interesting idea, and probably accounts for the film’s presence at this festival. But the ways the idea is dealt with – in the creation of the script, the direction of the film, and the performance of the lead actress – fail to create any interesting emotional or thematic premises, and so it remains a dull and uninspiring film throughout.

REVIEW: Wah Do Dem (dir. Sam Fleischner & Ben Chase)

Cast: Shaun Bones, Carl Bradshaw, Kevin Bewersdorf, Norah Jones

‘Wah Do Dem’ tells the tale of Max (Shaun Bones), a Brooklyn kid with messy hair, an American Apparel hoodie, and a pair of lime green Ray Bans permanently attached to his face. Max is looking forward to taking his girlfriend, Willow (a cameo by Norah Jones), on a Caribbean cruise that he won in a competition. But within the first minute of the film (the award for fastest inciting incident goes to…) Willow dumps him and Max is forced to go on the cruise alone. From the moment he embarks, he is forced into an exhaustive series of odd encounters with people he would probably never have met in any other situation… and this makes for an exciting and funny film.

To begin with, Max is the only person on the romantic cruise who is there alone, and he is also the only person under the age of 65! He sulks around the ship, dejected and lonely, until he eventually befriends a few members of the crew. This section of the film does admittedly begin to lull. There are only so many comic situations you can come up with on a cruise ship full of old people, and most of the time Max is just staring at a TV screen or throwing up in his shower. It is when he arrives in Jamaica that the real fun begins…

Max immediately escapes from the tourists on his boat and befriends Bruno, a Rasta with an almost unintelligible Caribbean accent. They head to a ‘local’ beach, and Max finally seems to be having some fun with his new friends: he learns a few Jamaican phrases, smokes some weed, and goes for a solitary swim. When he returns, his bag has been stolen (along with his wallet and passport) and Bruno claims ignorance and runs away. Max eventually gets back to the ship that evening, just in time to see it pulling away from the harbour. Max is thus forces to embark on a long and fraught journey to the US Embassy in Kingston; a journey that takes his through dangerous townships, football obsessed gangs of teenagers, an evening spent celebrating Obama’s election victory in a shack bar, and a terrifying ordeal with a knife-wielding youth.

It is impossible to imagine this film working without the performance of leading man, Shaun Bones; he even gets an “in collaboration with” credit after the names of the director/ writer team. His performance is a perfect balance of self-pity and self-realisation, resilience and defeatism. The brief programme synopsis says, “Bones’ enigmatic performance [makes] it difficult to know whether to laugh or despair”, and this is perfectly true. When the tension and drama are high, Bones performance rises to the task, but when the situation calls for a relaxed and naturalistic style of acting, he is right on point as well. The performance is filled with pathos and comic timing, but is also completely believable.

Bones’ performance mirrors the general feel of the film perfectly. At many points it is impossible to work out whether this is guerrilla-style documentary footage with non-actors, or a more designed and purposeful style of filmmaking. When Max plays football with a group of teenagers, and ends up spending the night with them celebrating the Obama campaign, it is so naturalistic that one can only assume Bones’ and one of the directors literally just spent the night at this bar on the night of Obama’s victory and filmed their exploits. But then at other points a more clear cut narrative

REVIEW: We Live In Public (dir. Ondi Timoner)

There are three things that may never cease to fascinate me: the early 90s (because it was so recent, and is considered by the generation who shape our conscious to be irrelevant in comparison to their “special” generation of the 60s, and yet it was so vibrant and culturally rich); the internet (because nobody is capable of predicting where it will go… it is like a wild frontier, but every time someone thinks they have discovered California a whole new plain appears before them); and finally men (and I use that word to denote a member of my species, not necessarily my gender) who seem to have it all, but then manage to throw it all away.

If you feel like you are interested in any or all of the above, then you really need to see Ondi Timoner’s ‘We Live In Public’. The film charts the rise and fall of one of the most iconic ‘dot com kids’ of the early 90s. Josh Harris discovered the Internet while Tim Berners-Lee was still perfecting HTML at MIT (I cant be bothered to explain any of that last sentence; just open another tab in Wikipedia and come back when you’re ready) He knew there was money to be made, and he had the seemingly uninspiring idea of creating a research company that prospective internet start-up companies could pay for data. It really was a genius idea: nobody had a clue how to quantify the internet, so Harris paid a rag-tag bunch of mathematicians and statisticians to come up with some positive projections for potential revenue on the internet. Harris was an overnight success, and used his newfound wealth to start up the first ever Internet television station, Pseudo.com.

The Pseudo.com studio in Manhattan came to resemble Andy Warhol’s Factory, and it wasn’t long before comparisons were being made. Pseudo was a hit, and Harris became a very young, very wayward, multi-millionaire. He began hosting huge parties with supermodels, bands, films, and limitless amounts of drugs and alcohol. This was a computer analyst geek-turned-millionaire who created the coolest scene in downtown New York since the punk scene of the late 70s. He used the parties as a way of finding new creative talent for the wacky shows that aired on Pseudo, and the station went from strength to strength.

This is where things get really interesting. Harris had had a difficult childhood; somewhere between his estranged father and alcoholic mother, Harris was left to bring himself up using the television as a surrogate parent. He grew up to be a detached and troubled young man. Having reached the pinnacle of success – by the mid-nineties Harris was worth $80 million – his mental state began to unravel, and he spent more and more time hiding behind his ‘clown’ alter ego, Luvvy. The investors of Pseudo.com began to distance themselves from Harris, and eventually he left the station, claiming that it had only ever been an “art experiment” and he wanted to move onto something new.

That “something new” turned out to be perhaps the coolest, most unbelievable social experiment in history, ‘Quiet’. Harris sank millions of dollars into the creation of an underground community in a basement in New York. He invited famous artists to build an odd, futuristic church, a firing range with a breath-taking arsenal of weapons, a huge dining room, a bar, a performance space, a transparent tent for showering, and a ‘pod hotel’ of individual pods for the inhabitants of the community to live in. Oh, one more thing… he also set up hundreds of live-feed cameras to record every movement in the building, and hooked them all up to a 75-channel private TV controller so that everybody in the community could watch everybody else on their personal computer screens in their pods! So you could be sitting in your pod and decide to sit up and watch the guy four pods down sleeping, or watch a couple having sex in the shower, or a guy taking a shit in the open-plan toilets.

The experiment opened in late 1999, and was an instant success. The Dandy Warhols came down to check it out, the creative director of MoMA had to beg for a pod, and an entire community of the quirkiest, most hedonistic New York artists moved in for the month-long experiment. The footage of ‘Quiet’ is enough to recommend this documentary on it’s own… it really does have to be seen to be believed. It is like a cross between ‘Das Experiment’ and ‘Fear and loathing in Las Vegas’. There is sex, drugs and rock and roll in unprecedented measures, not to mention drunken naked women firing automatic weapons! There is a compulsory interrogation room, and Harris reserved the right to create any rules he saw fit to make: he could tell people what pod to sleep in, when they could eat, etc.

In the end, in the early hours of the morning of January 1st 2000, the NYPD were alerted that a millennium cult had gathered in an underground basement for a mass suicide. Imagine being the first officer to arrive down in that basement: hundreds of artists, either naked or dressed in matching grey and red ‘Quiet’ uniforms, drinking, shooting up heroin, watching each other on banks of monitors, sitting in a futuristic church listening to their ‘leader’ (Harris) delivering a millennium mass, and running around with loaded automatic weapons!

And all this was organized by one of the richest men on Wall Street at the time!

I will resist the temptation to transcribe the whole film for you; but suffice to say this is a man you really need to get to know, and the only way you can do that is by watching this film.

The filmmaker, Ondi Timoner, was an inhabitant of ‘Quiet’ and became a lifelong friend of Harris’ (if Harris is capable of keeping a friend for life). The film was ten years in the making and charts his rise to success, through the ‘Quiet’ years and goes on to explore his disastrous attempts to stream his life, 24-hours a day, on a website… an experiment that only served to further dilapidate his frail mental state.

Timoner is the perfect person to explore Harris. She clearly cares about him – she respects everything he has done and sympathises with his difficult past – but she is not blind to his mistakes and is willing to admit that he is a flawed and difficult human being. Timoner also seems to have inherited Harris’ philosophical and artistic approach to the Internet, and the way it will affect human society. She is therefore able to explain just how ahead- of-his-time Harris really was. ‘Quiet’ is, in itself, a perfect representation of the Facebook/ smart phone generation: we all sit around in our defined spaces (our ‘walls’ or ‘pods’ depending on your choice of nomenclature) staring at each other but never really connecting.

In the end, you probably wont understand Harris any better at the end of this film; but at least the filmmaker hasn’t tried to force some balanced, insincere closed ending onto it. This is a fairly simple exploration of a fascinating and complicated man. Timoner may not have unravelled the mysteries, but she has certainly captured the fascination and awe that so many people felt for Josh Harris… “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of.”

REVIEW: Don't Worry About Me (dir. David Morrisey)

Cast: James Brough, Helen Elizabeth

‘Don’t worry about Me’ is the feature film debut of David Morrissey, one of Britain’s finest acting talents. Morrissey seems to have been plying his humble trade on the British airwaves forever. His “big break” was probably his portrayal of Gordon Brown in Stephen Frears ‘The Deal’; and since then he has starred in the superb ‘Blackpool’, and the internationally acclaimed ‘Red Riding’ trilogy (not to mention major motion pictures like ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ and ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.) I think it is fair to say that, despite his relative lack of experience behind the camera, the debut of such a well-disciplined, talented, and experienced actor (who can count the likes of Stephen Frears and Anand Tucker amongst his friends and associates) is a deservedly well-anticipated event.

The story revolves around “twenty something London lad” David (James Brough), who has skipped work and travelled to Liverpool in the hope of tracking down a one-night stand from the night before. His mission proves to be in vain and so, dejected, he gets drunk and sleeps rough for the night. After being robbed of his last few pennies, he enters a betting shop where a beautiful young employee, Tina (Helen Elizabeth), persuades him to bet on a particular dog. When her tip pays off, a refreshed and elated David begs her to take the rest of the day off and show him the sites of Liverpool. We follow this odd couple around for the rest of the day, as they cheer each other up and eventually learn to confide in each other. There is, of course, the predictable “downfall”, when one of them accidentally offends the other and all seems lost, but then they kiss and make up.

It is fair to say then, that this is not the most original or interesting film of the festival, and it hasn’t lived up to many of its expectations. I am at a loss to understand why such a talented actor, and a man who has worked with the likes of Frears and Tony Grisoni, would choose such a formulaic and unoriginal story for his debut feature. I appreciate that Morrissey is Liverpudlian, and that there was finance to be found there during the city’s term as European Capital of Culture, but there must have been a more interesting story with more depth of character out there somewhere. This is just a drab and uninspiring copy of Richard Linklater’s superb ‘Before Sunrise’. The characters wander around a few iconic sites talking about the nature of friendship and where their lives have gone wrong. But while Linklater’s film was fresh, dynamic, and insightful; in this film the character’s problems are mundane and their insights shallow and obvious.

There is something faintly charming about the story and the characters, and it did make me want to escape to the coast for a day or two, but it is distinctly uncinematic and would have faired much better as a Tuesday night drama on BBC3. For a British audience, I think it is difficult to completely write-off a film that harks back to the Woodfall ‘kitchen sink’ dramas and gritty, slightly romanticised Northern-centric films like ‘Billy Liar’ and ‘The Taste of Honey’. But I’m not sure that this film was consciously trying to build on those films, it just happens to share a location with them. It certainly lacks the sense of wonder and fantasy that those films managed to incorporate into their dull and depressing worlds.

One would have hoped that, at the very least, this film would have boasted some powerful performances due to the status of the director. Alas James Brough, who only got the part because he wrote and starred in the original play, is frankly amateur. I feel like a ratfink for being so negative, but that really is the only word to describe him; he isn’t actually terrible, just unprofessional and lacking in depth.

There isn’t even much to be said of Morrissey’s directing skills: the direction and camera work are as boring and one-dimensional as the story itself, and as drab and grey as the Liverpool skyline they are trying to capture. The opening section of the film is a whirlwind of short, meaningless scenes that fail to capture any emotion or atmosphere, and while the pace improves and allows the actors to find their footing, Morrissey never adds any visual flare to help the story along. A few seconds have been left open here and there for establishing shots of Liverpool, but if the filmmakers think this is enough to warrant the claim that it is “David Morrissey’s homage to his beloved city” then they are sorely mistaken.

The film is shot on video, I assume as a budgetary requirement, and this only serves to heighten the sense of cold detachment that abounds in the film. The footage lacks the softness of film, and while it might help to capture the atmosphere of a cloudy weekday in Liverpool, it fails to capture the emotions of the characters of the ‘feel’ of their world.

This film does have one saving grace however… Helen Elizabeth. Elizabeth is really a joy to watch for most of the film. Similarly to the lead actor, she takes a while to warm to the character and the script, which is awkward and stilted at first. But as the script and the direction and pace open up, so Elizabeth delves into the heart of the character and delivers a performance that many more esteemed actors would have failed to elicit from such a banal script. A scene in a confession box, where Elizabeth finally admits to having had an abortion, is really quite powerful, and almost justifies the making of the film on its own. I like to think that Morrissey had a helping hand here too: the performance has the measured and understated power and the beautifully controlled pace that Morrissey accomplishes so well, and if Helen Elizabeth has benefitted from his great talent and goes on to impress us with this quality of acting again and again, then maybe this film wasn’t a complete waste of time after all.

REVIEW: Passenger Side (dir. Matt Bissonnette)

Cast: Adam Scott, Joel Bissonnette, Vitta Quinn

In a week filled with documentaries and experimental features, I was glad to find that the Friday afternoon screening at this week’s LFF press week was a laid-back, quirky, slacker road movie set in East LA with a soundtrack consisting of Dinosaur Jr, Wilco, Leonard Cohen, and a host of other indie rock legends.

Passenger Side is the story of Michael Brown (Adam Scott), who is awoken on the morning of his 37th birthday by a phone call from his annoying, ex-drug addict brother, Toby (Joel Bissonnette, brother of director Matt). Toby persuades Michael to ditch his girlfriend and spend the day driving him around on some mysterious mission. What follows is a fairly lackadaisical, but never nebulous, talkative journey around the outskirts of Los Angeles.

I say the story is lackadaisical because the conversation mostly revolves around witty banter (I hate that word, but it’s Friday evening so we are sticking with it) that mainly serves to showcase the comedic sensibilities of the filmmaker; I say it is not nebulous, because the dialogue never entirely strays into the very British, Cowardian tradition of talking for talking’s sake. There is a constant undercurrent of sibling rivalry, male bonding, and that childishness that rears its head whenever we spend too much time with our immediate family.

The film is certainly helped by the performances of the lead actors, who at first seem to be pawns delivering funny lines, but eventually learn to gel as a duo and find their character beats marvellously. In a film that relies almost entirely on dialogue, it is essential that the actors work well together, and have a natural sense of timing and delivery, in order to prevent the story from feeling flat or lacking in conflict and dynamism. There is not a lot a filmmaker can do to avoid these pitfalls if the actors don’t work well together, but that certainly isn’t a criticism you could level against this film.

As I have already mentioned, the soundtrack is superb (as long as you like Dinosaur Jr… if you don’t then I must politely ask you to leave this blog!) and works perfectly in harmony with the aesthetic and tone of the overall piece. The cinematography is simple, but captures perfectly the unique atmosphere of East Hollywood and Echo Park. It is an area that can feel hot and claustrophobic, but seconds later a breeze finds its way from the Pacific, through the more famous and wealthy parts of the city, to the cracked and dusty settlement of hedonists and writers that is… Silverlake. This is easily my favourite part of LA, and while funds are tight it is great to be transported there so effectively by a filmmaker.

Don’t get me wrong; there are certainly downsides to this film. The dialogue does, at times, get on one’s nerves with its incessant wit and speed of delivery. I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if you stuck these brothers in a room with the mother and daughter from Gilmore Girls… I shudder to think.

There is also the terrible twist at the end (don’t you hate it when people tell you there is a twist at the end?) It’s not clever and it’s not shocking; it is contrived and insincere and annoying, and it very nearly ruins the ending of the film. In the end Toby finds what he was looking for, and Michael returns home to face another year of loneliness and confusion. I had hoped that he might have learnt something during the film, but alas he has not… and so I was forced to leave the cinema with the realisation that the film had lacked any genuine conflict or drama. But at least it provided some intelligent conversation, beautiful imagery, and a great 90-minutes of rock music to set my Friday evening off on the right track. As I sign off, I am looking forward to pressing play on It’s a Shame About Ray, and cracking open the first beer of the weekend. Farewell.

REVIEW: Trash Humpers (dir. Harmony Korine)

A film should, according to Godard, have a beginning, middle, and end (even if they aren’t in that particular order). I am, personally, a huge fan of this ideal. It is the careful structuring of a story that engages the audiences and whisks them away into the world of the characters.

I am willing to make allowances in certain cases: I would argue that many of John Cassavetes’ films lacked any coherent structure, and yet they still proved to be some of the most engaging, powerful, and dramatic explorations of character in the history of the cinema. But then, Cassavetes was exploring fascinating people that we can all engage with: a distraught husband who has lost the ability to reach out to his mentally-frail wife; an ageing actress who has lost the will to carry on; a strip-club owner who has forgotten why he loves the Sunset strip. Cassavetes uses improvisation, ad hoc camera-work, and fluid storylines to ensnare the audience and take them on a captivating journey into the world of his characters.

Harmony Korine has never been a stalwart of classical narrative structures, but the characters he chose to study were at least classical in their innate ability to encapsulate and create conflict. His first writing credit was on Larry Clark’s much-lauded debut feature, ‘Kids’ (1995). A film that felt a lot like Cassavetes’ character studies, ‘Kids’ helped blur the lines between feature filmmaking and the incisive, honest photo-journalism that made Larry Clark a household name in the early 1970s. While Korine’s script did loosely adhere to a narrative structure, it was clear that he was much more interested in exploring fragments of his characters lives, and building up a more layered, web-like understanding of the characters that would stick in the minds of the viewers, rather than simply forcing the viewer to empathise with the characters for 90-110 minutes before discarding them on the way home from the cinema.

Korine’s next project, which also constituted his directorial debut, was ‘Gummo’ (1997). ‘Gummo’ was the story of a group of teenagers stranded in a tornado-ravaged Ohio town; and it proved to be another successful experiment in non-linear storytelling. The barren, hopeless surroundings and the meaninglessness of the characters actions were perfectly reflected in the confused, episodic nature of the story.

I am therefore usually willing to align myself with Harmony Korine, despite my personal preference for traditional narrative storytelling. He has a rare ability to create fascinating characters, and expose the drama, conflict, and emotion at the heart of theses characters and their surroundings.

I must admit, however, that I was slightly more suspect than usual when I took my seat in the BFI Southbank this afternoon for the London Film Festival press screening of Korine’s latest film… ‘Trash Humpers’. The film follows a trio of geriatric perverts who butcher innocent people and teach a primary school student to crush a doll’s skull with a hammer.

While ‘Kids’, and even ‘Gummo’, had some semblance of narrative and traditional character arcs, ‘Trash Humpers’ is a helter-skelter, chaotic home video, seemingly shot by one of the very psychotic creatures we are watching. I can’t imagine Korine ever wants us to feel empathy for these people, nor does he seem to make any effort to explore them, or justify his decision to make a film about them. There is no semblance of realism in the film, and no attempt to make the film aesthetically attractive. But I cannot deny that I sat there, thoroughly engrossed, for the entire 78-minute running time.

The three main characters are not actually elderly, they are really young men and women dressed up in prosthetics. They closely resemble the Jackass crew in the sections of their feature-length films where they dressed up as old people to perform pranks on unwitting members of the public. I mention this connection not so much as a visual aid, but because it may explain why I noticed a dark humour and childish mischief in the film. The three characters are an unsettling mixture: the power and virility of young adults, mixed with the naïveté and irresponsibility of small children, all wrapped up in the decaying cadavers of the elderly.

Korine, in his director’s statement, explains that the characters were inspired by a group of, presumably homeless, elderly people who used to hang out under a bridge near his childhood home and hump trash cans while laughing and communicating in garbled noises. It is a testament to Korine’s odd artistic mind that he never let go of this childish memory. Many people would have adapted the memory every time they remembered it, slowly explaining away the mysteries until it was just another banal childhood experience. But Korine refused to explain this memory to himself; he preserved the thrilling mystery of it, and managed to transfer it onto video without losing the raw, almost horrifying childish simplicity of the memory.

These are people that only a child could imagine in a nightmare, but suddenly we are face to face with them, with only a cheap video camera to protect us. We are forced to mingle with them and listen to their gargling, screeching noises and destructive, irrational behaviour. Sometimes we are just standing next to them in a field while they hump, and masturbate, trees. But sometimes we find ourselves in a playground with them while they teach a child to strangle a doll with a plastic bag, or sitting at some warped house party where one of them has beaten a man to death and is standing in a pool of blood in the kitchen… laughing.

Korine has done a fantastic job of making the film look as cheap and shoddily made as possible: the whole film looks as if it has been edited in camera, and even the credits have been created in the cheapest possible video format. At no point from start to finish do we have cause to release ourselves from the illusion and gasp with relief that this really was just a stunt by one of the mavericks of American cinema.

The film never really employs any traditional conventions to illicit fear in us; but it is an unsettling concept and it shares with the horror genre that visceral, disgusted feeling that we get when we desperately want to escape from something but we cant run away. To quote Korine’s director’s statement again, “it is a new type of horror; palpable and raw.”