REVIEW: Source Code (dir. Duncan Jones)

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright

I won’t mince words: Duncan Jones’ Source Code is a poor film and a disappointing follow up to his debut feature Moon. Where the latter was stylish and striking, the former is muddled, over-bearing, and obvious. I will give you a synopsis and some thoughts, but only because I feel compelled to do so (it is my default setting), and not because the film is worth discussing or arguing over.

Sean Fentress is on his way to work on his usual Chicago commuter train, with the same people he sees every day, and the same pretty friend, Cristina (Monaghan), that he always manoeuvres himself to sit opposite. But for some reason Sean cant remember a thing about his life: he doesn’t have a clue who all these people are, and he thinks he should be flying a helicopter in the Gulf. Is he mad? No. He is actually Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal), a helicopter pilot for the US air force.

Stevens has been drafted into a new Top Secret military intelligence programme – Source Code – that manipulates brainwaves, allowing specially selected soldiers to inhabit the bodies of people who have recently passed away. Sean Fentress, along with Cristina and everybody else on the train, died when a terrorist bomb exploded onboard; but it was only a calling card for an unstoppable atrocity planned for downtown Chicago later in the day. Stevens is forced to relive the final 8 minutes of Fentress’ life over and over again until he finds the bomb and reveals the identity of the terrorists. But this is no easy task when he is also trying to find out what has happened to his own body (why isn’t he still flying a helicopter?) and falling in love with Cristina despite being told repeatedly by his superiors that he is only reliving a memory, and she is already dead.

Doesn’t that sound exhilarating? Doesn’t that sound like it could be spun out into an extraordinary psychological action thriller that would have Inception fans prolapsing all over the cinema? Well that may be the case, but the answers to all these exciting premises are as dull and disappointing as you could possibly imagine. As you read my little teaser, your 21st Century brain was registering the most obvious resolutions and dismissing them out of hand, because nobody makes thrillers without interesting twists anymore, right? Well Duncan Jones does, and if you rifle through the waste bin in your brain and find those obvious, boring answers, you will have just spoiled the ending of the film for yourself.

Admittedly, the first half hour of the film, before we begin to worry about where it is all going, is perfectly enjoyable. The basic structure of reliving the same 8 minutes is fairly exhilarating; and it is interesting to feel real anxiety, rather than just suspense, at the knowledge that your hero is going to blow up again in a few minutes. At first the subtle tweaks to the aesthetics and foundations of each replay ensure that the story doesn’t feel stagnant or repetitive; and Jake Gyllenhaal’s “watchability” manages to Spackle over any remaining cracks or worries.

But if you are sitting in the cinema waiting for the terrorist plot to escalate into some electrifying ‘Michael Bay’ catastrophe, while also shaking with anticipation at the thought of some Aronofsky/ Lynch psychological conspiracy thriller… then I just feel sorry for you. The terrorist plot is gallingly, almost offensively, simple; and the psychological element is half-baked and thoughtless. After the masterful consideration and patience of Moon, it seems that Jones has chased the stars and forgotten the gruelling hours of development needed to ensure a truly engaging thriller.

During the climax of the film, as Stevens and Cristina stare at all the naïve faces around the train carriage, Colter remarks, “look at all this life”, and Cristina suggests that if she knew she only had a minute to live, “she would make every second count.” I didn’t cringe, but only because my face was frozen into a mask of incredulity. Where did all the early promise go? How could a collection of talented filmmakers with a decent budget fail so completely to create a film that was in any way interesting or watchable?

To add insult to injury, Jones has also completely reneged on his artistic responsibility to find a cohesive visual framework through which to portray his vision. Moon was a Sci-Fi gem, harking back to the classics of the genre but subverting and invigorating them with new life. It was an astoundingly beautiful fugue to Solaris and Space Odyssey, and it marked the arrival of a new composer of light and images. Source Code has no integrity, no passion, no courage, and no patience. It is a pile of drivel, and surely Jones knows it.

REVIEW: The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (dir. Luc Besson)

Cast: Louise Bourgoin, Mathieu Amalric, Gilles Lellouche, Jacky Nercessian, Nicolas Giraud

French directors have a strange habit of flirting with Hollywood – blowing a few kisses and getting everybody hot under the collar – but then turning heel, shaking their tail feathers, and shimmying back to Gaul without a hint of reluctance or regret. Godard allowed generations of Oscar voters to pin their flags to his mast before proclaiming that the Lifetime Achievement Award they handed him “meant nothing”. Jean-Pierre Jeunet had the Thirty Mile Zone creaming for more after Amelie and A Very Long Engagement, but then waited five years to create Micmacs, a film so impenetrably “French” that it never made it beyond the festival circuit in the US. Even Renoir graced Los Angeles with his presence for a few brief years before returning to his beloved homeland. Compare that to British or German filmmakers (Hitchcock, Mendes, Wilder, Lubitsch, etc) who cancelled their return ticket the moment they glimpsed the Pacific through the Santa Monica haze.

Luc Besson is no different. Leon catapulted him into the cradle of the stars, and The Fifth Element seemed to confirm him as a major force in global blockbuster cinema. But thirteen years later, and with very little to show for himself in that space of time, he has created a peculiar and whimsical Gallic fairytale that will almost certainly, almost intentionally, not make it across the Atlantic.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec is a wonderfully absurd, decadent farce without a smidgen of style or class. Adèle is a brazen bombshell of a heroine: she has the sort of ringlets and curves that have weakened men’s knees for centuries, and her brown eyes smoulder and purr until they flash with feisty energy. A director flirting with Hollywood might have had her racing around some Dystopian metropolis on a 15,000bhp motorbike, or guiding a gang of time-travelling pirates through Gary Oldman’s brain. But Besson isn’t flirting anymore… he isn’t even playing hard to get.

Adèle’s extraordinary adventures see her Raiding a Tomb™ so that she can enlist the help of a Pharoah’s physician to cure her ailing sister. The physician’s death, a few thousand years ago, is a hurdle that might intimidate a lesser hero, but not Adèle. She knows an ancient Parisian doctor who has mastered the ability to bring creatures back from the dead; but by the time she returns to Paris, the senile doctor has already bitten off more than he can chew bringing a pterodactyl back to life. The rest of the film continues in this farcical (and I don’t use that word negatively) mould, as the pompous and huffing Inspector Caponi hunts  the deadly dinosaur and our maverick heroine across the Arrondissements of 1911 Paris.

At the opening, Besson is bursting with energy and eager to tell his story, but he isn’t really sure where to begin. We follow a number of openly irrelevant characters and catch snippets of information on the doctor’s metaphysical powers and the raising of the pterodactyl, before zoning in on our heroine being lowered into the Pharoah’s tomb. From here, Besson never looks back. The long sequence in the tomb is pure Indiana Jones, without even a hint of irony or a twist of originality, but it perfectly frames the energetic nonsense and slapstick that is to come.

Spielberg and Lucas knew what they needed to do with Indiana Jones: thread the story from one chase to the next as seamlessly as possible. It is a shallow and predictable technique, but it is undeniably entertaining when done properly. That is what Besson did with The Fifth Element, and he has not lost this rousing and erratic ability over the past decade. Of course, the worldly archaeologist Jones travelled all over the planet, and it is harder to make a series of chases feel dramatic when the characters are running around in circles through the streets of Paris. But Besson has created a magical and surreal Paris that perfectly suits the tone of the story, and the fact that the same locations show up repeatedly only adds to the absurd, pantomime vibe. The zipping speed of the storytelling even drips down into the minutiae of the editing: with panning cuts and visual cues ensuring that the story never calms down for a second.

When a film skips along with this sort of energy and rhythm, it is hardly surprising to find that it also possesses a natural humour. A director who knows how to race through a story must have a masterful control of timing, and this lends itself perfectly to great visual comedy. Add to this the hysterical quality of the performances from Mathieu Amalric, Gilles Lellouche, and Jean-Paul Rouve, and you have a thoroughly enjoyable, irrasicible French farce.

This film feels much closer to Jean Pierre Jeunet than Luc Besson; and indeed Besson’s bulky compatriot might feel his feathers have been ruffled by this assault on his artistic territory. Besson has forgone any of the darkness of his iconic earlier work, and has thoroughly embraced the folkloric fantasy of Jeunet’s vision. The makeup is grotesque, reminiscent of Punch & Judy puppets in some antique Romany travelling show, and the whimsical treatment of this iconic city owes much more to Amelie than Leon.

In the end, this is not a return to the global stage for Besson; but it is a delightfully entertaining French film with a giant imagination and a tiny audience… and who’s to say that isn’t exactly what he was looking for?

REVIEW: The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (dir. Werner Herzog)

In 1994, a group of scientists scrambling around in the Ardèche wilderness felt the faintest of breezes emanating from the cliff face beside them. They managed to burrow their way into a hidden limestone cave, enclosed for thousands of years, and there they made a startling and historic discovery that would ripple through the worlds of anthropology, geology, and art history: cave paintings dating back some 35,000 years. Since that date, only a handful of carefully selected scientists have been granted access to the Chauvet Caves (named after one of the original scientists); and only one man has ever been allowed in without any academic or scientific justification. Fortunately for us he had a camera with him, and his name was Werner Herzog.

Werner Herzog is a berserk and poetic filmmaker, and it is difficult to imagine anyone more suited to the frightening responsibility of recording the caves, knowing that he might be the only person ever to be granted permission to film there. Herzog doesn’t approach the task with any contrived humbleness or gravity; he approaches it like the giddy, maniacal genius that he is. He has a truly unique vision of the world, a deep care for the most archetypal and basic of human dramas, and one of the most melodic and soothing voices ever recorded.

There is no attempt to hide the clunking, equipment-ridden nature of the caves. Chrome walkways and cement doors exist not just beside but actually within this most fascinating and spiritual of monuments to human thought. As Herzog and his crew traipse along the walkways with their battery-powered lights and rustling overalls, there is a real sense of the claustrophobic ‘humanness’ of this adventure. You feel as if you are there with them, crouching and grunting and trying to avoid crossing lenses. So when they suddenly arrive at the back of the cave and stare, speechless, into the darkness, you find yourself completely unprepared for the quiet power of the paintings. You are still standing there behind Werner, in the awesome stillness of the caves, holding your breath and forgetting to blink.

The paintings are disarmingly beautiful and evocative, and they remain with you for a long time after the film has finished. Fortunately Herzog has avoided the crass temptation to turn the paintings into some dramatic story or use animation to bring them to life. Instead, he somehow transports us to the spiritual stillness of the cave; allowing the magnanimity of the images – their composure, the rippling lines on the cave walls, and the perfect shading and facial expressions on the animals – to completely absorb the viewer. They are powerful now, in the age of Avatar and Halo, so just imagine how entrancing they would have been 35,000 years ago, flickering in the firelight.

At one point, hopefully tongue-in-cheek, Herzog suggests that the pictures are “proto-cinema”. But even if this is in jest, there is certainly something in the idea of venturing into a ‘darkness’, adjusting to it, and then being bombarded by an astounding array of images while you are in an almost dreamlike state. The ritual of drama really hasn’t changed that much in 35,000 years.

It could be argued that there are Avatar fans and there are Herzog fans, and never the twain shall meet. So Herzog’s decision to use 3D technology for this project was greeted with some controversy. But Herzog fans needn’t have worried: the cameras used to shoot the film are lo-fi to say the least, and the extra dimension only causes the flickering grain and overexposure of the footage to leap out at you in an uncomfortable and shoddy way. It is a half-baked experiment with a trashy technology, thank goodness. Sometimes the 3D actually manages to peer through the darkness of the caves and add some faint and unnecessary depth to the images. But with Werner’s wonderful throaty voice expounding on the mysteries of human thought that have been unlocked by these paintings, an extra pane of depth in the camera is an awkward and silly appendage. Herzog 1 : 3D 0.

R.I.P. Elizabeth Taylor (1932 - 2011)

There is little I can add to the thousands of tributes to Elizabeth Taylor. However fragile she seemed, and eventually became, I will always remember her as the most fearless and unquenchable star of Hollywood's Golden Age. Bette Davis may have had more nerve, Audrey Hepburn may have had more style, but none could equal Taylor's fire. She was a child star, an Oscar winner, a stunning beauty, a lioness an infamous loud mouth, an AIDS activist, and a million other wonderful things. I dont agree with naysayers who claim that the death of Golden Era legends (most recently Tony Curtis and now Taylor) is leaving a void that can never be filled. The world changes, and it will always be filled with wonderful, glamorous, and controversial things. But there will never be another like Elizabeth Taylor, the icon with "a woman's body and a child's emotions", and I will miss her greatly.

REVIEW: Here (dir. Braden King)

Cast: Ben Foster, Lubna Azabal, Christina Hovaguimyan, Narek Nersisyan

There is emerging from the US a cluster of filmmakers possessing not only a gutsy and unpredictable artistic temperament, but also a wonderfully casual and intuitive grasp of genre conventions. Perhaps the best American film of 2010, Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone was a stunning example of a film noir, subverted by a young female lead, and twisted into some barren, ghoulish exploitation movie. It was Chinatown by way of Deliverance, with some other powerful emptiness besides. And in 2009 there was Ballast, a stirring and guttural study of a young black boy’s broken home. He totes a gun and gets in trouble with other youths, but the slumbering power of Lance Hammer’s film is closer to Béla Tarr than Spike Lee.

Braden King’s feature debut, Here, is a languid and ethereal take on another iconic Hollywood staple: the romantic road movie. But King lifts his story up off the comfortable blacktops of California and drops it into the harsh reality of Armenia’s border country. With all the ripened layers of Hollywood comfort and artifice stripped away, we are left alone with a lonely alcoholic geologist (Ben Foster) and a dissatisfied, pretty photographer (Lubna Azabal), travelling across a dangerous but muted landscape of mishmash fields. Yet somewhere deep inside, this film is still attuned to Frank Capra’s heartbeat. It is Andrzej Wajda by way of It Happened One Night, and it is mesmerising.

Will Shepard travels the world plotting landscapes for a Californian satellite navigation company. He has the stillness of a man who has learnt to be alone; but he is far from antisocial, and rarely does a day go by that he doesn’t end by drinking the night away with some aging vodka-soaked local. Gadarine is on her way back to her hometown after a long absence; but when Will offers her a lift she decides to join him beyond her original destination, and acts as his interpreter and guide as he heads off into Armenia’s dangerous, disputed territories.

They fall in love peacefully, journeying through the mountains and visiting some of Gadarine’s old friends and family. But as the landscape changes the tone darkens, and we begin to see the chasm that has always existed between these two lonely souls. Gadarine is dealing with old memories of her homeland; she has travelled the world trying to escape the powerful whirlwind of her country’s history, but she will never forget. Will is the ‘Yank’ who won’t take a second to think about anything that happened a second ago: he is the “quiet American” who thinks the past belongs to the Greeks, and the future belongs to whoever can trace its contours first. It is an easy dialectic, but it is plotted in such a simple and methodical way that it never feels laboured.

It is difficult to imagine the film without Ben Foster’s stirring performance. He is effortlessly charming and somehow manages to channel the excitable glint of Cary Grant or Richard Burton through the weary eyes of a geologist on a shrinking planet. But the angry, passive aggressive twitch that characterised his youthful performances in Six Feet Under and Alpha Dog is still there. It is the twitch of a dissatisfied man who doesn’t know where to scratch to make the emptiness go away. It turns every smile into a buried smirk, and every shot of vodka into a “running away from something”.

If there is a line that can be plotted through these films, it is the influence of cinematographer Lol Crawley, whose captivating ‘cinéma vérité’ camerawork and use of natural light forms the aesthetic basis for both Ballast and Here. Through Crawley’s camera, the settings are rendered in an effortlessly realistic and breathtakingly beautiful fashion. There is no unnecessary magic used to create some Ruskin landscape. This is a stark, sleek, undisturbed view of a bewitching part of the world that most of us will never see.

A THOUSAND WORDS: Becoming An Adult

For Pentti Sammallhati:

Your vulgar happy childhood world fragments.
The crumbling progression towards lonely afterthought laments.
Friends cease, hopes cease, you're sans eyes, sans teeth.
But you're YOU now, surrounded and confused, you're free.