Monday, January 09, 2012
Faith, hopelessness and channeling rage
By Edward Copeland
Sometimes when U.K. filmmakers delve into the bleak realm of damaged souls, what results can be unrelentingly grim and depressing to watch. Other times though, such as with Tyrannosaur, actor Paddy Considine's first feature as writer and director, the work may revolve around people in dire and dysfunctional circumstances but Considine and his cast execute the film with such finesse that the carefully crafted mood doesn't transfer to the audience.
Considine, who was so great as the father in Jim Sheridan's 2002 film In America, shows real skills both as a writer and a director with Tyrannosaur, which comes vividly to life thanks to what basically amounts to a three-character story. To be certain, the screenplay populates the film with many more characters that interact with the three main ones, but the casting of those top parts provide the crucial fuel to launch Tyrannosaur into the stratosphere.
Tyrannosaur stars Scottish actor Peter Mullan as Joseph, giving his best performance since Ken Loach's My Name Is Joe which came to U.S. shores in 1999. The widowed Joseph's blood system runs so thick with rage that it's a wonder it hasn't clogged his arteries and induced a fatal heart attack. The film gives us a startling introduction to Joseph as his temper explodes and he kicks his dog to death. Ordinarily, an act of violence of that sort would turn me off immediately. Hidden within Joseph though exists remorse, and the way he tenderly carries the dead dog, sobs over what he's done and prepares the canine's burial, proves touching.
However, Joseph remains Joseph and he still gets into scraps be it with neighbors or strangers. During one excursion through town, Joseph wanders into a Christian thrift store where the woman who works there, Hannah (Olivia Colman), senses his troubles and tries to approach him from a religious standpoint, but Joseph rejects God in very unkind and profane terms. Another day when Joseph ends up on the wrong end of a fight with an ugly wound on his forehead, he finds himself waiting outside the thrift store for Hannah to open it. She's reluctant to do it, but Hannah lets Joseph in and he sees that she's been on the losing side of a brawl as well.
Eventually, these two wounded characters build a trust and Joseph learns that while Hannah might preach the Gospel, at home she's victimized by her husband James (a frightening Eddie Marsan, in a role far removed from his great driving instructor in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky). You probably think you know how things will turn out, but the film actually picks unexpected directions.
To offer somewhat of a "break" from the terrible situation that Hannah finds herself in, Considine occasionally cuts back to a subplot concerning a feud between Joseph and the boyfriend of a woman across the street (Sian Breckin) who walks around with a pit bull chained to his pants and abuses her friendly son (Samuel Bottomley). It's strange to consider this the film's "comic relief," but it plays that way.
Considine, both as a writer and director, constantly surprises you with the direction the story takes which makes the many negative reviews I've seen (none of which I read until after I saw the movie) that think it's a by-the-numbers British working-class kitchen sink drama of violence seem as if they were watching something else. Considine receives substantial aid from Pia Di Ciaula's editing.
Considine's greatest asset turns out to be that cast. Marsan has the smallest role, but he's quite scary and impressive. Colman, who I don't recall seeing before, proves a wonder as Hannah, presenting us with one image only to destroy that and make us see the complicated woman who lies beneath. Mullan though holds the already strong film together. At one point, someone asks Joseph what his name is and he gives the smart ass answer, "Robert De Niro." With his nearly shaved head, Joseph could be Travis Bickle, except he's more grounded. His cragged face looks as if it could tell Joseph's life story in Braille. Mullan's work belongs in the consideration of 2011's best. Too bad you haven't heard his name once.
As for the meaning of the title Tyrannosaur, Joseph explains that in a great speech that comes in the third act of the film that runs at an incredibly efficient 90 minutes.
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Labels: 10s, De Niro, Mike Leigh
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Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Happiness is never distributed equally
By Edward Copeland
When a new Mike Leigh film opens, it's wrong to say you "watch" it. "Eavesdrop" seems to be a more appropriate verb, especially in the case of Another Year.
With Another Year, Leigh isn't telling a story as much as letting you observe a handful of characters. They aren't particularly fascinating characters, at least in usual movie terms, but seem defiantly ordinary. However, Leigh's fictional characters and the talented performers who inhabit them never fail to capture your attention and hold onto it.
Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen), a longtime, happily married couple, serve as the center of the small universe around which Another Year revolves. Tom works as a engineering geologist, Gerri as a counselor and they have a 30-year-old son, Joe (Oliver Maltman).
Even though the film will keep its focus on Tom and Gerri and those who orbit their galaxy, they aren't even the first two characters we see on screen. Instead, Leigh opens as one of Gerri's colleagues Tanya (Michele Austin) counsels a woman, Janet (Imelda Staunton, in a great two-scene cameo) about her insomnia and dissatisfaction with life in general. When Tanya asks Janet to rate how happy she is on a scale of 1 to 10, Janet answers, "One."
After Staunton's character vanishes after her two early scenes, some viewers may wonder what the point of her scenes were, but she's there to set up Another Year's theme: Happiness, or the lack thereof, specifically in the form of Gerri's friend and co-worker Mary (the marvelous Lesley Manville).
Mary could be a tragic figure, except unfortunately there are too many Marys in the world (and even worse, not enough Toms and Gerris, though even they have their limits). Mary is single, easing past middle-age and a functional alcoholic — and she clings to Tom and Gerri as if they were a life preserver which, in a way, they are.
It's easy to see why Mary relishes the time she spends at her friends' home — the warmth it emits practically emanates from the screen and wraps itself around the viewer as well. Mary dreams of a life that includes a mate, but her fantasies exceed her dreams. She puts off the advances of another damaged friend of Tom and Gerri's, Ken (Peter Wight), and somehow has imagined herself as a possible mate for Joe.
One of the film's best scenes comes when Joe brings home his hyperactively buoyant new girlfriend Katie (Karina Fernandez) and Mary drops by (unexpectedly, as she usually does) and Leigh builds tension around the simple serving of a cake. Leigh films it in a series of slow closeups of all the actors in the room, escalating the strain that lies beneath the surface.
For a plotless film such as Another Year, the success or failure of the enterprise largely falls upon the strength of the casting and Leigh doesn't have a weak link in his ensemble.
Manville is a wonder, milking the humor and pathos out of Mary, hitting just the right note at the right time. She can make you feel for Mary one moment and make you want to slap her silly the next.
The always dependable Broadbent gives the best performance he's given in ages as Tom and Sheen proves just as good as the level-headed Gerri and as a pair, Sheen and Broadbent make a believable couple.
In addition to all the other performers named above, fine work also comes from David Bradley as Tom's older brother, facing life as a widower, and Martin Savage as Tom's troubled nephew Karl.
Leigh has the audacity to tell the truth that not everyone's life turns out well and that some marriages do miraculously go on blissfully for decades and to mix them in the same movie.
While I was writing this review, wanting to doublecheck one character's name and the performer who played her right, I was surprised by the negative reviews of Another Year that I found that found it "smug," full of caricatures (one admitted "hating" all the characters) and even criticized the acting — and some of these critics were ones who fell all over the torture called Blue Valentine or the disaster Nicole Kidman inflicted upon Rabbit Hole. I guess a movie marriage must be in a state of disrepair or there's something wrong with the film.
You would think as damaged as the character of Mary (or Ken or Ronnie for that matter) are would satisfy their need for suffering. Who knew Leigh was being courageous by acknowledging that not everyone in the world finds a mate, even for a bad relationship? That people like Mary do become dependent on friends like Tom and Gerri because it's as close to intimacy as they get and it can get on those friends' nerves. It's sad, but it's true.
I've usually found Leigh's films to be hit or miss, but always with solid performances. In Another Year, everything comes together and he produces one of his best efforts, striking every chord perfectly. Most films work best when they don't have any extraneous scenes, but Another Year works so well by taking the opposite approach. Many parts don't seem pertinent as you watch them, but Leigh's thinking several moves ahead of you and eventually you realize why that sequence, like all the others, were absolutely essential.
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Labels: 10s, Broadbent, Mike Leigh, Nicole Kidman
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Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Freaks of Nature, Freakishly Good
By Josh R
When it comes to the men and women who make the movies, history insists that there is no such thing as a sure thing. Not even the most gifted and influential of the lot — be it Hitchcock, Truffaut, Hawks, Scorsese, Bergman, fill in the blanks as you may — can lay claim to an unblemished record. Only so much of this can be attributed to age and the law of diminishing returns; Hitchcock’s late-career films may not have been as good as his earlier ones, but then, he made The Paradine Case within a year of Notorious (it didn’t help). Perhaps there’s some truth to the notion that talent is a constant; be that as it may, its application is a hit-or-miss proposition, and quality is often difficult, if not impossible, to sustain.
All of this goes to suggest that Mike Leigh — the standard bearer in the world of British independent filmmaking for more than two decades now — might be something of a freak of nature. It is true that some of his films, most of which favor a style based heavily in improvisation, have been more kindly received than others (and only 2002’s All or Nothing, it should be noted, sank upon arrival on these shores without a trace). Speaking only for myself, I have never come away from one of his films feeling disappointed, short-changed, or simply wondering what in hell the nutty old bloke could have possibly been thinking when he embarked upon the enterprise.
It is entirely possible — nay, even probable — that the law of averages will catch up to Mr. Leigh sooner or later. As of this writing, it has not; his latest film more than ably demonstrates that he still knows exactly what he’s doing, and exactly how to get it done. Lighter-than-air in most respects, the aptly-titled Happy-Go-Lucky lacks the emotional punch of his best films — but even as a minor entry in the Leigh canon, it keeps the streak alive, and the laws of probability confounded.
Unlike some of his more recent films — most memorably 2004’s Vera Drake, a devastating account of a mid-20th century abortionist being crushed underfoot by a hypocritical establishment — Happy-Go-Lucky is a throwback to the small scale, character-driven films on which Leigh first made his reputation. As in Life is Sweet and High Hopes, the film is almost entirely character-driven, as opposed to taking shape around a cut-and-dried narrative structure. What we see is a series of vignettes fashioned around the character of Poppy (an effervescent Sally Hawkins), a resolutely cheerful young woman who teaches primary school in a working class neighborhood. The film observes her in her everyday life: chatting up strangers, hanging out with her mates, attempting to keep a straight face during physical therapy sessions and flamenco classes, dealing with a school bully, visiting her married sister in the suburbs, enjoying a flirtation with a charming social worker, and gamely taking lessons from an unctuous driving instructor. While it may be tempting to regard the approach as haphazard — and I suppose that with no plot to speak of, the film is lacking something in terms of shape — as in the more overtly schematic Vera Drake, everything in Happy-Go-Lucky is geared to a purpose. A kindred spirit to Chaplin’s Little Tramp, Poppy is the kind of eternally optimistic, unostentatiously decent sort of “little” person who comes face to face with the evils and indignities of the world; while appraising them with an astonishingly clear eye, she refuses to succumb to bitterness, anger or despair. Some of the things that she confronts in her travels are horrible, indeed — an instance of brutal abuse wreaking havoc on the delicate psyche of a child, a disoriented derelict who talks in streams of gibberish, and some genuinely harrowing glimpses into the damaged soul of Scott (the excellent Eddie Marsan), the driving instructor whose smudgy outbursts of rage eventually fix upon Poppy as their object. The heroine registers her encounters with all of these people — lost, drifting figures in the sad, confused parade of human suffering — with a mix of compassion, sorrow, and occasional bewilderment, but without allowing it to dampen her naturally sanguine outlook or her essential faith in the existence of goodness. Even when bleak realities of life threaten to engulf and extinguish her tiny beam of light, she manages to keep aloft above the waves. She’s not just a glass-is-half-full person; against all odds, her cup runneth over.
I will confess that for the few minutes or so, I couldn’t help wondering if that indefatigable buoyancy of spirit would become grating in the extreme. The opening sequence of the film shows our clean-scrubbed heroine chirpily trying to engage an unresponsive bookstore clerk in conversation — as she forges breezily ahead in her attempts, completely undaunted by his silence, you think “Oh God, not one of these.” (Unflagging perkiness is fine for morning talk-show hostesses, but nobody wants to encounter anyone who can approximate that quality in real life.) Any misgivings were swept aside fairly quickly, due in no small part to the warmth and originality Hawkins brings to the role; all toothy grins and jangly bracelets, she’s as endearingly quirky a presence as Diane Keaton was in her Annie Hall days, and her disarmingly self-deprecating charm and all-around averageness (that's meant as a compliment) gives the film an emotional honesty it couldn’t possibly have had with some airbrushed movie star dressing down and playing against type. As always, the strength of the film owes much to the director’s talent for casting. Leigh very astutely chooses unconventional performers who interpret their roles in highly individualized ways. The performances he draws from them are often heightened and exaggerated, but always in ways that feel completely authentic. More than any other director I can think of — save, perhaps, for Rossellini and De Sica — Leigh has always exhibited a genuine empathy for the working classes, and a natural affinity for the world in which they live. There is nothing condescending or romanticized about his attitudes; the slice-of-life he is serving up in Happy-Go-Lucky may cast a rosy glow, but it always feels true to life. A cynic might feel that people like Poppy are too good to be true; the actress and director are so keyed in to what makes her tick that the audience never questions the plausibility of her behavior and motives. Like Mike Leigh, Poppy is something of a freak of nature — just be glad that in a world of darkness, such freaks are still in evidence to provide rare glimpses of light.
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Labels: 00s, Chaplin, Diane Keaton, Hawks, Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, Mike Leigh, Scorsese, Truffaut
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