Sunday 15 January 2012

#4 - Shame

There are two main things that spring to mind in the first few minutes of Steve McQueen's 2nd feature film, 'Shame': 1. 'What a lovely apartment but the sheets need a wash' and 2. 'Isn't Michael Fassbender well-endowed?' The movie starts as it means to go on, so anyone who has any kind of issue with on-screen nudity need look no further: this movie is not for you. Otherwise, this is a powerful, engrossing depiction of how someone's facade can be a mask for who they are behind closed doors.

Following Brandon (Fassbender) in his journey through an ever-increasing sex addiction, and his relationship with his self-destructive sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), McQueen doesn't pull any punches in his depiction of these two siblings. Brandon is selfish, arrogant and at times extremely aggressive; Sissy needy, manic and irritating. Neither of them seem to think about how their actions affect the other characters around them, as long as they get what they need or desire at any point in the script. They are different, yet the same and they are written in such a way that the audience can really believe in them as brother and sister.

The screenplay, a collabaration between McQueen and Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady), is bare and brutal. Minutes pass without words, but the performances are so outstanding that everything is said on screen without a need for dialogue. When words are used, there is no redundancy - everything that is said is vital.  This device intrigues the audience, making them want to know more, but ultimately leaving them to put together some of the jigsaw themselves. What was the start in life that led to Brandon and Sissy both ending up the way they are? We don't know, but there are enough clues to help us decide for ourselves.
Brandon (Fassbender) and Marianne (Deharie) enjoy a candlelit dinner.

Fassbender's performance is an absolute tour-de-force, earning him a well deserved Golden Globe nomination already, and with any luck an Oscar nomination should follow. The journey his character follows is distressing and every nuance feels so real. The pain he conveys gets more and more noticeable as the final act plays out. One scene that sticks in the mind is his date with his work collague, Marianne (in a small, but outstandingly naturalistic supporting performance from Nicole Deharie). Brandon desperately wants to be 'normal' and the audience feels moments of hope throughout this single-shot dinner scene but his actions in the ensuing scenes bring home the reality of his addiction.

Mulligan provides another superb supporting turn as Sissy. She continues to prove her diversity as an actress, and her scenes with Fassbender are always unnerving, because she plays the role with such unpredictability.

Sex addiction has long been a taboo subject, but McQueen has attacked it head-on, exposing it for what it can do to a seemingly 'normal' person. He has shot the film in drab colours and with no holds barred. As the film progresses, the pace accelerates, similar to how an addiction happens: slow at first, but spiralling out of control. In this respect, it is an extremely clever work of art. Each scene gets progressively more 'shameful' and to that effect the title is very apt. Suffice to say, there are no happy endings here for anyone.

Having said all of this, it's probably important to remember that this is not a movie for everybody. A first date movie, it is not! But if you want to watch extraordinary actors in a film that really gives a great understanding to everyone about addiction and its effects on a person, and those around him, then see this movie. Just don't expect to want to have sex that evening.

Lowdown: A dark, depressing journey into the psyche of a sex addict, directed to perfection by McQueen. Fassbender proves why he is the biggest breakout actor of 2011.

Score: 10/10

Sunday 8 January 2012

#3 - The Iron Lady

Is Meryl Streep the most talented actress of all-time? The debate goes on, but with her performance as Margaret Thatcher in 'The Iron Lady' almost certain to garner her a record 17th Oscar nomination, the Academy continue to think she's a cut above the rest. 

The role is as baity as they come: biopic of high profile historical and political leader? Check. A make-up and hair job that makes the actress unrecognisable? Check. Dramatic life spiralling downwards from articulate, powerful leader of people to senile old woman with dementia. Check.

And Streep delivers. Not since her astounding performance in The Devil Wears Prada has she embodied a role quite so completely - she just is Thatcher. From the intonation, to the facial expressions, and even down to the walk. She has done her research and made the most perfect impersonation. Comparing Streep's performance to Michelle Yeoh's somewhat less 3-dimensional portrayal of a political figure last week as Aung San Suu Kyi in 'The Lady', poor Yeoh comes in a distant second place.

However, one performance is not enough to make a movie, and 'The Iron Lady' is dissatisfying in every other department. Screenwriter Abi Morgan has done away with a typical chronological biopic, replacing it with the musings of an old lady dealing with dementia. This provides a huge contrast between the articulate and powerful Margaret of the Downing Street years with the confused and senile Margaret of the present day. It allows Streep to show us what she can do as an actress, but it provides us with a lot of screentime in which she just sits in a darkened flat, spouting nonsense to no-one in particular, or to an imaginary friend in the form of her dead husband, Dennis (Jim Broadbent). This time could surely have been put to better use by going into more depth as to why Thatcher made the decisions she did, and the cause and consequence of her actions. The key events are in the film: the Falklands, the miners' strikes, the riots, IRA bombings including the party conference in Brighton and Thatcher's eventual resignation from office - but because so much time is spent in the present day, none of them are given depth and are skimmed over. Further to that, they stand alone and aren't put into any kind of context against each other, meaning the film ends up being a series of disjointed scenes that don't seem to correlate or tell any kind of story arc at all.

Phillida Lloyd's direction is even more messy than in her similarly unfocused 'Mamma Mia'. She doesn't seem to know if she is making 'JFK', 'The Notebook' or an episode of 'Spitting Image'. The film works as none of the above.

Broadbent and Olivia Colman, playing Margaret's daughter, Carol, seem to play the whole thing as if they are in one giant comedy sketch and as a result any emotional impact of Thatcher's failing memory and mind are completely nullified, and any real drama is lost.

Neither does it work as a political document. Historical inaccuracies are abundant. In particular, Lloyd's decision to show Thatcher as the only woman in the entirety of the House of Commons, against a backdrop of only white men is just incorrect and frankly quite patronising to the audience. If it's intended to make Thatcher's story more impressive, maybe Lloyd should have focused more on her battle to get into office in the first place, rather than wandering around newsagents and buying a pint of milk.

What makes this the biggest shame is that so many big male political figures have had great movies made about them: JFK, Nixon, Guevara, to name but a few. Lloyd wanted to demonstrate that a woman can do the same, but has given us a wishy-washy story that doesn't demonstrate anything of the sort. In the movie, Thatcher mentions that what she feels is wrong with the world today is that people don't think any more, they only feel. Lloyd should have used this line to her own advantage and created a film that made people think. But as it stands I think the only thing that this film is good for is seeing the majestic performance of an exquisite actress in full flow.

Lowdown: A movie that neither makes us think, nor feel, actingly solely as a showcase for the talents of Meryl Streep.

Score: 4/10

Monday 2 January 2012

#2 - The Lady

In the 1980s one woman stole the global political headlines from any other woman: Margaret Thatcher. Despite being a British resident and hugely influential political leader herself, Aung San Suu Kyi has never been able to compete with the might of Thatcher in prominence. Perhaps, then, it is fitting that a biopic of Suu Kyi should be released just weeks before a higher profile one of Thatcher.

Suu Kyi's story has been documented in the press, but as is made clear in this film, probably not as much as it should have been. Born in Burma, the daughter of Aung San, the man who negotiated Burma's independence but was assassinated by rivals in 1947. Suu Kyi (Michelle Yeoh) went to Oxford as a student where she met her husband, Michael Aris (David Thewlis), and became a working mother to two sons, Alex (Jonathan Woodhouse) and Kim (Jonathan Raggett). In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to look after her ailing mother where followers of her father asked her to lead them in their fight for democracy. The film documents her decision to lead this group, and the response of the authorities in Burma - imprisoning her in her own house to prevent her speaking out.

It's a stunning story and Luc Besson does well in making us realise the enormity of the upheaval in Suu Kyi's life when she travels to Burma, by showing us her life as a 'normal' wife in England first. The filming is visually striking with shots used to good effect to highlight the difference in the world of England and Burma. But something is missing.

For a story packed with drama, passion and frightening politics, it only feels dramatic, passionate and frightening at a couple of moments in its 132 minute running time. When people are taken away silently from the back of Suu Kyi's peace protests; when the heroine of the piece squares up to face her armed rivals at close range; when the house arrest first takes place: these moments all deliver with some poignancy and horror at the realisation in our Western minds that things aren't all as rosy as we'd like to believe. While Besson has obviously gone for low-key as a theme throughout, this doesn't make for a good drama.

Aris (David Thewlis) and Suu Kyi (Michelle Yeoh) 
contemplate. A lot.
Low-key can work with performances that move the audience. But Yeoh and Thewlis in the central roles are disappointing. Thewlis seems to treat the role as an exercise in caricature of English professor: the bumbling, old buffoon. Not cool. Yeoh on the other hand delivers her lines with understatement and quiet sincerity, but never quite convinces. The transformation from English wife and mother to national figurehead smells as baity for awards attention as Meryl Streep's Thatcher or Helen Mirren's Queen Elizabeth II previously, and she must have been thrilled to get the role of a lifetime like this. But Yeoh fails to give the part the emotional punch that it could and should have delivered. Something in her eyes says she never quite believes in herself and it radiates throughout the whole film. Perhaps she wasn't given the time to get it right, as this picture seems to have been released in something of a rush, at the end of Suu Kyi's house arrest, but frankly it's not enough of an excuse.

Rebecca Frayn's script and Besson's storytelling as director are possibly more at fault than the performances though. Episodic and, dare I say it, bland, no character is given emotional depth or much in the way of motivation. The 'bad guys' (and that's exactly how they're presented, with no attempt to understand the reasoning behind their behaviour) are close to being pantomime villains and the 'good guys' are shown as completely faultless in every way.

The film is saved from being a complete flop by the fact that the story is so incredible. Momentous, powerful and extraordinary, even a filmmaker's ineptitude can't take away from the fact that Aung San Suu Kyi is an exceptional person, with an exceptional story. The biggest shame is that if this film had been better, it could have resolved the very problem that it is trying to highlight - the ignorance of the Western world to the plight of the people in some 'forgotten' countries. As it stands, I imagine more people will be asking if 'The Lady' is that film with Meryl being Maggie in.

Lowdown: A less than incredible biopic telling an incredible story about an incredible woman. Disappointingly flat, but worth a watch for the history lesson alone.


Score: 5/10