Month: March 2018

The Shape of Water film review *****

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The Shape of Water, 26th February 2018

I have to confess I wasn’t that interested in seeing The Shape of Water, (I am pleased with my little conceptual joke here). The trailers suggested this was likely in a similar vein to Guillermo Del Toro’s previous gothic horror/romance/fantasy films: lovely to look at but tedious to watch. Yet the reviews were persuasive, Sally Hawkins is a tip-top favourite of mine and I was getting into the swing of seeing all the Oscar nominated films in the manner of a sad armchair critic.

So off I went. Dear reader, I was bewitched. This is not, on the face of it, a complicated fable, but it has a lot to say. Sally Hawkins plays Eliza Esposito, an orphan who has not spoken since being found on a riverbank with scars on her throat. She works as a cleaner at Occam, an aerospace military research facility in Cold War America. Our symbolic “monster”, a merman/amphibian of sorts, direct from the Amazon, arrives. So far, so Del Toro. Class A psycho nutjob, Strickland, played with splenetic relish by the versatile Michael Shannon, is tasked with looking after the creature, which he does, cruelly. Restless scientist Hofstetler, (an austere Michael Stuhlbarg), objects, but, as a Russian spy, he has ulterior motives. Eliza, through that tried and trusted combination of eggs and music, falls in love with the creature and hatches a plan to release him, roping in kindly, gay, commercial artist neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins) and voluble colleague Zelda (another engaging performance from Octavia Hill). You can guess the rest.

Good triumphs over evil, naturally and there is thrill, if not suspense, in the break-out. This is a timeless story. Beauty and the Beast, set against a world of US-Soviet paranoia. You can feel the references to other classic films, even if, like me, you don’t know what they are. There is an echo of the silent movie greats as well as a nod to the monster movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed Eliza and Giles actually live above a cinema the Orpheum (courtesy of Toronto, as so many of the exterior shots are). It is chock-full of repeated motifs and symbols. Mr Del Toro has a hand in the writing, but has wisely co-opted Vanessa Taylor, who wrote some of the early episodes of Game of Thrones. It shows. There is a hard-edged realism which punctures the fantasy and lends structure to the story.

Unsurprisingly the film looks exquisite with blues and greens predominating and all sorts of arresting images wrung from Mr Del Toro’s box of tricks. Water, water, everywhere. Costumes from Luis Sequeira, Paul Austerberry’s designs, Alexandre Desplat’s inventive score and, especially, Dan Lausten’s cinematography, all coalesce to bring the story to life. Frankly though none of this can work if the two, effectively wordless, performances of the two leads don’t convince. Getting zipped in to a merman/amphibian suit for hours on end and trying to convey emotion through face and body movement alone is a job few can master. Just as well Mr Del Toro has his long time “monster” collaborator, Doug Jones, on hand.

Now it doesn’t take a genius to work out that Sally Hawkins is a gifted actress. I saw her first in 2000 in a pair of Shakespeare productions at the Open Air Theatre. was struck by her performances in the TV adaptions of Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith and Persuasion, by her collaborations with Mike Leigh and, most impressively, by her performance alongside Rafe Spall in Nick Payne’s Constellations. The two of them turned that into a much better play than it really was, and it was pretty good to start with. Here, as Eliza, she is transcendent. I don’t care how grizzled and cynical you are, this is a love story you should buy into.

So there you have it. I am fortunate to have had the time to see all the Oscar nominated best films, bar Call Me By Your Name. I enjoyed all of them, but only this, Phantom Thread and Three Billboards … really seemed to me to harness the power of cinema. Films where you know the direction of travel or where the camera is just pointed at the action can be satisfying but what I crave is uncertainty and surprise. And insight into the human condition. I see the other films I really liked last year would fail to make the grade because they are either a) “foreign”, b) tiny, in budget, not scope, c) actually from the prior year or d) maybe a bit too full on. I would have shoved Mother!, Detroit and The Florida Project into the list if I where in charge. Mind you, all pointless since Three Billboards … is, unarguably, the best of the chosen bunch but, to my immense surprise, The Shape of Water, runs it close.

I should have realised. Never underestimate a fat bloke born in 1964 (or 1963) with a terrible beard and ill-kempt hair who spends too much time locked in his imagination.

Picnic at Hanging Rock at the Barbican Theatre review ***

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Picnic at Hanging Rock

Barbican Theatre, 24th February 2018

Picnic at Hanging Rock is an Australian cultural icon. Joan Lindsay’s novel, published in 1967 and Peter Weir’s 1975 film, (and all manner of subsequent examinations, interpretations and meditations), is a metaphor which gets to the very heart of the making of Australia. It is a fictionalised account, purporting to be true, of the disappearance of three students and a teacher, at Hanging Rock in Victoria, from a girls boarding school on St Valentine’s Day 1900. The “rational”, “European” Australia is contrasted with the timeless, “original”, natural Australia. As one character says, “we named things that had not been named”, but it turns out naming isn’t really enough. It doesn’t get any more meta or deconstructed than this.

So no simple attempt to act out the book/film on stage. Mind you that wouldn’t be that simple anyway. Renowned Aussie theatre companies Malthouse, (Shadow King, their take on Lear, was fascinating here last year), and Black Swan State, with writer Tom Wright, came together to create something far more ambitious. Our all-female cast of five appear on stage against a black backdrop, (thus sidestepping the problem of the cavernous Barbican stage for this small scale production), to narrate the story of Picnic at Hanging Rock, in a fragmentary, almost musical fashion. Their uniforms are contemporary – no flouncy Edwardian white frills here – but in that old, fashioned public school way. They inch forward menacingly on the stage. It is not long before they themselves collapse into the characters from the novel, acting out the key scenes. They are, it seems, consumed by the story they are telling.

The staging remains sparse, so text, lighting, soundscapes, and our imaginations, combine to conjure up the settings and, in particular, the mystical, primeval landscape. By having the cast take on the male “roles” and by concentrating on specific parts of the story and of the text, (which are sur-titled for emphasis in each scene), the mystery of the disappearances is downplayed and the colonisers fear of the natural world, the “anti-Eden”, is foregrounded. The sub-text of awakening sexuality is also lent a complexity that was, I seem to remember, more one-dimensional in the film, addressed in particular by the performances of, I think, Elizabeth Nabben, as increasingly beleaguered head Mrs Appleyard, Amber McMahon as the artless English visitor Michael Fitzhubert, who becomes obsessed with finding the girls, and Harriet Gordon-Anderson as the forthright detective set to uncover the “truth”.

There is still a dream-like feeling to events, but not the hot, sun-drenched, woozy “outback” of the film, (though remember this was, even in 1900, a tourist spot a short(ish) hop from Melbourne), but a darker, more nightmarish, fracturing of reality. This does make for a somewhat ardent production, which left me a little puzzled at times, but I guess that is an occupational hazard when trying to unpick a myth, especially in just 90 minutes. Still there was much to enjoy in this bold approach from Matthew Lutton (director), Zoe Atkinson (designer), Paul Jackson (lighting) and J David Franzke (sound). I couldn’t quite work out from the programme who exactly “played” whom but no matter. Harriet Gordon-Anderson, Arielle Gray, Amber McMahon, Elizabeth Nabben and Nikki Shiels made up a uniformly excellent ensemble.

 

 

 

 

Phantom Thread film review *****

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Phantom Thread, 19th February 2018

I saw Daniel Day-Lewis on stage. In Another Country in the early 1980s. That’s why it’s a good idea to buy programmes and stick them in a box. I remember the play a bit but not really his performance. Not sure I would have guessed he would become the “greatest ever actor” and not sure that epithet is entirely justified anyway. Anyway I was lucky since the only other way to have seen him in the theatre was when he was a student in Bristol or early in his ill-fated Hamlet run.

But he is good even if it is just on film. Very good. Brilliant in fact. Always a commanding screen presence. Whatever he does. Up to him but I reckon he is a bit cheeky retiring. His output isn’t what you’d call prodigious. Still he famously leaves nothing on the table when he performs and I guess he has enough to live on.

So we will have to make do with his cinematic legacy. Good for us he didn’t pursue his cabinet-making ambitions. And probably good for cabinet-makers too. He wouldn’t have made very many but they would be best in class.

His work with director Jim Sheridan counts amongst his best obviously as does his Bill the Butcher in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. But by far his best performance in my view, and that of many others, was as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, an all time Top 10 film for the Tourist. (Saw a memorable showing with a live performance of the score at the South Bank a few years ago with Jonny Greenwood twiddling his ondes martenot) TWBB was written and directed by none other than Paul Thomas Anderson who also does the necessary here in Phantom Thread.

Mr Anderson is an extraordinary film-maker as the string of awards for his films show. I have seen all his films at least once, with the exception of his feature debut Hard Eight and the documentary Junun, (about the making of Inherent Vice). They are all, by turns, baffling, annoying, claustrophobic, frustrating, stimulating, thoughtful, intense and intriguing. He doesn’t hurry, is not averse to repeating motifs, words or themes, and he asks you to think about the story he is telling. He pushes himself and us the audience. In his “tragic’ films his lead characters are powerful but flawed, cursed by hamartia. In his “comic” films the humour is complex and stylised. His camera never takes a pedestrian position and music and sound is never backgrounded. In short his is a very epic, theatrical approach to film-making. Which is why I like his films I guess.

So what about Phantom Thread? Daniel Day-Lewis plays bachelor Reynolds Woodcock, (I wonder how many other ostentatious names Paul Thomas Anderson mulled over before alighting on this corker), who is an obsessive frock designer for the great and good in early 1950s London. He is a genius with the needle and thread, his clients love him and his sister Cyril, played by the exceptional Lesley Manville. cocoons him and dumps his muses for him when they have outlived their usefulness. He is suave, charming, precise and fastidious, but egocentric, boorish whilst still slightly camp, and prone to childish tantrums if all is not to his liking. He definitely loved his Mummy: his dresses are all ultimately tributes to her. He meets mysterious waitress Alma (Vicky Krieps) whilst away from London and seduces her. She falls for him, and his life, and moves into the London townhouse which also houses the business. He becomes dependent on her. The film charts their intense relationship and the way it affects him and his work. Reynolds has a fair few issues and a masochistic streak: Alma is his match, literally, equally complex and anything but helpless.

Put like this, as a romance, the story sounds commonplace. In the hands of Mr Anderson and the three leads, though, it is riveting and something altogether more rewarding. It looks, (costume designer Mark Bridges must have been in seventh heaven throughout), and sounds, (Jonny Greenwood should get the Oscar for his eclectic score), magical, but what really draws you in is the depth of these characters. There is a lot wrong, sometimes disturbingly so, with both of the lovers. At first you think Reynolds is just going to eat Alma up for breakfast, (breakfast, and specifically the correct way to butter toast, is a key motif here), then cast her aside. She persists, easing Cyril aside, takes on his mores and eventually finds a striking way to control him. This requires Vicky Krieps to match Mr Day-Lewis. The wonder is she succeeds. A stunning performance. PTA must have been ecstatic when she auditioned.

There is a definite Hitchcockian, or Powell/Pressburger, vibe about the whole affair, and not just in the setting. (I was reminded of the opera version of Marnie at the ENO recently). There are allusions to fairy tales here, the Gothic sort where is all goes pear-shaped for the protagonists. It is often very funny. Yet this still feels, even with PTA’s fractured, exaggerated and unpredictable observation, ripe and real.  A triumph which will need another viewing, and another, for sure.