You Won't Be Alone

The Witches
Of Eat, Spit

You Won't Be Alone
United Kingdom/Serbia/Australia 2022
Directed by Goran Stolevski
Focus Features

Warning: Some slight spoilerage.

You Won’t Be Alone received it’s official UK premiere at this years London Film Festival. It’s a really nice slice of folk horror set in Macedonia in the 19th Century and it would have made a nice addition to Severin’s All The Haunts Be Ours box set, it has to be said. The film stars many great actresses such as Alice Englert (from Ginger And Rosa, reviewed here), Anamaria Marinca, Sara Klimoska with, due to the constantly shifting nature of identity in the story, some of them taking on dual roles, such as the absolutely marvellous Noomi Rapace, who puts in an extra special turn here... I’ll get to her in a minute.

The film tells of a witch living near a small farming community, who comes to claim a mother’s daughter on pretty much the day she is born. The mother strikes a bargain that she will only give her offspring up to live with the witch when she reaches 16 and the witch marks her, removing her power of speech. The mother tries to cheat the witch by hiding her daughter in a sacred cave, isolated from her community, for the next 16 years but, somewhat predictably, the witch still claims her prize and uses her last ‘witch spit’ to seal a wound she gives the girl, bestowing special witchy powers on her, also. However, her ‘apprentice’ angers her and she abandons her to life among the normal humans and watches from the wings, waiting to see how long it will take before the humans will rip her apart. And that’s all I’m telling you of the story... you’ll have to see how the pair of witches fair.

The film starts very strongly, in an unusual 1.44:1 aspect ratio, with a shot of a cat eating something in the foreground of a beautiful landscape, before we suddenly take the cats eye view for the camera as she rushes to a hovel where the new child is living... jumping back into a third person view. I was somewhat puzzled by this choice at first (and it’s not the only time the camera does this) but since the film is put together using occasional, still and static shots interspersed into sections with both fluid camerawork and almost brutal, in your face, hand held camera stuff... it doesn’t feel so out of place as to knock you out of the story. And it makes more sense when you realise it’s the form a witch is taking in certain scenes and used to indicate that in a visual manner without showing the witch transforming... a tactic used throughout the length of the movie although, in one shot where a witch transforms into a dog, it’s done in camera and looks amazing. It also reminded me of similar cat POV style shots used in another classic tale involving witches potions... Morgiana (reviewed here).

There’s a brilliant moment early in the film where you see just how the young girl with newly bestowed powers transforms, which is quite eerie and striking... pulling out the internal organs of someone (or something in the case of the animals) she has just killed, ripping a hole out of her torso and then shoving the organs into her own body to essentially turn into a doppelganger of that person. The film then proceeds to follow the girl as she takes on new identities throughout the movie... man, woman and animal... in order to silently hoodwink the humans around her and try to fit in. So the film becomes almost a ‘fish out of water’ comedy in some ways... but with no humour in it, just stripped back to the point where the lack of fitting in is seen as some kind of unhinged mental condition on occasion.

Which brings me to the wonderful Noomi Rapace who, in the role of a young mother killed and replaced by the girl, tries to fit in with the community in such ways that actually give the film a sense of lurking dread and strangeness. There’s one sequence in particular where she’s imitating the women-folk of the community by laughing joyously on cue and then dropping back to a straight, emotionless face before attempting it again a number of times, which really makes the blood grow cold.

All this plus the poetic voice over narrative of the young witch, combined with some heavy and unhurried musical statements with long pauses between lines, makes for a really nice combination and singles You Won’t Be Alone out as one of the more interesting and rewarding examples of folk horror cinema for a while. It’s a slow burn of a feature with some amazing, stand out moments which punctuate the pacing and it kind of gets under your skin as you watch. Definitely a strong recommendation from me and I’d urge fans of unusual cinema to check this one out as soon as the opportunity arises.

Jonathan Strange And Mr. Norrell

Raven Mad

Jonathan Strange And Mr. Norrell
UK Airdate: 17th May - 28th June 2015
BBC 1

It's been a number of years since I first read Susanna Clarke's literary debut, the masterpiece Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell... a couple of years after it was first published in 2004, I believe. I had a girlfriend living in Ipswich at the time and so my Friday and Sunday evenings were all about devouring books to pass the long train journeys to and from my ultimate destination.

I remember, at the time, marvelling at the blend of fact and fiction in a tale where the author had veiled her characters, the narrowly focussed Mr. Norrell and the younger, heroic Jonathan Strange (whose name I took at the time, and still do believe to be, a less than veiled reference to Steve Ditko and Stan Lee’s 1960s super hero sorcerer Dr. Strange), with an air of realism by cloaking their fantastic deeds with four very vital ingredients that helped to give them an air of credibility...

Firstly there was the almost archaic tinge to the language. While not nearly as "old worlde" in style as the writings of one of my favourite writers, Jules Verne (and he certainly had an excuse), there was still a lack of haste in the writing style and a clarity of detail which I appreciated from the writer.

Secondly, and possibly as a natural offshoot of the decision to go with this writing style, perhaps, there was a certain amount of slowed pacing. There is no rush, especially at the opening of the book, to tumble quickly into constant feats of fantastical magic in an attempt to entice the reader in at speed. Instead she skillfully used her storytelling talents to treat the incidents of magic with a certain gravitas that pulls the reader in slowly and surely, rendering each magical act a little narrative event at first, building speed slowly from zero to a hundred until, in time, the acts of magic are accepted by the reader as background incidents to the fiction, while still somehow not losing the sense of magnificence as they occur.

Thirdly, she quietly mixes her fiction with the historical fact of the times the tale takes place in, with the Duke Of Wellington leading his armies into victory, giving her characters a context and then using them and their magnificent deeds to remould and retell history. This gives the story the context of an alternate universe which, once the reader can relate to it through the comparison of the historical basis (or our best approximation of that), helps to give the characters a weight of their own in their interaction with the events of their time... again rendering a very believable reality for the reader.

And fourthly, of course, their was the constant amount of footnotes which the writer used to add "fact" (or perhaps a better word for it would be "fict?”) to the circumstances and history of the magic in the books. There are over a hundred and fifty of them throughout the novel, providing little annotations regarding the legacy from which the use and existence of the magic practiced by both of the title characters begins. As any reader who has read this wonderfully enchanting tale will remember, the footnotes are of varied lengths but there is a lot of detail in them... some of them going on for a few pages of small text at a time, if memory serves.

I was completely blown away and delighted by the book at the time and knew that, someday, somebody would want the film rights (something which has already happened, by all accounts). I, however, was always keen to insist to anyone who would listen, most of whom had not read the novel, that the sheer size of the volume would surely lend itself better to a TV miniseries, given the breadth of the story and the amount of detail in it.

Imagine my surprise when I learned, towards the end of last year, that the BBC were co-producing a short series, totalling seven episodes of an hour each, of an adaptation of this much loved tale. Perhaps something that allowed for that much screen time would actually be able to do some justice to the source material? My enthusiasm was tempered somewhat when I saw the two actors who had been cast in the lead roles. Eddie Marsan is a great actor and I've seen him in a number of things over the years... but he seemed just a little young to be playing Mr. Norrell, in all honesty. Similarly, I seem to remember Jonathan Strange as being the dashing young hero type and the, unknown to me, actor they had cast, Bertie Carvel, seemed to me to be just a little too old for the part. I must admit that, until recently, the only person I would have thought absolutely perfect for doing justice to the role of Strange would have been Johnny Depp... someone who is, admittedly, probably out of the reach of a BBC budget. So, despite the obvious fact that the BBC tends to populate its dramas with brilliant performers, I was quite worried about the casting.

As it happens, my concerns were unfounded and I was soon to learn that even if the casting doesn't at first seem right, great actors who are more concerned with breathing life into their characters as opposed to letting their own personality dominate to the extent that it harms the production, are just as good as the serendipity of perfect casting, when it happens. Both Marsan and Carvel are brilliant in their respective roles, as are all the other actors and actresses in this version. These include Alice Englert as Lady Pole, Charlotte Riley as Strange's wife Arabella, Enzo Cilenti as Childermass and Marc Warren in the role of ‘Thistledown’, who is kinda the villain of the piece here (referred to as the gentleman).

Now I suspect, and I can't quite remember because I must have read at least a couple of hundred books since this one, that the writer of this adaptation has changed the order of certain events... or at least altered the structure a little to make it easier to digest for a TV audience. I seem to remember Jonathan Strange being around more in the early parts of the book for instance... but the character doesn’t have a great deal of screen time in the first episode. Also, a character who is a prophet, of a kind (and without giving you any spoilers) for an important but rarely glimpsed character called The Raven King, seems to be more prominent in this version. And again, ‘Thistledown’, who is admittedly an important character, also seems to be much more prominent in this version of the tale. Now, as I say, my memory may be at fault here or, perhaps, the art of the adaptation to naturally render the more visual aspects of the story and cut away at the various judgements and dalliances of the wordage automatically brings more prominence to parts of the novel which were less overt, in contrast, in the original format. I certainly can't, with any confidence, say either way... but that's a good thing, actually, as it gives me an excuse to go back and re-read it sometime in the future.

Another thought was that the production brings a very personal interpretation to some of the magical events in the tale and throw their own versions of enchanting spells into the mix from time to time. However, as I've said many times on this site in the past, good adaptation is not necessarily about doggedly sticking to all the details of the source material... it's more about creating something which follows the intent, spirit and style of the original work and, I have to say, the BBC have come up with an amazing version here which does credit to Clarke's original work and will hopefully inspire more people to go out and read it. It's easily the best contemporarily written book I've read in a very long time.

I was also somewhat impressed and pleased that the production doesn't shy away from some of the darker passages in the book... and this includes the fact that they didn't try and give the tale a more optimistic or audience mollifying ending. The way the characters are left in the book is a little bleaker than readers might, at first, hope for and with a little less positive closure than is comfortable for an audience who has grown to love and empathise with these creations over the course of the novel. The adaptation as it stands leaves the ending as it is in the novel and, because we go through so much with Strange and Norrell, it's not the most crowd pleasing conclusion in the world... but it is a totally appropriate one and well done to all involved for not tampering too much with Clarke's original ending.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a good example of what British television does best... producing a strong period drama to a very high standard. That they've also picked on source material that reshapes that period and remakes it from the viewpoint of an England where magic returns to the kingdom to deliver the twists and turns of the more fantastical aspects with all the enthusiasm and invention that they lavish on their flagship show, Doctor Who, is to be applauded and encouraged.  A truly entertaining adaptation which retains the spirit of the original work with the deft touch of a cast and crew that know exactly how to make the illusion work. I hope that the BBC will seek out more material of this nature to bring us in future. Might I humbly suggest that a serial based on Gordon Dahlquist’s The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters may be a good place to start?

In Fear

In-fear-ior

In Fear
2013 UK
Directed by Jeremy Lovering
Playing at UK cinemas now.

I’m not really sure that I’m inspired to say too much about this movie, in all honesty. Other than it’s fairly effective for a lot of the running time and that, its does what it does very well... for the most part.

It’s not a horror film and neither, really, is it a slasher film... although some people could probably put together an effective argument for the latter and that’s the kind of the genre film I was expecting it to be. I guess psychological thriller, for want of a more appropriate term, could fit this film to a certain extent and it firmly belongs, I think, in that strange, unspecified genre which could be formed if you lump together films like The Hitcher and Duel.

The one really good thing about it is that it was, despite having seen the trailer, not quite what I was expecting, although it did try to follow certain horror film genre rules at a few points and tripped itself off by tipping its hand too early, for sure.

The film is a three hander and, when I say it’s a three hander, I really mean it. Actually, for most of the first two thirds it’s only a two hander but, certainly, there are only three people in the cast in total and, though I suspect budgetary concerns may have played a part in that decision, it certainly bows down before the basic aesthetic of not showing, for example, a sequence in a pub which the two characters talk about and which seems (although it doesn’t really) to have repercussions for them later in the movie. However, I also think there could have been a couple more people in it at a certain point, and I’ll get to that in a little bit, but I can certainly admire the writer’s decision not to include a cluttered jumble of cast, at any rate.

The set up is simple. Two young “almost lovers” Tom and Lucy, played by Iain De Caestecker (the little Scottish guy from Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D) and Alice Englert (who played Rosa in Sally Potter’s Ginger And Rosa... reviewed here) are on their way to a festival and trying to find a hotel that Tom has checked them in to. But with phone and sat nav signals fairly absent they get lost (and deliberately misdirected) on the country roads around their destination and terrorised by the local psycho. That’s the set up and I guess in some ways it’s pretty dreary. What I wasn’t expecting, though, is the fact that the majority of the film is actually set in their car and the director uses this to firmly establish a “please don’t get out of the car” vibe which, of course, he breaks every so often to set alarm bells ringing in the audience and to stretch the tension out like the surface of a drum. And, as I said above, for the most part it’s very effective and the director plays with your concept of what you feel the safety zone is and it’s all supported by very good performances by actors who seem to thrive on making all the stupid and idiotic decisions characters who are IQ challenged tend to make in these situations.

Unfortunately, that last thing is a double edged sword because the characters really are stupid and as you worry about them more, the more you lose respect for them. Any credibility that these characters could really be as lost and misdirected as they seem to be, flies out the window when you wonder what would happen if logic is applied judiciously to the situation... something neither of the main protagonists seem to want to apply and when the main antagonist of the movie turns up, you really would have to be completely switched off to not recognise the character for who he is. Which is a shame.

Now, here’s my thing, with regards to this particular movie. I was, despite all of the above, on a white knuckle ride for about two thirds of the running time and then, like something which is stretched too far and too soon, I suddenly reached a point where all anxiety stopped for me, I stopped caring about the characters and wondering whether they would get killed or not and, frankly, found myself looking for a clock and trying to figure out what I had to do next after the movie had ended. All tension had disappeared because the director had piled too much on too quickly. And I think this is where the movie could have done with a few more characters. I think a pause was needed by about this point. We needed, in my opinion, to see Tom and Lucy get to absolute safety... before seeing all that destroyed and the rug pulled from under us as their comfortable sanctuary was quickly demolished and they were in danger for their lives again. That, I think, would have helped maintain my interest in the movie and helped ratchet the tension back up to the level it had soared to earlier in the film, giving me cause to care again. But this didn’t happen and instead, when the last, dynamic set piece was played out, ending in a kind of semi-denouement (which I personally think was the right call but which I suspect, judging from the loud protestations at the screening I was at, is going to leave a lot of people unsatisfied), I felt no tension or interest in the ending. I was already working through other things in my mind as I watched and that’s kind of a shame.

But there are some good things about the movie, such as the inevitable “survival” betrayal of one of the characters which is a button pushed to serve as an object lesson by the mad psycho villain and I suspect younger, less jaded audiences who aren’t familiar with these kinds of films will probably get a lot more out of it than this old hand, to be sure. And it’s effective enough for a lot of its running time. Certainly, if you have nothing better to do, then it’s not a bad film to give some of your time too, although I do feel certain kinds of people may come out of the screening a touch angrier than they went in.

Ginger And Rosa

Sally Potter And 
The Goblet Of Ire 

Ginger And Rosa 2012 
UK/Denmark/Canada/Croatia 
Directed by Sally Potter
Playing at UK cinemas soon

The first time I saw a movie directed by Sally Potter was back in 1992 when her debut feature Orlando played at my local cinema... cinema, now, sadly deceased. It was also the last time I’d seen a movie directed by Sally Potter up until the debut of her new feature, Ginger And Rosa, at this year's London Film Festival.

There’s no real reason why I’ve kept clear of Potter’s work since then... I liked Orlando well enough, although the score seemed to be in some places, almost “fake Nyman”, it’s just that she’s never really been a blip on my radar with any of her work since her debut. A brief glance at her filmography on the International Movie Database informs me that I haven’t been particularly staying out of her way on purpose... it’s just that she’s made only five features, including this one, so I’m not going to blame myself for this. Even if she is known for being a woman of some substance when it comes to making films and also, I would personally like to add to that, seeing her smallish “quality not quantity” output... perhaps the female equivalent of Stanley Kubrik when it comes to getting exactly what she wants on screen. Although, of course, Stanley would never have been able to actually shoot the thing in 5 weeks, as this one was... something she revealed in the Q&A after the premiere.

What I’m trying to say here is this... I’ve not seen Orlando since it came out at the cinema and I don’t know this lady’s work so well, so if there are any stylistic similarities between her new movie and any other of her works... well, I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to point them out to you.

What I can point out to you, however, is that this is a particularly well made and gripping film. Telling the story of two young girls in their adolescence who were born on the same day around the time of the Hiroshima bombing, quite literally one bed apart from each other, the film then takes us straight to 1963, where the move stays to weave a tale of the two inseperable girls of the two mothers who were also inseperable in their hospital beds when they had them.

The backdrop of the film is the CND marches of the time, with the threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis heightening the anxiety of the characters who inhabit this world of the early sixties, as it would have done to the director herself, growing up as a teenager around this time. Some people at the screening seemed to have jumped on this and assumed the film was actually about that... but of course it’s not. It’s a very personal film for the director, I would guess, and she uses these events and emotions to push the boundaries of her fiction and allow her to explore the relationship between the two girls, played absolutely brilliantly by Elle Fanning and Alice Englert (as Ginger and Rosa respectively) and the gamut of their trials and tribulations (and even betrayal) as the two girls react to their loved ones, in particular Ginger’s father (as played by Alessandro Nivola, who reminded me a lot of Daniel Day Lewis’ performance in The Unbearable Lightness Of Being in this role).

I don’t want to give away too much about the way this story goes but I will say that, while the title and relationship of the girls is very strong and would suggest a more even approach to the way the girls experience this period of their adolescence, it is actually Ginger who takes centre stage, as she is the one who seems to be going through the most traumatic time.

The two actresses do an excellent job and they are similarly aided by Christina Hendricks as Ginger’s mother (I have to say the only thing I remember her from was the two episodes of Firefly when she played Saffron... but she’s still the beautiful creature she was in that show and doesn’t look old enough to be playing anybody’s mother) and some very well known thesps such as Oliver Platt, Timothy Spall and, particularly, Annette Benign, who I can honestly say I’ve never really liked all that much but who absolutely shines in the role she is given in this movie. Good job, lady!

The soundtrack is interesting, using an ecclectic batch of needledrop pieces which reflect the conflicting styles of current hits of the time with jazz standards which represent Ginger’s dad and his particular lifestyle choices. I noticed an article in Sight and Sound magazine just recently referred to the film's soundtrack as being absolutely non-diegitc, but that’s actually not true. I noticed that there were a few scenes where the songs from the previous scene’s on-screen source were continuing well into another shot which wouldn’t support that particular source... so it’s definitely not, strictly, non-diegetic. It’s not particularly unusual and I’m surprised the reviewer didn’t pick up on that. There are lots of films that use this technique, of a piece of source music transforming into background music, but only a handful, that I can think of, where diegetic cues are then transformed into music which is non-diegetic in nature. Off the top of my head... the long tracking shot preamble around the rooftop in Dario Argento’s Tenebrae and the opening pre-credits sequence of Luc Besson’s Subway (if I’m remembering that second movie’s opening correctly... it’s been a few decades since I saw it).

The movie is absolutely riveting, the first 20 minutes or so especially fast paced and building speedy momentum as it goes. The camerawork seemed, to me, to be mostly (if not totally) handheld, even in some of the scenes which at first appeared to be static, and I guess if you’re on-board with a five week shoot, you have to sacrifice something in the mix to get the film shot? What that does do, of course, is allow the director to really focus on the actors and I would say she really gets great performances out of the people in this movie. I can’t say enough of how good the two leads are either. Both come from families who are no stranger to showbusiness... Elle Fanning is the younger sister of Dakota Fanning and Alice Englert is the daughter of famous director Jane Campion. So no wonder they acquit themselves so brilliantly here... I’m guessing it’s in the blood.

All in all, a quite serious film, dealing with characters at an age when everything seems so traumatic but also capturing the sense of naiveté that makes it so. It’s not something I’d watch again for entertainment purposes, but I will say that it’s definitely worth a look once, if even to see how well Potter throws her camera around... so to speak. A definite recommendation on a wonderful, quite enchanting piece of film-making. Enjoy.