Mary Magdalene

Mary, ‘Cross The Fair Sea

Mary Magdalene
UK/Australia/USA 2018
Directed by Garth Davis
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

I was always lead to believe that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute and I’ve seen that alluded to a fair few times in films over the years. Not so, apparently. According to the end of this film it was some pope who spread such stories many centuries ago. Now, I can’t say if this is a great adaptation of certain sections of The Bible or not, to be honest. The last time I read it... or, you know, a version of it... I was very young (maybe four or five?) and, frankly, I’m not a religious person. That’s not to say I don’t believe in God or some kind of Godly presence... if I can give consideration to the possibility of aliens and ghosts I can certainly believe in the possibility of that too... but I certainly don’t think any organised religion is going to have some kind of true, unvarnished story of what did or didn’t happen all those years ago. So, if you want to know what hill I’m sitting reviewing this from... it’s from the one where I’m not necessarily ungodly, just not prepared to decipher my way through a lot of man made, rabble controlling nonsense disguised as any of the religions of the world.

The reasons I wanted to see Mary Magdalene, as I missed it on the one week it was available at my local cinema last year, are two fold. Firstly, I quite like Rooney Mara and think she’s a great actress who possesses a certain quality that makes her kinda unique. Not necessarily better than all the others, just unique and... I haven’t been let down by her yet. I enjoy her work. Secondly, I knew the musical score was by Hildur Guðnadóttir and Jóhann Jóhannsson, which means this must have been one of the last scores that Jóhannsson worked on before he was found dead in a hotel room in Germany and I wanted to hear what he had done with it. So those are my reasons and the viewpoint from which I am approaching this film.

Now, it has to be said that this movie got my back up right away because, even though I’m not a religious person, the caption at the start informs us that it’s set in the year 33CE. Well, I’m sorry but I don’t agree with CE as something useful as anything other than a stupidly politically correct and possibly cowardly stance so as not to offend people of religious sensibilities believing in something other than what some people would mistakenly have you believe are, ‘the right religious sensibilities’. I know the term CE is, in fact, many centuries old but, frankly, I’ve have had BC and AD in my life for a long time and they outdate the alternate terms by around 1600 years. So I’m not having any of it. I may not be religious but it’s BC and AD or nothing, as far as I’m concerned. Have some respect for the past is what I say (not to mention the future).

Okay so, in spite of that, this is a quite a nice if, mostly, joyless take on the story of the last days of Jesus Christ. Christ is played by Joaquin Phoenix but everything in this film is seen through the eyes of Mary, played so interestingly by Mara, so we don’t even get to Jesus until a good twenty minutes or so into the film. Which is a bit of a double edged sword in terms of getting across the oft told story from the source material but, in all honesty, it makes a nice change.

Now, the director has gone for a lot of muted colours and, aside from the built in gravitas which seems to mostly be an inherent trait of the way this material is always handled, we also have a fairly sedate and less than colourful series of shots which add to the effect, despite some big smiles from Phoenix, that this is not a fun film in some respects. Although, if you believe in what the bible says then I can understand that a certain section of the audience will get more of a happier experience out of the content of the movie... just don’t look for it in the mise en scene.

That being said, and while I am on the subject of mise en scene... there is some nice photography and shot design in this movie. Although the cliché of the ‘very slightly moving hand held camera for shots that would normally be static’ methodology is applied during a lot of the film, there’s some nice shot design on hand too. I was especially impressed with a shot towards the end with Rooney Mara’s veiled, white head in close up as she’s telling the other disciples that Christ has risen. One particular shot where her head in the veil is splitting the screen vertically is great because the blurred background behind her head is full of dark texture on the left and light texture on the right... so her head becomes the focal point that the rest of the shot leads the eye too. That was a nice piece of work there and I wish they’d gone back to the that shot set up later on in the conversation because it was more effective than some of the other stuff they were doing in that scene.

Mara and Phoenix are both good in this, as is the always Chiwetel Ejiofor who pays Peter and some guy called Tahar Rahim, who plays Judas with wide eyed enthusiasm which helps the character come across as a somewhat naive person, it has to be said. So no problems on the acting front although, truth be told, I found the early parts of the movie... Before Christ (BC), so to speak... a little more gripping than the rest of the story.

In fact, the rest of the story does, in fact, kinda play out like a ‘selected highlights’ or ‘greatest hits’ compilation of famous set pieces of Jesus’ final days and, to a certain extent, you can’t blame the writers and directors from taking that approach. Especially since it’s pretty much the same approach that most films over the last 100 years have taken. However, the director and writers have, perhaps a little too conveniently, used the guise of having the narrative switched to Mary as a focal point, so they can skip a whole load of stuff which either a) she wasn’t allegedly to have been witness to or b) would have taken a lot more time and money to produce, I suspect. I don’t mind that so much myself and was somewhat relieved, since the film does drag a little at two hours, to not have to sit through things like the trial before Pilate and some other noteworthy bits of the various accounts of the events during the already longish running time.

Though, I have to say that this means it was only watchable to me, in terms of the coherence of the story content, because I already knew the basic tale of Jesus in the first place. Something I’m sure a certain percentage of the audience will have to fall back on but, I have to say, without this prior knowledge of the ‘between the lines’ of the events depicted on screen, I would have had a pretty hard time trying to piece together what was going on if I was new to this particular set of religious ideas. So, I can’t help but feel that the built in nature of audience expectation on the part of the film-makers here is a little arrogant and a smidge irresponsible/optimistic. It might, of course, promote further research for some of the audience or... you know... may not. Which is in itself a bit of a challenge unless you’re willing to take things that have been passed down through the years as ‘gospel’... so to speak.

At the end of the day, Mary Magdalene is a little dull in places but the performances of the leads are electric and if you have a prior knowledge of the source material on which this tale is being based and that stuff doesn’t offend you, then you will probably have an okay time with this one. I quite enjoyed it and, although it did drag a little in places, as I said, it never really outstayed it’s welcome and I was glad I chose this film to watch as my Easter Sunday viewing this year. I always like to have some kind of Easter connected film to watch over this period and so that was today’s choice.

Oh... and in case you were wondering, the music didn’t let me down. A nice score which I’m happy to see is on CD and which I will probably listen to a fair few times over the years. Not the best material any of the leads or principal movers on this movie could have chosen but glad to have followed them on their journey. Check this one out if you’re so inclined as it’s certainly not the worst film I’ve seen on the subject.

Mandy

Thulsa Bloom

Mandy
2018 USA/Belgium/UK 
Directed by Panos Cosmatos
UK cinema release print.

I’ve been trying to get to see this one for a little while now. Unfortunately, because of it’s near simultaneous release on streaming and DVD (although not in the proper Blu Ray format it needs to be seen on in the UK... I'll have to import that from the US - since publishing this I've found out that there are actually two UK Blu Ray editions of this, both exclusive to HMV), the very limited cinematic release has made this almost impossible for me. Then I finally managed to find one screening which was on at an appropriate time for normal, working people to actually be able to go and see this thing, at the Prince Charles Cinema in London. Like almost all the screenings it sold out fast due to a mix of good word of mouth and limited showings but at least I finally got to secure a ticket. The cinema was packed and this was kind of good because this film is a very intense ride and it seemed almost like a community spirit took over in the auditorium as this near magical motion picture started to stream deliriously into our collective eyeballs.

Mandy is both... not the film I’d expected it to be but everything I would have hoped it could be if this kind of film-making was more common. The dream-like quality of the visuals and the way the film kind of slowly ebbs and flows on a singular course at a very deliberate pace is not something I think a lot of director’s would have held their nerve with (I guess I’m going to have to catch up with Cosmatos’ other movie at some point).

At its simplest level... which is pretty much the only level you can really take it, I think... the film is an old school revenge movie. Mandy Bloom, played almost enigmatically by Andrea Riseborough, lives in a cabin with her lumberjack boyfriend Red Miller, played by Nicolas Cage... until fate intervenes in the form of cult leader Jeremiah Sand, played by Linus Roach. Well, I say cult leader but there is some evidence to show that he might be the devil or some other major demon although, at one point in the film, his hold over others weakens and whatever power he may have had deserts him.

He and his psychotic group of followers also have the use of a group of biker ‘heavies’, for want of a better term and there are many ways to interpret these bizarre creatures. With their superhuman strength and impenetrable visage there’s a lot to suggest that they are either demonic entities or, possibly, even aliens. Or are they just totally drugged up humans who think they are either demons or aliens? I don’t know and, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter as they are just another obstacle in the path of Red Miller as he seeks revenge for the brutal murder of his girlfriend... who was coveted by Jeremiah but who dared to laugh at him.

Now Nicolas Cage is an interesting actor but I do find him an acquired taste and haven’t seen a great deal of his movies. That being said, I was blown away by him back in 1990 when he played Sailor Ripley in David Lynch’s Wild At Heart. Alas, it’s been a long time since I was able to watch that film again because subsequent DVD and Blu Ray releases to date have been heavily censored... I wish someone would release this properly at some point. He’s great in Mandy too, though and, although he doesn’t say a whole lot, you get the feeling that Red is completely focused by his grief and hate.

Now talking of David Lynch... if I was asked to sum up the atmosphere of this movie by comparing it to other things, I’d be hard pressed. Like Argento’s Suspiria (reviewed here) it’s very much a movie which works completely on its own terms and is not like much else you’ve seen at the cinema, in terms of style and feel at least. So my best summation of the feel of the movie would be this... imagine if Dario Argento and David Lynch had met in the early 1970s and decided to make a film together and then, furthermore, gave all the audience members some LSD before they went in to the cinemas... that’s what I would imagine Mandy feels like in words. The colours, the intensity, the animated cartoons of a naked Mandy giving Red cryptic clues as to the location of the cult from beyond the grave... it’s all very overwhelming and, indeed, the slow pacing of the film is almost a necessity to give your head a chance to catch up to what you’re seeing and hearing on screen.

Also, I don’t know if anyone else saw this possible connection but it almost feels like our imagined versions of Lynch and Argento were trying to do a modern reboot of the John Milius version of Conan The Barbarian. I can see Jeremia as a stand in for Thulsa Doom and the simple revenge arc as almost an homage to that 1982 classic (indeed, Mandy is even set in the 1980s and also includes an oblique reference to the animated Heavy Metal movie). So yeah, this film felt very much, to me anyway, like Eraserhead meets Suspiria meets Conan the Barbarian by way of the artistic sensibilities of Panos Cosmatos, so... yeah, that works for me.

The score is fantastic too. This is one of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s last movie scores before his accidental death earlier in the year and it’s another absolutely brilliant piece. It’s quite similar in tone to his amazing scores for Sicario (reviewed here) and Arrival (reviewed here) and I can’t think of anything else that could hold the film together in the way that this intense music, mixed right into the foreground of the film, could. It elevates the ‘in your face’ nature of the visuals and really helps glue the imagery together without letting up. It keeps you in the headspace required to appreciate Mandy as the work of art it is because, it has to be said, there are a couple of places where it does threaten to drift over into ‘camp’ territory and there are plenty of laughs midst the blood and gore to be found here. That’s another reason why this is a great communal experience because the audience reaction was terrific... a girl in a group of people sitting to my left held her hands over her face when a giant, fiery “bat’leth” of an axe is thrown into a man’s head and then found herself laughing at something one of the characters said not five minutes after this scene. And, it has to be said, everyone had a little chuckle at Nicolas Cage’s grin in a shot near the end of the movie. This is another film which people are going to remember this actor for in future generations, I think.

One scene where Miller is trying to process what has just happened to his girlfriend, could have gone either way. It’s a protracted scene of him alternately drowning down a bottle of Southern Comfort (I think that’s what the bottle was) and screaming emotionally in his y-fronts and, it very nearly got a lot of unintentional laughs, I suspect. However, let me say just this about that scene... it’s possibly the closest contemporary equivalent I’ve seen to the Isabelle Adjani ‘grocery in the subway’ breakdown sequence in Zulawski’s Possession (which I reviewed here)... so I think a certain cross section of the audience would have appreciated this. It’s a raw moment for Cage and, luckily, it does just come out as the right side of credible in a film that is being called by a lot of reviewers... ‘totally bonkers’ and, who am I to disagree with them. As long as they mean bonkers in a good way then I have no fight with that.

Mandy is a hallucinatory, intense, vibrant, fun and somewhat trippy pill to swallow. It’s 100% a modern exploitation movie but one which doesn’t skimp on a lot of the implications of that term and celebrates itself in a way that lets the audience join in with it. A really great little flame of a movie and one which I’m sure an insane bunch of cinephiles will be happy to keep burning for a number of years. Don’t miss out on this one... especially if you can see it on a big screen with a full house... a gem of an experience.

Top Ten Soundtracks of 2016

When The Note Comes In

Top Ten Contemporary
Score CDs of 2016

Well, it’s that time of year again when people start asking me what I thought the coolest scores of 2016 were and, I’d have to say, I’m kinda disappointed with my list this year. One of the problems with that is I limit myself, quite strictly, to what is allowed to go on this list.

It goes without saying that I don’t include the redundant, vinyl only releases of the year and nor do I include the evils of the electronic download as a viable alternative to the magic of compact disc as the required format for any soundtrack listener worth their sort. So that sort of “but it had a (insert either of the two evil formats here) release" isn’t going to cut it with me. It has to have had a compact disc release in the year the movie came out to be eligible. Something which has scuppered my number one spot this year, as I’ll go on to explain.

Apart from this, my other rule is that the score has to be from a movie released this year in the UK or US. There are gazillions of good archive scores released nowadays from small, boutique labels of restored old scores, most of which would run rings around anybody’s pick of soundtracks from just one year... with this year being no exception. I would love to put a proper listing together for the many resurrected film scores coming out in any year but it would just take me too long to properly compile the damn thing. There are a lot of ‘holy grail’ type releases coming onto the market, often monthly, and there is just so much stuff now getting released that every soundtrack listener’s wallet is under threat... with companies like Intrada, La La Land, Quartet and Varese Sarabande putting out some truly great stuff (although many of my personal Holy Grails seem to have been left untouched... cough cough... The Final Programme, Work Is A Four Letter Word and proper releases of Doc Savage and Blade Runner).

Okay, so my biggest problem with this year’s listing, asides from the fact that it seems to be all American scores this time around, which is not a great thing, is that the score that would easily take the top spot, Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s amazing The Girl With All The Gifts, has not even made it onto one of the lesser useful formats as yet, let alone a nice CD release. This is a shame but I’m going to have to leave it off because, without the CD to give it some ‘stand alone’ context, I really can’t, in good conscience, include it.

So here we go... my top ten score CDs from contemporarily released movies of 2016 in reverse order.

10. Nerve by Rob Simonsen
There either seems to have been a resurgence in electronic music in films over the last few years or I’m getting older and noticing it more. The film is an okay movie but the score on this one is phenomenal... easily the best of a bunch this year (many of which seemed to be trying to sound just like late 1970s John Carpenter... which is no bad thing... but not quite getting there) and as accessible for someone like me as, say, the Tron Legacy score was a few years back. Definitely worth picking up. My review of the movie is here.

9.  10 Cloverfield Lane by Bear McCreary
One of my favourite modern TV composers, Bear’s score for this spin off from the original Cloverfield is fraught with tension and some interesting and melodic atmospheres... plus he uses the musical instrument known as the 'blaster beam' (which is rumoured to be able to give women spontaneous orgasms). Check out my review of the movie here.

8. Inferno by Hans Zimmer
Zimmer’s synth heavy score picks up where his masterpiece, Angels and Demons, left off. It’s not as strong a work but it does its job in the movie (which wasn’t the best of the series) and it's very listenable away from the movie. His Professor Langdon theme gets referenced here, of course, but so too does his chase music from the previous movie. Not 100% sure how the leitmotif on these films works but, who cares when it’s so much fun? The movie review to this one can be found here.

7. The Forest by Bear McCreary
Bear’s second and final entry into this list sees him providing some incredibly eerie atmospheres and a lot of his, almost trademark, drumming. Set in Japan, the score somewhat reflects this and is easily one of the most satisfying listens of the year. I reviewed the movie here.

6. Rogue One by Michael Giacchino
Giacchino’s score to one of the most frustrating Star Wars movies of all time (so far... my trust in Disney has gone right down after seeing this) is equally frustrating... both in the movie and as a stand alone listen. The composer has a lot of the musical language down but there aren’t enough big themes to make it totally sound like a John Williams Star Wars score (some would argue that it shouldn’t). Also, the choice of leaving off the opening title crawl, with the familiar main theme, was a bad call. At least it’s on the end titles but... astoundingly... on the album it isn’t. Honestly, this is absolutely a terrible thing to do... like leaving the latest James Bond song off of a James Bond score. Which is something else they’ve started doing of late. This is a quite good stand alone listen which grows on you with repeat listens but it really needs a proper, full length CD release. My review of the movie is here.

5. Hail Caesar! by Carter Burwell
Burwell’s affectionate look back at Hollywood in the Golden Age, filtered with a little of today’s sensibilities, is a beautiful and fun homage to the scores by the likes of Miklos Rosza and the kinds of songs of Comden and Green used to turn out in their heyday. Just a completely ‘smileriffic’ album which stands up away from the visuals as much as it supports them in the movies. My review of this completely underrated movie, one of the best of the Coen Brothers, is here.

4. The Nice Guys by David Buckley and John Ottman
This Shane Black movie set in the 1970s gets exactly the score it deserves. This sounds like a dozen funky TV cop shows from that era without actually pinpointing any of the influences down. It’s slick and, maybe a bit short for an album release but it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome. This movie probably wouldn’t be sunk without the funk but, man, it has it in spades here. Crucial grooves from a movie which I reviewed here.

3. Doctor Strange by Michael Giacchino
Given the amount of superhero movies we’re getting on our screens every year, you’d think that a few more of them would have made it into my top ten. However, this is the only one which managed that trick in 2016. I was really looking forward to a Brian Tyler score for this movie, especially since he seems to be the only guy who was able to bring a semblance of musical continuity to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Alas, he seems to have mysteriously parted company with Marvel (although I’ve heard nothing official, it’s just my observation based on a few things and I sincerely hope I’m wrong) and so we have Giacchino scoring Doctor Strange and... it’s really pretty good. The main theme and the beautiful end statements of it, especially in Go For Baroque and Master Of The Mystic End Credits would elevate it to this list most years and its’ supported by some nice stuff. My review of the movie can be found here.

2. Arrival by Jóhann Jóhannsson
Jóhann Jóhannsson is not someone whose work I’m very familiar with and so I’m inevitably going to compare it to his similarly atmospheric score for Sicario. This one really suits the subject matter with some interesting moods and a modus operandi which really fits in with the idea of language and the way it can sometimes be seen as a code... the patterns made by the music reminding the audience of this at key points and also, if you’re anything like me, frightening the  audience half to death when the sheer density of the music kicks into high gear with a more thunderous wailing than the quieter passages of musical texture around it. My review of the movie is here.

1. The VVitch by Mark Korven
At times a jarring but absolutely riveting score and quite popular with those who actually liked the movie. This score sounds very simple but it holds a power reminiscent of some of the choral work of one of my favourite composers, György Ligeti. Lay your head down in a darkened room with this and it’s pretty much guaranteed an unsettling atmosphere will develop. Simply one of the best horror scores since the 2015 score to It Follows... which is high praise indeed. My review of this film is here.

And that’s my short contribution for this year. Hope you find some time to delve into these soundtracks. If you do, let me know in the comments section below. Happy listening.

Arrival

Cunning Linguist

Arrival
2016 USA Directed by Denis Villeneuve 
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Although absolutely no spoilers are in here, the fact that I talk about the syntax of the film could result in slight spoilerage if considered for a while.

Arrival is an adaptation of a sci fi short story I’ve not actually read by Ted Chiang called Story Of Your Life... so I can’t say how it is as an adaptation. This expanded (presumably) version of the story is directed by Denis Villeneuve, who directed last year’s movie Sicario (which I reviewed here) and who, since finishing this movie, has started filming a seemingly unnecessary sequel to Blade Runner (reviewed here). On that subject, I guess if I had to name a modern director who could take on a sequel to what is, after all, the greatest movie ever made, I think Villeneuve may be a good one to trust. I wouldn’t trust Ridley Scott after the way he’s ‘revisionist butchered’ the film in subsequent decades and, especially after having seen Prometheus... which seems to take joy in holding up all that was great about his astonishing movie A L I E N and then destroying the memory of it.

Anyway, back to this director’s Arrival. It’s not too long ago since we had a big, conceptual sci-fi movie playing in cinemas but they don’t come along as frequently as some of the other kinds of films made in versions of the genre so this is kind of a welcome change from the plethora of superheroes and space opera movies which have been howling for our collective attention in recent years.

Now, the thing about high concept sci-fi films like this one is they, generally, live or die on the strength of the mystery which is hiding at their core and which is usually revealed at the end of the movie. More often than not, the audience will work the ending out way before they are supposed to on these kinds of event films and this is either because they are too obvious or because the director telegraphs (or is forced to dumb down because of studio pressure) the nature of the ending. Alas, while Arrival is a pretty terrific movie, it’s no exception to this rule but... I’ll get to that in a little while.

Okay, so what’s good about Arrival?

Well, a heck of a lot actually. Villeneuve has equipped himself with some fine actors in this one with the main protagonist being played by Amy Adams, who is very well supported by the always watchable Jeremy Renner. They are both in terrific company as they are backed up by a team of good actors, headed primarily by Forrest Whitaker and Michael Stuhlbarg.

The plot is very simple... Amy Adams plays Dr. Louise Banks, one of the United States’ top linguists, who is called upon by the military, in the form of Colonel Weber as played by Forest Whitaker, to try and communicate with an alien species who have landed twelve ships around the Earth at places where, apparently, Sheena Easton has had hit records. No, I’m not making this up and I did appreciate the odd bit of humour in what is, it has to be said... and this seems to be typical of this director... a fairly dry film. It’s a film that deals with big emotions but there’s something fairly distancing and clinical about the directorial style which mostly tends to render the emotional context as something which needs to be studied and observed rather than felt. At least that’s the way I react to Villeneuve’s work and I have absolutely no problem with this. Louise heads up the languages team and Renner’s mathematician character, Ian Donnelly, heads up another division and, every 18 hours when the ship allows some humans to go inside to make contact, the two are accompanied by military personnel to try and make some kind of breakthrough, for their country, as to what the aliens want and if their intention is hostile.

Of course, the world’s leaders are all conducting their own investigations with their own spaceships and, as tensions rise, Louise has to try and find ways to get the fragmented super powers talking again and to stop them from launching what seems an inevitable attack on the aliens, thus causing major disruption between the nations and possibly inviting death from the aliens. At least that’s what the story at first seems to be about if you are just accepting everything as it’s fed to you. I wasn’t but... yeah, like I said earlier, the film has a flaw and I’ll get to that in a minute.

Villeneuve, once again, gets the most out of his cinematographer by grabbing some really beautiful shots but the colour palette, asides from some strong reds near the start, is kind of subdued and neutral throughout the entire course of the movie. Everything looks very dialled down and flat although, in some shots, I did notice he tends to enhance a small part of the screen with a bright colour or striking object which, although it’s rarely the centre of your focus, does tend to balance the way the shot is received, it seemed to me. I’m not sure if that was a conscious decision to do that but, since these things take so long to light and set up, I can only conclude that it was.

However, despite looking like the cinematic equivalent of a page full of Helvetica, the shots are quite beautiful and, coupled with some very slow and fluid camera movement and less than speedy pacing, I have to say that it’s an immensely gorgeous looking film and it’s primarily on that basis, and the strength of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s riveting score, that I will be seeking this one out on blu ray so my dad can take a look at it at some point.

However, there’s some bad stuff thrown in with the good which I’ve been intimating all through the review and... well... the problem is this.

Arrival places the solution behind its mystery dead front and centre. There’s a pre-credits scene to this movie and I so wish the director had not included this because, even before the title to the movie comes up straight after this, I’d kinda figured out exactly where the ending was going. It was always going to be a possibility that the movie ventures into the territory that it does... and I’m trying really hard to not give away spoilers here people... but the director really tips his hand very early on in the proceedings with the opening sequence, both with the nature of Amy Adam’s voice over to this scene and, even more tellingly, in the way he shoots around a certain something, deliberately not revealing something specific through blurry cinematography. This immediately got my brain thinking about why certain visual clues had been hidden and, of course, once your mind goes down that track it’s not too hard to think of the best logical conclusion... or at the very least, the way the film is really playing out towards a similar conclusion if you’re not caught up in the director and screenwriter’s parlour games.

Villeneuve reenforces his folly in a much cleverer way than, say, M. Night Shyamalan might try and cover his obvious slips in his movies. What Villeneuve does here is structure the film and the frequency of certain styles of scenes so that they play out in a way that the audience will, for the most part, trick themselves into misinterpreting some of the information. It’s my long held belief that the complex series of visual signifiers that make up the syntax of cinema stick in people’s brains as youngsters after watching only a few films or TV shows. For instance with flashbacks (which work slightly differently in some cinematic cultures, I’ve noticed) or other such things such as two shots of people talking and cutting back and forth, making up a conversation, have very pointed interpretations. So, if you screw around with the way they are really as opposed to being perceived, then you can allow the audience to fool itself. The strength of the opening sequence in the amazing film Pleasantville, for example, relies on the audience thinking that two characters are having a conversation before a long shot reveals the punchline that they are both in different places and a conversation ‘with each other’ isn’t happening at all at this point.

The director of Arrival uses another long held cinematic tradition, which I won’t name here, to fool the majority of the audience as to a certain element of one of the characters and I suspect it might work really well on some people. The only reason it didn’t work on me, I suspect, is because I have an unconventional outlook on life and don’t take for granted a certain linear element of people’s lives that they tend to latch onto as a scientific reality. And that’s all I’m saying about that so as not to spoil things for you but, alas, I did find the main conceptual twist to be jarringly obvious right from the pre-credits sequence, I’m afraid.

However, it doesn’t matter. The thing is... Arrival is a startlingly good presentation of a concept that has been done in a fairly different manner quite recently in the cinema and certainly in a more light hearted manner by some films over the last four decades. The pacing might be a little too European for some audience members (which was clearly the case in the screening I attended where people were kicking the backs of chairs or going out for a little walk half way through) but it really is a stunning film and I, personally, didn’t get bored by it once. If you are into conceptual science fiction then you’ll probably want to take a look at this one. It’s a film with amazing cinematography, great music and some interesting performances. And if you do find it as obvious as I did in terms of never quite taking you by surprise, the film more than makes up for it in other ways and ultimately I found it to be an entertaining, if not entirely thought provoking, lollipop of a movie.

The Theory of Everything

Look Who’s Hawking

The Theory of Everything
2014  UK
Directed by James Marsh 
UK cinema release print.

Almost every year these days, on my birthday, I take my parents out to see a movie at our local cinema. It’s rare they go to the cinema and probably only go with me between 2 and 4 times a year. Usually, to be honest, it’s to a film that I know one of them would like, rather than something I would be happiest seeing myself and, this year, I decided on the new biopic of Stephen Hawking, The Theory Of Everything, because I knew my father would probably really like this one (and I can always buy my mum Paddington on Blu Ray for Mother’s Day, after all).

Now, I’m really not a religious person and I don’t understand the willingness of anybody to believe or support any of the organised religions of the world... which seem to be crafted by the hand of man as a tool for control at the best of times. However, just because I have that view, it doesn’t mean I rule out the existence of God, or a God-like being or, possibly, a God-like energy in the universe. I like to keep an open mind about such things. Many people seem to think that Hawking’s scientific theories preclude God or a God-like entity in the mix and that seems to be the same tack that this film takes. One thing I will say on this subject, however, is this... Hawking’s has got motor neuron disease. When it was first properly diagnosed in the early to mid-sixties (going by the film here) he was given just two years to live. It’s now over fifty years since then and he is still with us. If ever someone wanted to try and show some evidence that there is a deity watching out for certain people on Earth or the possibility of a grand scheme of things then the survival of Stephen Hawking, the greatest scientific mind of our generation, would definitely be considered by most people... well... a bit of a miracle.

The film is based on the memoirs of Hawking as told by his once and longtime wife, Jane Hawking, brilliantly portrayed by Felicity Jones. Hawking himself is a tour-de-force of a performance by Eddie Redmayne, who I first saw when he was playing Colin Clark in My Week With Marilyn (reviewed here). He was pretty good in the former film but he really does turn in a gobsmacking performance here. If he was just portraying Hawking in one specific phase of his battle with motor neuron disease then it would be no less brilliant but certainly understandable. However, with the timing of the film spanning from around 1962 to the present day, with Hawking seen in various stages of the disease... when you take into account that these thing are not shot in chronological order... well, this performance must get some kind of recognition when it comes to award season, I reckon.

Felicity Jones has an easier time of it, I would guess, but her performance here is no less subtle...

I once had a really good friend. I’ve somehow managed to fall out with her now but, in fact, the lady I’m thinking of was almost certainly the best friend I’ll ever have and I can’t imagine that ever not being true, regardless of the fact that I don’t see her any more. When we first started talking, years ago, in a pub rendezvous, I became aware that she was looking after someone very sick and, my reaction to that news was honest and it’s probably something that someone in the position of caring for someone above and beyond the call of duty is used to, coming from that kind of situation... I immediately started trying to think of ways in which the person she was caring for could be helped and try to understand what the sick person was going through. However, it was made clear to me, as that particular conversation wore on, that the person who is actually caring for someone and having to do a lot more than a standard workload in their relationship (this on top of a full time job, no less) is a person who also needs the understanding and support of those around her/him. That role gets taken for granted a lot but it is exhausting and it’s something that the one being cared for is too wrapped up in illness to appreciate that often... and that can be a wearing, grueling, big deal of an issue sometimes. And it’s something I tend to consider more (I hope) when I meet people in a similar situation (as I have on occasion).

All of this kind of responsibility was brilliantly performed by Felicity Jones’ performance as Jane and, again, like Eddie Redmayne’s performance, it’s a slow burn where the actress has had to cope with playing the gradual build up from doing all the extra work caring for her on-screen husband to not coping with all that life is flinging at her. And again, it’s something she’s had to film out of sequence but with a degree of subtlety so that, when it’s all put together in linear fashion... and it’s a, mostly, surprisingly linear film, to be fair... then we see the gradual build up as all the elements line up against her and wear her down over time.

So... cracking performances by both the male and female leads, in this one.

It has to be said, though, that the film relies almost purely on these performances to the exclusion of much else. Sure, there are some nicely elegant set pieces and some lovely shot designs but there seems to be a lack of interest in experimentation in the way the movie is put together so that, even when a specific moment comes up at a Q & A scene near the end of the movie and the on-screen Hawking appears to do something he would never be able to do in real life, it never really takes you by surprise and I thought that where the director did try and use the language of cinema a little by running the film backwards as a metaphor, perhaps, for Hawking’s theories, it wasn’t really all that successful or as interesting as it might have been... at least not to this audience member.

However, one thing the film certainly is, is it’s a more than competent, British-made biopic with a very well written script and very strong performances so, frankly, anything else would have just been extra icing on the cake anyway. Similarly, Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score was appropriate and certainly easy on the ear but, I couldn’t help but wondering what it might have been if they had maybe employed the services of a composer like Alexandre Desplat, to be honest, but again... it was still pretty good and too much icing can be fattening at the best of times.

At the end of the day, The Theory Of Everything is a really neatly put together and powerful dramatisation of the majority of the life of one of the greatest scientific thinkers in history. It’s something that British cinema and television seem to do extraordinarily well and this entertaining and moving film is certainly no exception. Definitely worth a look if you don’t go in expecting too much from it structurally or are anticipating semiotic acrobatics. Certainly something which will hook you in from the start, though, and the performances are well worth the watch. Don’t waste any time contemplating not seeing this one... you never know what time is going to do to you next.