Stillwater

 

Run Deep

Stillwater
USA 2021
Directed by Tom McCarthy
Dreamworks

Okay, just a short review of a long but solid film. I’ve been wanting to see Stillwater since I first caught a trailer for it in my local cinema a couple of months ago. I have a soft spot for Matt Damon since seeing him in films like The Bourne Identity and Dogma although, I don’t exactly go and see everything he’s in. I think he’s a remarkable actor though and I think sometimes he could do better with his choice of roles. And, heck, this movie is definitely one of his better choices.

Stillwater refers to a place in Ohio where Damon’s character, Bill, lives and works in construction... when he can’t get work digging holes for oil rigs. However, five years before this movie begins, his daughter Alison, played by Abigail Breslin (Little Rock in the Zombieland movies), is accused and found guilty of murdering her Arabian girlfriend, where she’s studying in Marseilles in France. Just after this movie starts, Bill goes to Marseiiles to visit his partially estranged daughter in jail and it’s then that he gets hooked into the possibility his daughter brings up of some new evidence that might prove her innocence and name the real murderer of the girl.

So, not being a rich person and unable to interest either his daughter's lawyers or being able to afford a private detective, he stays in Marseilles, picking up construction work there and tries to clear his daughter’s name himself. In the process he is befriended by an actress, Virginie, played by Camille Cottin (who can help him translate stuff as he doesn’t speak a word of French) and her young daughter Maya, played by Lilou Siauvaud, who he becomes a kind of father figure to.

And that’s really all I want to say because a) I don’t want to spoil it for you and b) because you will probably reach your own conclusions about how the story is going to go way before many of the characters cotton onto what’s going to happen. I will say, though, that  it’s a very dramatic film and the actors are all absolutely amazing in this. Damon fleshes out his ‘roughneck’ character as being a deeply religious man and someone who is busy redeeming himself for his past sins and trying to do the right thing by both his daughter and himself.

The photography on this one uses a lot of hand held camera stuff. It’s not especially jerky or unwatchable in any way but it’s one of those kinds of movies where the camera is responsive to capturing details and actors as they come up and following through the impetus of the shot accordingly, rather than using either big sweeping movement or, indeed, all that many static shots. What this means is that the film projects a kind of voyeuristic, fly on the wall atmosphere which is surprisingly not ruined by the great Mychael Danna’s low key score when it kicks in for the odd scene or two, here and there. This makes for some very immersive viewing and, despite it’s length, it never fails to be anything but an interesting and compelling drama.

Now, there is one thing which is a shame, in that there really are no surprises in the movie. You will probably twig both a certain ‘third act’ plot twist way before it comes along and you’ll probably figure out how and where the various characters are going to end up before the story’s finish. Sometimes this can ruin a movie but, I would say that in this case it really doesn’t do much damage and, well, sometimes the expected endings are clung on to because they happen to be the ones that work the best. It’s a shame, though, that one of the scenes near the end of the movie, where there is supposed to be a lot of suspense and tension, is kind of booby trapped by a shot a few minutes before which suggests that one of the key characters is not under as much threat as they themselves think they are. Which was a shame but, like I said, didn’t really harm the film any.

So, yeah, I said this was a short review and I meant it. Stillwater was an entertaining slice of life style drama which is mostly effective and which certainly entertains. It does kind of have that ‘Hollywood trying to take itself too seriously’ stamp on it but, again, it doesn’t harm the final product and it’s an enjoyable watch. It felt to me like it’s one of those films which Jack Nicholson that might have latched onto and won and Oscar for in the early 1970s like Five Easy Pieces and Matt Damon does a very good job of that kind of part. Definitely one to catch if you like those sort of dramas. I’m really glad I got to see this one. 

Spotlight

A Priestful Of Dollars

Spotlight
2015 USA
Directed by Tom McCarthy
UK cinema release print.

So Spotlight, directed by actor, writer and director Tom McCarthy.... is not the kind of movie I would normally take a look at in my local cinema, to be honest. With the subject matter being the 2002 scandal of numerous Catholic Priests molesting children that the church was covered up or, more properly, the investigative team on The Boston Globe who brought it to light, the Spotlight of the title, it's really not something I would usually go for.

However, the trailer was pretty good for this one and it had a couple of actors in it, Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo, who I happen to think a lot of in terms of giving strong performances. I could tell from the trailer that the studio were trying to pitch it as a kind of modern equivalent, in terms of atmosphere, to the classic Watergate scandal movie All The President’s Men and I guess, yeah... that’s exactly what this is, in some ways. Although, if I’d known that the film was directed and co-written by the same guy who had written and directed The Station Agent, one of the great modern classics of American cinema, then I would have rushed to the cinema even faster.

Now, this is not a perfect film here, in my book, but it’s pretty close to being one and I have to say that if you want to be on the edge of your seat with a movie that’s based on real life events then this one’s a pretty good choice. It’s apparently fairly accurate to the original events and situations too... as much as a Hollywood movie could be, I guess. According to some quotes from various people who found themselves being played by some pretty great actors, that goes for the accuracy of the portrayal of the personalities in question too, by all accounts.

Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo knock it out of the park, just as I would expect form them. Liev Schrieber, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci and Brian d'Arcy James are all pretty darned amazing too, it has to be said. If you want believability and credibility... not to mention a sense of naturalism that can carry a drama of this emotional weight while still accenting it enough to give it all a broader sense of entertainment value, then this group of actors are very much people who you are in good hands with. If you admire films which can flow forward breezily as you follow the characters in the course of their investigation then this is definitely one for you. It’s the kind of investigative movie that does what it should do... explain what the Spotlight team are after, explain the individual's assignments and then follow through on their detective work with well put together montages punctuated by key excerpts from their interviews. So that’s all good.

One thing which didn’t sit well with me, however, were some scenes... not all that many of them but enough for me to sit up and pop out of the experience somewhat... where the editing of the footage didn’t seem all that great. Not necessarily the fault of the editor, by the way, it might have been the only way to sort out the footage in some sequences. Those sequences in question being some of the back and forth conversations which litter the movie in several places. These are often treated with static shots and the standard TV style of editing where we cut from one shot to the reverse is very much a present constant in some kinds of scene. I also thought the placement of the focus of the eyes on those shots and their reverse equivalent was conflicted and it was the contrast of forcing the eye to suddenly jerk between different areas of the screen at speed in a few places which really started distracting me from what I was supposed to be looking at. Not throughout the whole movie, for sure, but I did find it quite gruelling on a few occasions in there.

The other minor thing, and it is a minor thing, was that I felt that Mark Ruffalo’s passionate, hot headed reporter was somewhat bereft. His wife or girlfriend is mentioned a couple of times but, though we see him in something like a home environment on a number of occasions, we never catch sight of the lady in question. This is even when we see him working on stuff at home at night... when you would think the lady of his life would be present in some way. Maybe I missed a detail in the dialogue to explain that but I think it would have given Ruffalo’s character a little more context if we’d had seen the lady in his life, to a certain extent.

But yeah, minor grumbles at best in a film which delivers the tone and passion you would expect from people being forced to confront the truth of a story rapidly expanding in scope as the Spotlight team discover more about the unwritten conspiracies which have kept the story from breaking in the press over the decades that this kind of abuse had being going on. Their initial story began with just one priest and, by the end of the investigation, there were around 87 priests who had been uncovered.

The film is very sparsely spotted in the musical content and I would have expected this kind of movie to have no score at all but certain key montages and highlights are given a certain emotional presence by Howard Shore’s piano dominant score. At  points it maybe felt a little heavy handed in contrast to the many scenes without music but that’s always a hard balancing act to get right and, where some of these scenes reach for the music in a less naturalistic accompaniment... there’s always another scene where the score gets it dead right. I’ve been a big fan of Shore over the years, especially with his scores to the early David Cronenberg films and Kevin Smith’s Dogma and it’s not a bad match for the movie in most scenes. People who are only familiar with his brilliant scores to the less than brilliant adaptations of Tolkiens works by Peter Jackson may be a little surprised at the modest scope of this piece but, frankly, anything heavier may well have undermined a movie of this nature and even this one threatens that on occasion. I know I wouldn’t normally argue for this, being as I love movie music so much, but maybe the mix was a little more prominent than it could have been in certain scenes but... yeah, for the most part it’s pretty good and it may be a good stand alone listen too.

And that’s what I thought of Spotlight. A pretty amazing movie with some things which irritated me but which in no way put me off the movie as a whole. A brilliant cast and some nice dialogue make for pretty compulsive viewing, in my book, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if there isn’t at least one Oscar nod to this one sometime soon. Definitely worth a watch, as far as I’m concerned.