The FilmSoc Blog team got together to predict some of the wins for this year’s Oscars, while championing our own personal favourites and calling out injustices for snubs. Do you agree with our choices?

Illustration by Verity Slade for The Washington Post

Blog Consensus: Best Picture

What Will Win: Roma 

What Should win: Roma

Runner up: The Favourite

Our team at the FilmSoc Blog took a poll and the results for both were overwhelmingly Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, and interestingly even more of us believed that Roma will win as compared to should win. It will be well deserved – Roma has been gathering praise and accolades since its release on the festival circuits, and infused with Cuarón’s passion in this quiet, melancholic portrait of both the character of Cleo (first-time actress Yalitza Aparicio in a revelating performance) and Mexico City, there is no argument in whether it should win. However: no foreign language film has ever won Best Picture, and the Academy is not exactly known to be enthusiastic for them either. Nonetheless, it seems that Netflix this year not only has its eyes on the big prize, and will be taking it in a historical win, too.

Raphael’s Prediction for Best Director

Who Will Win: Alfonso Cuarón or Spike Lee

Who Should Win: Alfonso Cuarón or Paweł Pawlikowski

The ‘Best Director’ category of this year’s Oscars is both surprisingly diverse and uniform. With the nominations of Alfonso Cuarón, Paweł Pawlikowski, and Yorgos Lanthimos, there is a historically high proportion of non-American directors featured, at the paradoxical expense of deserving female filmmakers such as Lynne Ramsay for You Were Never Really Here or Chloé Zhao for The Rider. Adam McKay and Spike Lee make up the rest of the contenders. The BlacKkKlansman director earned his first nomination in this category 29 years after Do the Right Thing; he is the only black filmmaker to be nominated this year, considering the notable omission of Barry Jenkins for his Moonlight follow-up, If Beale Street Could Talk. Cuarón and Lee, in that order, appear to be the strongest candidates for the win, but personally, I am torn between the Roma and Cold War directors, whose black-and-white magnum opuses have stolen my heart. 

Sabastian’s Prediction for Best Actor 

Who Will Win: Christian Bale or Rami Malek

Who Should Win: Christian Bale or Willem Dafoe

This year sees some of the most prolific figures in both music and artistic history portrayed, from Vincent Van Gogh to Freddie Mercury. It’s undeniable that both Dafoe and Malek embody these roles remarkably well, with both performances carrying their respective films. In At Eternity’s Gate, Dafoe seems to strike a remarkable balance between acknowledging the status and history of Van Gogh whilst creating an original human character. In Vice, we see Christian Bale in yet another remarkably transformative role, this time as the villainous Dick Cheney; amidst the fat and the loathsome personality, one loses any sight of Bale the actor. It must be said that Bradley Cooper’s efforts in A Star Is Born, his directorial debut, are also impressive – the star physically hurt himself to lower the baritone of his vocals and lend authenticity to the role. Although it seems obvious that it’s Malek versus Bale, I would absolutely adore to see Dafoe recognised after coming so close with 2017’s The Florida Project. 

Sabastian’s Prediction for Best Actress

Who Will Win: Yalitza Aparicio or Lady Gaga

Who Should Win: Olivia Colman or Yalitza Aparicio

This year hosts a very interesting range of nominees, from Lady Gaga for (A Star Is Born) to Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) – both contenders who honestly surprised me with their performances in such serious roles. Olivia Colman, nominated in this for her role in The Favourite, would be a shoe-in for Best Supporting were she nominated, and Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz both equally deserve Best Actress undoubtedly, though they were nominated for Best Supporting. What I will say about Colman is that she is lovely, hilarious, and heartbreaking from one beat to the next as Queen Anne. She is able to encapsulate devastating grief and a lapse in sanity immediately after light and playful banter with ease. She’s finally being given the full attention she’s deserved for a long time. If not Colman, then Aparicio deserves this win for her role in Roma; the teacher-turned-acting powerhouse is one of the shining examples of an untapped wealth of talent coming from Mexico.

Sabastian’s Prediction for Best Supporting Actress

Who Will Win: Regina King or Rachel Weisz/Emma Stone

Who Should Win: Rachel Weisz

Starting with the obvious, Amy Adams does not deserve an Oscar for her role Lynne Cheney in Vice; she deserved it for 2016’s Arrival, but sadly that time has passed. Regina King obviously deserves recognition for her portrayal of Sharon, a reserved yet powerful mother-turned-diplomatic negotiator in the complexity that is If Beale Street Could Talk. However, every fibre of my being wishes to see one of the The Favourite duo recognised for their absolutely outstanding performances. Friends, rivals, jealous lovers, enemies – the layers both actresses bring to their roles while maintaining a comedic levity is commendable and breathtaking as you watch this dysfunctional triangular relationship decay into a simultaneously childish and serious dynamic.

Alex’s Prediction for Best Animated Feature 

What Will Win: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

No longer will we have to debate which is the best Spider-Man movie, since Spider-Verse excels in leaps and bounds. Laugh-out-loud funny, important in its messages, and simply gorgeous aesthetically, this one definitely deserves the win.

What Should Win: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

See above.

Hassan’s Prediction for Best Original Screenplay 

What Should Win: Roma – Alfonso Cuarón or First Reformed – Paul Schrader

What Will Win: Roma or First Reformed

Cuarón’s intelligent screenplay reveals just enough necessary information in an intimate and personal manner. Set in the socio-politically turbulent years of the early ’70s in the Colonia Roma district of Mexico City, it would be easy for Cuarón to didactically showcase the context of his film through basic news headlines and obvious dialogue. Instead, hints of revolution and police brutality are relegated to off-comments during a family dinner at the very beginning of the film, before being interrupted by mention of the family dog, Borras, and his roaming shenanigans. Indeed, ‘Borras’, the dog’s name, is one of the most frequently spoken words in the opening five or ten minutes, demonstrating emphasis on Roma’s domesticated setting. Cuarón’s screenplay declares that, first and foremost, this is a personal film set in a middle-class household, drawing attention to the emotions of the family, their maid Cleo, and the peripheral figures that shape their experiences. The script allows the lens to do the talking, instructing wide pans that reveal the lively character of the neighbourhood. Moments of brilliant intensity and disturbing imagery are dotted around the film, highlighting the brutal realities that Cleo contends with while she maintains her stoic, selfless approach for the sake of the children she cares for.

On the other hand, despite First Reformed being concerned with the worries of a religious pastor, Ethan Hawke suggested that as soon as he read Paul Schrader’s screenplay, he could tell it was by the writer of Taxi Driver, just a bit more ‘grown up’. Schrader himself agrees, saying the character of ‘the drifter, the loader, the lightsleeper, and the man in his room’ is one and the same, only this time he’s spiritual. The fight between religion, climate change, and how history will remember us for our sins takes centre stage, and while the performances are stellar, it is the confrontational nature of Schrader’s words that lends the troubled narrative path of Hawke’s pastor, Ernst Toller, a moving brutality.

Xinyi’s Prediction for Best Cinematography

What Will Win: Roma – Alfonso Cuarón

Roma’s combination of sweeping, grand shots of Mexico City with intimate closeups of the inner workings of Cleo’s life, all shot in black and white, has earned it numerous wins in the cinematography category so far – and rightfully so. Tackling black and white is a traditional yet tricky job, and Roma succeeds in moving away from gimmickry by utilising light and shadows fully to construct an almost angelic yet melancholic world. The opening and closing shots of the airplane reflected on the floor water; the overwhelming magnitude of the student protests; and, of course, the heartbreaking scene on the beach permanently imprint themselves in the mind. There is a reason why it has been recommended to see Netflix’s Roma in the theatres and not on the laptop – the vastness and the emotions encompassed by the camera are deserved to be marveled at on the big screen and pack their punches harder if viewed with maximum sensory focus. Cuarón juggles the role of Director of Photography himself and delivers – a feat that the Academy will recognise.

What Should Win: Roma / If Beale Street Could Talk – James Laxton

Roma absolutely deserves to win Best Cinematography. However, there is one film of 2018 with such vivid camerawork that rivals, a film that was unbelievably snubbed and not nominated: Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. Shot by James Laxton, its cinematography is so full of character and personality that you could recognise that it is a Barry Jenkins film even when going in blind. Jenkins’ frequent collaborator and go-to DP Laxton continues from the visual aesthetics and intimate softness of Moonlight, but this time with a beautiful overabundance of colour; yellow never looked so good on camera. It’s atrocious that the Academy failed to recognise Beale Street’s cinematographic feat. If entered into the game, it would be much harder to choose between Roma and Beale Street. 

Lydia’s Prediction for Best Editing

What Will Win: Vice – Hank Corwin

Roger Ebert once said that to accurately predict an Oscar win, just replace the word ‘best’ with ‘most’ – and Vice is certainly filled to the brim with exciting, interesting editing, both moment-to-moment and structurally. Anyone who has seen Corwin’s work on Adam McKay’s previous film The Big Shortknows this. Out of the nominated films, it’s fairly easy to pick out Vice as the winner amongst a selection of films with mostly natural, competent editing. (The exception of course being Bohemian Rhapsody, whose atrociously jarring editing is truly a testament the Academy’s seeming lack of ability to distinguish between ‘best’ and ‘most’)

What Should Win: If Beale Street Could Talk – Joi McMillan, Nat Sanders

Okay, yes, this may be cheating slightly in that Beale Street is not nominated for Best Editing. The way in which certain shots, particularly those of faces, linger on screen for longer than audiences are accustomed to beautifully complements James Laxton’s stunning cinematography (who has, again, also been somewhat shockingly snubbed for his work on Beale Street) to create a visual experience which is immersive and not easily forgotten.

Alex’s Prediction for Best Original Score 

What Will Win: Black Panther – Ludwig Göransson

And honestly, I’d be happy with this win. Blending African music with American hip-hop, Göransson’s score underlines the looming presence of Killmonger’s character and the emotionality of the film’s themes, all while managing to keep a hold of that classic superhero orchestral sound. This is one of the most original and interesting scores we’ve had in years.

What Should Win: Isle of Dogs – Alexandre Desplat

Although controversial, Desplat’s score celebrates Japanese music and culture – I mean, that Taiko drumming is phenomenal (though actually written by Kaoru Watanabe). You only need to listen to ‘End Titles’ to know that the music of this film is playful, unusual, and fantastic, but I guess Desplat winning two years in a row would just be a little greedy.

Alex’s Prediction for Best Original Song

What Will Win: “Shallow” (From A Star is Born) – Lady Gaga

Does this need an explanation? No, I think not.

What Should Win: “Sunflower” (From Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) – Post Malone, Swae Lee

This gem of a song was not even nominated, despite it being one of the chillest and most re-playable songs to be featured on the big screen. It is dreamy and sweet, not to mention as catchy as a spider’s web. (Too cheesy a metaphor?)

The 91st Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, 24th February. It will air live in the UK through Sky and NOW TV on Monday morning at 01:00am. 

Click here for more Awards Season coverage by the FilmSoc Blog.

Sam Hamilton reviews the colourful Freddie Mercury biopic and Queen tribute.

Bryan Singer returns from the X-Men franchise to direct Bohemian Rhapsody: a big-budget, star-studded, thoroughly glamourised and oft-Americanised tale of the self-prescribed “hysterical Queen” that is Freddie Mercury. And despite first appearances, this is a film about the great performer and him alone. Yet whether it can be called a character study is debatable, since great swathes of darker material from the singer’s life are abandoned. Instead, Rhapsody opts for a more wide-release-friendly broad stroke of his wild persona. As such the plot reads like a formula Hollywood spectacle movie: rags-to-riches, abandons friends, realises wrongs, gets back together and blows-us-all-away. In many ways that is exactly what’s delivered. But in the magical sparks of Rami Malek’s virtuoso performance (as the one and only) and Newton Thomas Sigel’s sumptuous and smart cinematography, the film transcends what could have been just a Greatest Hits music video.

Malek works around a troublesome set of prosthetic teeth that belong more reasonably in parody than biopic. But he does so with great prowess: stepping skilfully into the glossy boots of a pop culture icon, never overdoing an easily overdoable character, adopting a near-flawless accent, and frequently playing down the big moments in such a way as to be at once mystifying and endearing. There is a charming and frustrating vulnerability to Malek’s Freddie that draws us in, very much like the camera, which often seems to linger in close-ups and carries our interest where the script cannot.

This is particularly the case in the film’s final third, where deepening troubles in Freddie’s personal life, and grappling tensions in his professional life, seem to evaporate just in time for the finale, leaving only a few stage nerves to stop him from acing it. A couple of vapid exchanges between band-members bury the potential for recognising a realistic conflict between them, the only memorable moments found in Roger’s (played smoothly by a charismatic Ben Hardy, the best of the entourage) sarcasm. There are many moments involving the crucial relationship between parents and son that fall short of eliciting any overwhelming response. And to add to this, scriptwriter Anthony McCarten injects a crowd-pleasing, sometimes silly, sensibility into many of the scenes where a straight approach may have been more effective – if at the expense of a few hushed giggles throughout the 2 hr 14 min runtime.

However, Rhapsody‘s chief sin is in neglecting the real weight of Mercury’s path towards recognising his homosexuality and the personal struggles that ensued – not to mention his fight with AIDS. Such an emotional tug of war is essentially muted, allowing only a handful of subtle moments to genuinely acknowledge the difficulties of hiding one’s true identity. This is where the film could have become the “epic poem” that Mercury describes Bohemian Rhapsody, the song, to be. This having been said, the gradually and tragically distancing relationship between Mercury and his “Love of My Life” Mary Austin plays out delicately, conjuring a throbbing sadness that remains one of the film’s most notable achievements. Other spellbinding moments include a captivating limo confrontation between Mercury and his managers as well as the always-priceless cameo contribution of Mike Myers, as a very distressed record label owner in Ray Foster.

Director Singer, arm in arm with longtime collaborator and cinematographer Sigel, battles any and all mundanity in the film with a vibrant colour palette and eclectic, energetic movement in and between set pieces. One particular shot of Mercury, stood tall, head rocked back at 90˚, balanced against an expressionistic array of interior decorations, played perfectly in scene; this and others reconfirm Sigel as a master of his craft in his best work since Drive (2011). Complete with an awesome (as if there could be any doubt) selection of tracks, and enchanting reenactments of some of the band’s top moments, Bohemian Rhapsody, even if it’s not the biopic Freddie deserves, warms the heart, salutes the spirit of its hero, and will endeavour to make you sing along.

7/10

Bohemian Rhapsody was released in October 2018. It is nominated for Best Picture at the 2019 Academy Awards. Check out the trailer below:

George Glover reviews the award-winning satirical biopic on US Vice President Dick Cheney.

Vice offers an alternate portrayal of the Bush administration, sidelining George W. (Sam Rockwell) in favour of his quiet, manipulative, Machiavellian Vice President Dick Cheney (an unrecognisable Christian Bale). Adam McKay’s film races through the last fifty years to show how Cheney utilised lawyers, journalists, and oil magnates to amass bureaucratic power and become the most powerful ‘Vice’ in American history.

After making his name with comedies such as Anchorman and Step Brothers, McKay earned newfound respect in 2015 with The Big Short, which depicted the events leading up to the global financial crisis. Instead of condemning greedy bankers, Vice takes aim at bureaucratic career politicians – particularly Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (in one notable early scene, Steve Carell’s Rumsfeld is reduced to hysteria when Cheney asks him ‘what do we believe?’). Still, there are many similarities between the two films, most obviously McKay’s zany, fast-paced directing style and an examination of how the actions of the film’s antagonists affect ordinary people. Despite Vice’s comedic tone, the film ends with the sobering reminder that 600,000 civilians died as a result of Bush and Cheney’s invasion of Iraq.

Vice recently received eight Oscar nominations, and this critic anticipates Academy Awards for Best Actor (Bale), Best Film Editing (Hank Corwin), and Best Makeup and Hairstyling (Greg Cannom‍‍‌, Kate Biscoe and Patricia Dehaney). The film’s key strength is its cast – Bale has earned much praise for his portrayal of Cheney, and Rockwell and Carell are also excellent in more light-hearted portrayals of Bush and ‘Rummy’. Amy Adams is superb as Cheney’s wife Lynne, who emerges as Wyoming’s answer to Lady Macbeth. The humourless Lynne particularly shows her cold-heartedness in a side-plot centred on her daughter Mary’s sexuality.

There are a few problems with Vice’s narrative, which sometimes detract from the viewing experience. In attempting to cover such breadth of subject matter without creating confusion, oversimplification is inevitable. Several critics have accused Vice of historical inaccuracy, particularly problematic when the film begins with a disclaimer that McKay et al. “did our f***ing best” to tell the truth. McKay’s insistence on mixing black comedy and global tragedies leads at times to an uneven tone; for a Londoner, the scene depicting a Piccadilly line train carriage after the 7/7 bombings was particularly unsettling. Lastly, Vice’s obvious hatred of Cheney (Bale thanked Satan for inspiring him in his Golden Globes acceptance speech) can be exhausting for viewers. In The Big Short, Bale and Carell portrayed likable outsiders, but there is not a single redeemable character in Vice.

But when the jokes work – and they almost always do – McKay shows his feel for both base and sophisticated comedy. Vice is a subversive film that will entertain audiences while encouraging them to think about profound political issues at the same time. Bale and McKay combine to create a loathsome Cheney and place him at the centre of the ills of 21^st century politics. Indeed, considering the unrepentant hatred for its subject, comedy specialist McKay missed a huge opportunity in naming this biopic: instead of Vice, he should have just called it Dick.

Vice is currently out in UK cinemas. Check out its trailer below: 

Pawel and Maeve discuss one of their favourite foreign films from 2018 – Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War – and other great foreign language films dominating awards season this year.

Illustration by Tony Stella / Alphaville Design

PREVIOUSLY: The Crimes of Grindelwald – An Extended Discussion

Editor KC Wingert critiques Disney’s video-game based animated sequel and its relationship to today’s consumerist media landscape.

Ralph Breaks the Internet, the follow-up to Disney’s 2012 animated feature Wreck-It Ralph, finds Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) six years later. Now best friends, the two spend their days hopping from game to game in their small arcade, but Vanellope secretly longs for something more. Ralph, in an attempt to bring some excitement to the arcade for Vanellope’s sake, accidentally sets off a chain of events that breaks the Sugar Rush game’s steering wheel, shuts down the game console, and displaces all of its characters. In order to replace the broken wheel and save Sugar Rush from permanent retirement, Ralph and Vanellope must venture into the unknown world of the internet to buy the only Sugar Rush steering wheel available in the world, which happens to be listed on ebay.

This film uniquely imagines the internet as a real, physical place where humanoid avatars represent all internet users’ data footprints; where juggernaut brands like Google and Pinterest occupy giant skyscaper-esque structures; and where pop-up ads pester people on the sidewalk like annoying street hawkers. Many of the film’s jokes are references to memes—even the film’s title refers to Kim Kardashian’s now legendary half-nude PAPER Magazine cover—that will feel outdated to someone watching in ten years. With jokes dependent on content from a rapidly changing media sphere dominating the film’s humor, writers Phil Johnston and Pamela Ribon have essentially cemented their screenplay’s eventual obsolescence. Even the bonus scenes at the end of the film are references to memes and the film’s own marketing campaign. These extratextual references may prove delightful to children eager to be in on the joke, but they only serve as marketing for various websites and apps and feel unnecessary to the story.

Clearly the intention behind this film was not to create the lasting power of a positive message, as one usually expects out of a children’s film, but rather its purpose was to create another franchise designed to milk as much money out of loyal fans as possible. The only ultimately positive messages that could be eked out of this nearly 2-hour ode to the coterie of companies that profit from invading people’s privacy are: 1) don’t read the comments on the internet, because people can be mean, and 2) don’t try to prevent your friends from following their dreams.

Moreover, Ralph Breaks the Internet acts as a tool to promote brand familiarity in children, with happy-go-lucky shout-outs to Google, Instagram, Amazon, and other internet behemoths which we now know to be engaging in less-than-ethical moneymaking practices. With a children’s film about the internet, directors Phil Johnston and Rick Moore could have created a teaching tool for parents to broach the subjects of data harvesting, identity protection, cyberbullying, and other issues their kids might encounter online. However, Disney, a media conglomerate in and of itself, seems to view Ralph Breaks the Internet as an opportunity to tout its own influence over today’s media landscape.

A large segment of the film is dedicated to Vanellope’s newfound friendship with the Disney Princesses, whose cheeky introduction in the movie’s trailer went viral among delighted feminists and Disney-philes alike. The princesses, after hearing that Vanellope is also royal, try to find out what type of princess she is by interrogating with a line of questioning—“Were you poisoned? Cursed? Kidnapped or enslaved?”—to which Vanellope responds, “Are you guys okay? Should I call the police?” When Vanellope says that people assume her problems were solved when a man showed up in her life, they exclaim, “She is a princess!” But this humorously metatextual, feminist moment shouldn’t fool anyone hoping to find radical themes within the rest of the film. This portion of the movie also includes cameos from other Disney films—from Winnie the Pooh to Zootopia—as well as from Disney-owned subsidiaries like the Marvel universe and Star Wars. In this critic’s opinion, this clearly shows how the film serves as a tool for Disney to essentially trumpet its own media empire within one of its films, with thinly-veiled product placement. Ralph Breaks the Internet therefore becomes no more than a Disney marketing campaign that will inevitably pay for itself.

Ultimately, Ralph Breaks the Internet is a blatant initiative to sell, sell, sell to those among us who aren’t able to make informed decisions about their consumption: children. The film is a 2-hour long advertisement that would leave any children’s media literacy educator aghast. While the film’s story, visuals, and performances were well-executed, it is fundamentally a tool for indoctrinating children into complacency in a media landscape that serves massive companies, not individuals.

Ralph Breaks The Internet is currently out in cinemas everywhere, check out its trailer below:

It’s festival season! The FilmSoc blog is covering the 62nd BFI London Film Festival (10th – 21st October), diving into the myriad of films and events on offer to deliver reviews.

Raphael Duhamel reviews Barry Jenkins’ intimate and introspective drama on race and family.

Two years after I Am Not Your Negro, novelist James Baldwin’s singular voice still echoes in the heads of those who fight for equality. The American author’s fifth novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, is the quintessential expression of his talent, bursting with spirit and rage. Director Barry Jenkins’ adaptation unequivocally does the original work justice, successfully blending artistic prowess and grounded storytelling to surpass his own previous achievement with the Academy Award-winning Moonlight.

The opening credits only offer a few words from Baldwin, revealing that Beale Street is the metaphorical birth place of every black person in America, from his own drug-addicted biological father to the legendary Louis Armstrong. No actor or actress’ name is featured, and Jenkins himself is not even mentioned, which goes to show that his auteurism is first and foremost a respectful and restrained one, letting the narrative, rather than his newly established household name, affect the audience.

If Beale Street Could Talk recounts the passionate relationship between 19-year-old Tish (KiKi Layne) and her first and only love Fonny (Stephan James), who dreams of becoming a sculptor until he is unfairly arrested for rape. After Tish finds out that she is pregnant, her mother (Regina King) proceeds to do everything in her power to exonerate her stepson; however, they cannot move beyond the restrictions of African-American life in 1950s Harlem. Baldwin’s title finds its resonance in his characters’ tragedy:  if Beale Street could talk, it would cry out Fonny’s innocence and testify for him and every other blameless black person in court. But Jenkins’ film stresses that these innocents’ sufferings are doomed to remain silenced until their country wakes up from its deep and intolerant slumber.

Stephan James tackles the role of Alonzo ‘Fonny’ Hunt, an intrepid and charismatic young man with a singular expression, channelling Andre Holland’s performance in Moonlight. James’ slight squint gives him a piercing gaze, perfectly captured by Jenkins’ trademark portrait shots in which the actors to look directly into the camera, as if they were in direct conversation with the audience. This aspect adds a certain earnestness and poetic intimacy to the film, almost blurring the frontiers between fiction and documentary and turning the characters’ story into an account of African-American life in New York City. The feature boldly and seamlessly transitions between real photographic footage, narrated by Tish, and more cinematic episodes, a creative decision which never diminishes the story’s impact but rather reinvigorates it in a Spike Lee-esque fashion.

More personal sequences depicting Tish and Fonny’s relationship are equally well executed in an even more mastered and fearless style than in Jenkins’ previous picture. The two protagonists’ lovemaking is pure and candid, punctuated with quasi-Godardian dialogue in an otherwise conventional screenplay. Tish’s bright-coloured outfits seem to indicate her lively enthusiasm and youthful inexperience, contrasting with Fonny’s plain, working class clothes; however, she endures and survives with the help of her family, showing her hateful stepmother and the world that she is up to the task. Layne’s confident portrayal of this brave and reserved 19-year-old, embracing God’s gift of a baby boy, undeniably makes her the film’s true breakout star.

The rest of the cast is comprised of more familiar faces, such as Diego Luna and Pedro Pascal, all standing as emblems of various minorities. Their incorporation into the narrative reveals how intertwined their fates are with those of Tish and Fonny, perhaps demonstrating the necessity of convergence among similar struggles. Brian Tyree Henry only has a few minutes of screen time, but he manages to fit a memorable performance in a single exceptional sequence. The Atlanta star tells the story of his arrest and prison time – for car theft, in spite of the fact that he does not know how to drive – with such intensity and dignity that it suffuses the film and lingers in the spectator’s mind. Dave Franco, however, plays the role of a Jewish landlord, a confounding miscast considering that every other actor stands out in his own unique way. Franco is hardly believable as a religious proprietor, performing as if he had walked on set without reading the script and making no effort to transform into a credible character.

The two-hour drama, despite its focus on racial injustice, never gives in to Manichean representations of society. The woman who accuses Fonny of rape and is pressured to indict him is Puerto Rican, but her own marginalized social status does not influence her allegation; she refuses, even after Fonny’s stepmother’s ceaseless efforts, to change her testimony. Jenkins follows Baldwin in indicating that the American legal system is broken, achieving the unfortunate feat of cheating both the victim and the perpetrator in such cases.

If Beale Street Could Talk’s conclusion, however, ultimately demonstrates that these characters are far from leading the miserable existences one may have portended. Although the film does not imply that the fates of African-Americans can or will ever be equal to their white compatriots, the outcome of Tish and Fonny’s story is hopeful, rooted in the deeply Christian belief that suffering and hardship will always be redeemed in the kingdom of God.

If Beale Street Could Talk will have its general UK release on February 8th, 2019. Meanwhile, check out the trailer below: 

It’s festival season! The FilmSoc blog is covering the 62nd BFI London Film Festival (10th – 21st October), diving into the myriad of films and events on offer to deliver reviews.

Milo Garner reviews the Coen Brothers’ experimental anthology Western.

The Coen Brothers have always been filmmakers capable of great range. While their most recognisable works typically bend towards a kind of comedy, they have also successfully dabbled in the world of serious drama: a biopic in New York’s music scene; a Cold War thriller; a classic western remake. Their latest project initially seemed to be a stretch even further – a series of short films set around the wild west, each to be released as a separate episode. This ambition later retreated to the still-curious idea of an anthology film, encompassing six shorts in a single runtime. While tonally similar, these short stories would range in subject and genre in a similar setting; a playground for writer-directors so creative as the Coens. The result, however, is bland, guileless, and suggests far too much stretched from far too little.

The first entry is the Coens at their most Looney Tunes since Raising Arizona. We open to a singing cowboy on horseback, dressed in all-white and addressing the camera directly. We learn he is the eponymous Buster Scruggs, an infamous outlaw with a taste for finery. He encounters various rival bandits on the road and guns them each down in an increasingly (and surprisingly) violent fashion, and afterwards breaks spontaneously into song. There is some value to this section – the singing in particular is an inspired choice – but it also betrays issues that will become far more apparent as the film goes on. A pointlessness to proceedings prevails; besides the most basic of moral takeaways it appears to be a skit for its own sake. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, of course, until it stops being funny.

By the second entry this creeping worry becomes more fully formed. James Franco appears as a bank robber, but is stopped by a man using pans as body armour (funny). During the lynching he is then afforded, the local law are attacked by Indians, leaving him strung up with only his less-than-still horse between him and asphyxiation (funny). Then he is rescued by a herder who turns out to be a thief, ending up at the gallows again (also funny). But besides these three events, and one or two jokes thrown in between, it’s hard not to wonder where the Coens were going with this one. What could the point be, other than the haplessly simplistic “what goes around comes around”? It isn’t tight enough to justify its purely comedic existence, and has nothing to say or show otherwise. These are at best five-minute skits, but here they are stretched to twenty.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the third part, in which Liam Neeson runs a sort of freak show with one exhibit, a limbless man. The twist? Rather than show him off as grotesque and horrible, the act involves him reading extensively from classical texts, finishing on the Declaration of Independence. It’s almost funny, and maybe would have been as a short bit in The Mitchell and Webb Show. But though the punchline has been spent, the Coens march on. We follow this man and his boy across various shows as their audiences decline, his act growing stale. It goes on and on. Neeson visits a prostitute at one point, contributing nothing but a laughless joke; still it goes on. The material here is barely amusing in concept, but made all the worse by its simple lack of longevity. There is only so much that can be done with a limbless man who knows the Bible by memory; ironically, this very limitation is what the short is actually about.

The fourth part might be the only one I can say I fully enjoyed, though even then in a relative sense. It features Tom Waits as a wild-wandering prospector, and his various experiences in searching for a vein of gold. The narrative arc (it has an arc) seems intentionally trite, with Waits’ corruption of the verdant land punished both instantly and inexplicably. The combination Waits’ screen presence and the pleasant visuals make it an easy watch, and the sense that it is actually going somewhere at all is welcome and gratifying. Had it been released as a standalone short I might be more critical, but here it becomes a sort of oasis; a short that is both well-paced and containing some internal narrative interest.

In the fifth, this idea of pace is entirely discarded. It is long and meandering, a sort of Oregon Trail romance that has no real spark or narrative drive. We follow along only because we must, as a young woman who has recently lost her brother forms a sort of professional relationship with the sheriff, which eventually (and blandly) transforms into something more (or so we are told). While the vistas are beautiful (the cinematography largely is throughout), they are little compensation for a story so lacking in substance otherwise. The scope is naturally limited by nature of form, yet any hope this might be used as some kind of excuse is dashed by the ten minutes spent on a sudden attack of Indians, one that separates the two characters that have actually been defined in any significant sense. A decent action scene, but again a misuse of time and space in an already overextended episode in an overextended anthology.

The final part is perhaps a little better than this, focused entirely on a single conversation between the various inhabitants of a carriage (something the Coens have always been capable of writing), but even this, like the rest, can’t quite escape feeling just a little futile. It begs the question of what the original idea might have amounted to – would the additional time offered by standalone episodes permit further depth and development to these ideas, or would they have been stretched even thinner to compensate? Whatever the answer is, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs remains a significant misfire for the Coens – a spent six-shooter that missed every shot.

3/10

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs will be released on Netflix on November 16th. Check out the trailer below:

It’s festival season! The FilmSoc blog is covering the 75th Venice International Film Festival (29 August – 8 September), diving into the myriad of films and events on offer to deliver reviews.

Milo Garner reviews Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s upcoming drama. 

“Von Donnersmarck: two features, never more.”

For a while this was one of the great tragedies of modern German cinema, the acclaimed director of The Lives of Others dropping off the cinematic map after completion of his poorly-received (though relatively successful) sophomore effort. Eight years later he returns with a grand and sweeping narrative about art, love, and Nazis. With an estimated $20 million budget, it is also amongst Germany’s most expensive productions, and that much is clear.

In approaching this three-hour behemoth, however, I detect an uneven split. There is the more substantial film, one that concerns the process of artistic creation, its meanings and origins, set around an artist living in East and West Germany during the Cold War. Then is another, a melodrama about love and eugenics in the GDR, an exaggerated and far less engaging subplot that consumes most of the film’s first half. It is in this melodrama that many of the film’s issues come to the fore, the first and most essential being its appearance. While the cinematography is technically well executed, it is the production design that must be questioned. Everything has a sheen, a brightness and cleanliness. It almost reflects the romantic cinema of the thirties and forties, obsessed with beautifying everything and everyone. Kurt (Tom Schilling) might paint all day and night in one scene, but God forbid his perfect hair might fall out of place, or his fresh face be besmirched by some blemish. And Ellie (Paula Beer) may age more than a decade by the film’s close, but let that not show on her faultless body, always caught in a warm and welcoming light. For a film so caught up with the concept of truth, it seems perhaps ironic that it presents a visual aesthetic so unreal.

This unreality follows into this subplot’s villain, too. Professor Seeband (Sebastian Koch), an ex-Nazi eugenicist, becomes the arch-evil, the father-in-law from hell. Not only is he a Nazi (the skull on his cap emphasised like in that Mitchell and Webb skit), but he’s a philanderer, prickly in attitude, and a general bastard all round. His character cannot be compelling because he is entirely contrived, and nothing about him is at all refined or rounded. It is possible for a Nazi to be human even if they are still despicable –  this kind of moral depth might have given the film something to grasp on in this extended section. Instead we are left with a ruefully predictable romance, one whose dramatic ironies veer increasingly in the direction of soap opera. It is competently, if not excellently made and always watchable. But at once, disappointing.

While the sections focused on art must still endure the rather ironic aesthetic qualities of the film, they are a little more developed in narrative, and for the better. The central idea is an artist finding his voice, caught between extremes. The first of these is in the Soviet clench of East Germany, where limitations are obvious. He is trapped in the genre of social realism, which prioritizes immediate and obvious meaning to the more indulgent habits of artists. This is art for the people, a populism of sorts, one that sees bourgeois in the abstract. Von Donnersmarck is clear to reflect this belief against Nazi rejection of degenerate art, for much the same reasoning.

Kurt then emigrates to West Germany, but here faces a foe less obvious than Soviet artistic tastes, that being a lack of substance altogether. Instead, it is necessary to produce something garish and loud, new and outspoken. A total freeform in which it is easy to lose oneself, as Kurt almost does. He must discover his own style, and what it means to have a style at all. This arc functions, but it functions as any might predict. Again, for all its artistic pretentions in content, the film’s form is deeply conventional, and perhaps loses a sense of its subject in being so. At Eternity’s Gate, while perhaps not so pristinely crafted as Never Look Away, achieves its own goal of explicating the artistic process far better in its attempt to embody it. We see as Van Gogh sees, and understand the world as he does fully. While von Donnersmarck occasionally experiments with point of view shots, this is largely a film from the objective eye. Everything is as it seems.

I am left at a crossroads with Never Look Away. It is generally engaging and always well crafted, but at once lacking in direct, evocative feeling. It hits every beat, but as the (surprisingly smooth) run-length trundles on, emotional investment always seems out of reach. The acting is generally up to standard, at least half of the music is great (with the other half being uncharacteristically bland for Max Richter), and it’s difficult to fault von Donnersmarck’s understanding of space or camera placement. But the result is spectacle that fails to move.

5/10

Never Look Away (Werk ohne Autor) had its premiere at Venice Film Festival. It has yet to acquire a UK release date. Check out its German trailer below:

Karina Tukanova reviews Spike Lee’s Cannes-winning, KKK-infiltrating biopic.

There are few films that can leave me speechless. Not because it is hard to impress me, but because there is always something left to be said, discussed, or think about. Yet I find it hard to put into words what BlacKkKlansman really is. It is funny, heart-breaking, infuriating – all at the same time, and definitely is worth the hype.

Spike Lee’s most recent hit, BlacKkKlansman, has already won over the hearts of critics and audiences alike. Set in the early 1970’s, the film chronicles “some fo’ real, fo’ real shit”. A story of the first African-American officer to serve in Colorado Springs Police Department, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is determined to make a name for himself after he joins the force and sets out on an undercover mission to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan (the KKK). His Jewish partner Flip (Adam Driver) becomes a surrogate to the mission, acting as a blacks-Jews-Mexican-Irish–hating persona of Stallworth at the Klan’s meetings. The two eventually gain insider knowledge about “the Organisation,” preventing several cross-burnings and deadly plots. But was this investigation a success, or were their efforts futile? BlacKkKlansman leaves you only with one answer.

Brought to life by the same team behind Get Out, one would expect the same level of witty humour blended with all-too-current issues of racial identity in the US from Lee’s work. Justly, BlacKkKlansman does not disappoint. It is somehow funny and brutally honest, hammering home its main message: history repeats itself. Indeed, the whole film seems to be structured around leveraging a 1970s tale to shine a light on – or should I say shove down your throat – what’s happening in our world right now. The parallels are so in-your-face, there is little left to interpret. At one point even, a white cop explains to Stallworth that the way to promote racist ideology among average Americans is to slip it beneath other issues such as immigration and crime. He then continues that Americans one day will elect someone who embodies these ideals. All the while throughout the film, we hear “America first” and cries for the country to “achieve its greatness again.”

Sounds a bit too familiar, doesn’t it? Some would say that this all-too-political approach weighs down the otherwise decently made fiction flavoured with a documentary, but isn’t this exactly what we need right now? As the white cop urges Stallworth, it is time for the world to “wake up”. BlacKkKlansman does not shy away from using history to offer a bitter commentary on current politics and this is exactly what makes it so uncomfortably important.

Politics aside, BlacKkKlansman deserves a share of its own for the grappling tension and drama. The dual oppositions – black power vs white power, deeply moving gatherings of BSU vs perverse rituals of the Klan, compassion vs hatred, past vs present – are the backbone of the narrative, and the suspense created leaves you itching at the edge of your seat.

One feature that does balance out the otherwise bleak undertones is the well-balanced humour. Outlandish at times, it offers a necessary relief without undermining the dramatic tension. “With the right white man,” Stallworth jokes, “we can do anything.” The audience bursts in genuine laughter, only to realise the bitter aftertaste of Ron’s words. The slapstick comedy scattered throughout is by no means absurd and on the contrary quite cunning. Except for some Klan members. The KKK are obviously terrible people, yet their portrayal is frankly pathetic, rendering them unrealistic. Save for the amazing performance of Jasper Pääkkönen as Felix Kendrickson and poignant portrayal of David Duke, grand wizard of KKK (Topher Grace), the Klansmen are caricatures of themselves. Outright dense and misogynistic, they are not only unlikeable but incomprehensible characters. They seem to be a thing of the past – so ridiculously pompous in their beliefs – and it’s hard to imagine any sane person say “blacks” with such passionate hate (they use a far less endearing term). Maybe though, this is exactly what Lee was aiming to show: these are no relics of the past but terrifying realities.

What did bring down the film was the odd pacing, especially in the beginning. Some scenes turned out to be needlessly long – I found myself looking at my watch couple of times. At the same time, some of the most dramatic and exciting moments seemed to be squeezed in a matter of minutes. Such is the case with the sub-plot of Stallworth’s romantic interest, the BSU president Patrice (Laura Harrier). Their love story only serves the main plot and disintegrates into nothing midway through the film. The epitome of their tension – Stallworth who believes he can change things from the inside and Patrice who is angry at the injustice Black people face at the hands of the police, or “pigs” – is brushed off towards the end. Even though completely fiction, the audience never gets a full exploration of their relationship and these conflicting opinions.  Don’t get me wrong though, it is indeed a thrilling film to watch with only minor flaws that can be easily ignored. Especially great are the visuals. The iconic dolly shots, aesthetic colour palette, and stylised costumes make it impossible to resist getting sucked into the visceral environment of 70s America. Topped off with a wonderful soundtrack, it makes a very pleasant watch.

BlacKkKlansman’s most powerful and nerve-shattering part, however, ditches completely from the story of Ron Stallworth. The eruptive fictional violence that we see characters experience on screen suddenly turns into an all-too-real and disheartening clips of white supremacists’ march in Charlottesville, Virginia, along with the real David Duke and his avid support for Trump’s administration. Seconds later we see the man himself, proudly proclaiming that not all white supremacists are Nazis, and that “there is blame on both sides.” The last shot, like a punch in the stomach, is the familiar stars and stripes turned upside down, stripped of their lively colours. If BlacKkKlansman were to come out a year earlier, it would have been an unnerving prophecy. Now, rather, it is an alarming confrontation with the truth. Watching it with a lump in my throat, I could hear the penetrating silence that filled the audience and stuck with me since. BlacKkKlansman reinforces what we are already frustrated with and calls us out directly: do we really believe racism is a thing of the past or do we just choose to hide behind the pathetic lies?

BlacKkKlansman is currently out in UK cinemas everywhere. Check out its trailer below:

 

It’s festival season! The FilmSoc blog is covering the 75th Venice International Film Festival (29 August – 8 September), diving into the myriad of films and events on offer to deliver reviews.

Milo Garner takes a look at Julian Schnabel’s ode to Van Gogh. 

It has a name like an Emily Dickinson poem, and At Eternity’s Gate covers much the same territory. Following Van Gogh at the end of his life, it muses on the beauty of nature, on loneliness and alienation, and on the great beyond. It is fashioned much like the work of Terrence Malick, featuring a flowing camera drifting about forests and fields, characters circling each other as they speak in vagaries, and the occasional voiceover linking together an elliptical cut, set to leap ahead at any moment or fade to a sudden black. It is most unlike last year’s Loving Vincent, a film that covered a similar ground (albeit from the reverse angle). That film, while astounding in its making, is flat and simple in script – a work of fine artistry, but mediocre art. At Eternity’s Gate might be the opposite, always artistic, but perhaps a little looser at the seams.

It flourishes best when set in the nature Van Gogh so loved. The colours saturate, the film stock grows grainy, the camera peers up and through the trees. In these moments we are not told that Van Gogh loves nature: we feel it. Set to French impressionism or minimalist piano, we follow him into the wilds. The camera rushes through the yellows and greens, enjoying every moment. Shots from Van Gogh’s point of view are altered further, with the lower half of the screen defocused. This represents his manner of seeing the world, a certain distortion, a blurriness that might be detected in his landscapes. By no means an effect meant to replicate his work, it is instead a suggestion of subjectivity, a leaning toward the supposition that we all glimpse the same nature in different ways. These moments of happiness seem almost unusual, with the image of Van Gogh so often associated with the mood of his drearier works (the titular oil painting especially). Cinematically, said mood also prevails: Loving Vincent viewed the man in a sombre retrospect, and Maurice Pialat’s 1991 biopic also saw little room for levity. This may not be a happy film, but it is not one bereft of happiness. It does not lose yellow for blue.

Slightly less accomplished are the scenes structured around dialogue. These differ formally in their more restrained nature, and will often be conceptually focused, with Van Gogh explicating some belief or other and being fenced against by an interlocutor of some kind. Most often this will be Gaugin, who initially rejects Van Gogh’s obsession with painting the real and the seen. He prefers painting from the mind, abstract, indoors. Van Gogh’s argument is that painting the scenery is just as internal, as it is less the trees of France that he paints than the trees of his mind’s eye, different from any other. These conversations are often interesting, but do occasionally risk straying into the academic. It seems almost ironic that Schnabel frames these lengthy discussions about feeling over thinking when he has already evidenced his ability to do so through visual prowess alone – a sense of redundancy drips into shot. This is made worse by the occasional habit of repeating dialogue – though that is in part a representation of Van Gogh’s suffering mind – as a line that, said once, might sound true or wise risks pretentiousness when echoed; and pretentiousness is a fate this film narrowly skirts at some points.

But then the film will grasp back with something more physical, something direct. Van Gogh’s struggles with reality are portrayed viscerally through the camera, often tilting and panning as if to somehow understand better its subject. Dafoe’s performance is expectedly impressive, managing to capture both the spark of genius and the blaze of discomfort at once; he seems always to be teetering, bar when among the trees. His cognisant discussion with a priest best fulfils this feeling, with his insights on life and art falling disturbingly close to his personal comparisons with Jesus; in this conversation he seems both to drift in and out of lucidity, aware of his madness in a way madmen are not supposed to be.

If beset occasionally by structural shakiness, At Eternity’s Gate is not a film obsessed with plotting or pacing. It prefers to drift, to glance at branches and listen to the impossible music on the wind. It understands Van Gogh and his paintings – better are they experienced in three dimensions than Loving Vincent’s two – and displays his person through snapshots of his final days. Small insights and revelations often avoid formative moments altogether or approach them indirectly. It is a film of visual beauty, a grasp to understand a great artist on his own terms, rather than breaking down his character and analysing the pieces. It is here that it differs most from Loving Vincent, a film that sought to present Van Gogh as a mystery to be solved, puzzle pieces that belong together. There we look at him, here we look as him.

8/10

At Eternity’s Gate had its world premiere at Venice Film Festival on September 3rd, 2018. It has yet to acquire a UK release date. Check out its trailer below:

It’s festival season! The FilmSoc blog is covering the 75th Venice International Film Festival (29 August – 8 September), diving into the myriad of films and events on offer to deliver reviews.

Milo Garner assesses Bradley Cooper’s much anticipated directional debut. 

A Star Is Born is, if nothing else, competent filmmaking. Despite the various doubts that were justifiably raised around the project – an actor’s directional debut starring a largely untested pop star is always going to be a questionable proposition – Bradley Cooper has defied these early critics and created a surprisingly functional film. Besides a few laboured shots (at one point, Cooper’s drunk and drugged rockstar drives past a billboard depicting nooses) this could easily be directed by one of Hollywood’s old hands. It gets from A to B, and gets there without any major slip-up. A lack of enthusiasm might be detected in this write-up so far, as it is that very feeling that the film inspired in me. Everything works, the wheels crank round and the script tears on, but rarely does it reach above base functionality. It is of little surprise that this is a remake (the fourth!) of a film from the 1930s – it brings to mind the assembly line nature of all but the best of Hollywood in that period.

The narrative progression should sound familiar – a woman singing in a bar gets spotted by a rich-and-famous musician who rockets her to fame, but it’s not all that it seemed once she gets there. It’s what they did before the X Factor, common practice. Cooper’s spin is curious in that it isn’t a spin at all – he plays it exactly straight. A few drag queens are thrown in for good measure (then promptly edged out), but this is essentially a beat for beat remake in a modern skin. By foregoing any narrative surprise, the film would then need some compelling characters to function in any interesting way, however again Cooper fails to provide anything more than what would be expected as minimum. Lady Gaga’s Ally is especially disappointing, nearly escaping the whole of the film with her morality unscathed; the person she is at the beginning is essentially the same one she becomes by its end, only then with more money. Fame’s corrupting tendrils are considered, of course, but always batted away before they cause any significant damage, and more than that, remains often superficial. Backing dancers might not fit Gaga’s vibe, but modern celebrity culture asks for far worse of its young stars than for them to simply dye their hair; a more incisive consideration of modern fame could have made this section engaging, but instead we are left with something that fails to reach beyond the surface.

Superficiality is, however, inherent to a good deal of the film. Again reflecting its 1930s heritage, A Star Is Born enjoys wealth as much as it supposedly critiques it. In the 30s, cinema was often used as a window into how the other half live, with screwball comedies backdropped by palatial chandeliers, droll servants, and blinding sequin dresses. As we follow Gaga’s rise to fame, the film seems to enjoy the process. It almost appears to be wish fulfilment; a flawless protagonist is picked up by a broken-but-beautiful man who lets all her dreams come true. There are trials along the way, but these never question the nature of being famous inherently, just the way of being famous, or the way of being wealthy. To win a Grammy is great, the film supposes without question, but perhaps not like that. It isn’t generally the business of a film like this to ask such questions, that much I can grant, but lacking anything else of real interest lays bare its otherwise more acceptable flaws.

Any interest that might be implicit even despite this is then consumed by a corrosive blandness as the film enters its second half. Here, after fame is secured, the rhythm falters. We must instead be sated by the turbulence in its central relationship, generally signified by Cooper getting off his face and Gaga condemning him for doing so, him going clean, then getting off his face again. A circular motion of that like is, again, not poor by design, but should serve as a foundation for something (anything) more compelling. Instead the romance develops and unfurls as might be expected, and any chance of a rousing melody replaced by the constant drone of predictability.

While drones and melodies are in mind, the music deserves a mention. Three styles dominate – stadium country/blues, stadium pop, and ballads combining a little of the two. The singing and playing is all adequate, perhaps even quite good, but other than a few of the guitar solos I wasn’t hugely impressed by anything on display. A matter of taste, certainly, but if La La Land can make me like show tunes anything is possible. I suppose my feelings about the film’s music reflect well my feelings on the film altogether – technically well put together and rarely unpleasant in a direct sense, but then so unremarkable, so flatly predictable. I’m sure A Star Is Born will become something of a sensation in the coming months, and will find itself beloved by many for its by-the-book balladry. But I’d prefer a few wrong notes to a progression so dull as this.

4/10

A Star Is Born will be released in UK cinemas everywhere on October 5th. Check out its trailer below:

It’s festival season! The FilmSoc blog is covering the 75th Venice International Film Festival (29 August – 8 September), diving into the myriad of films and events on offer to deliver reviews.

Milo Garner reviews Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest absurdist comedy. 

In a direct sense it would be wrong to say that The Favourite is historically accurate. The characters are largely real and the process of events is not entirely fabricated, but then so much else is, or at best, ruefully assumed. But in another, perhaps more pertinent sense, it is historical, and in a way that many films more fixated on events and dates and costumes are not. It communicates a historical concept, an idea, and does so using the anti-real of cinema for emphasis. Yorgos Lanthimos has never been a realist director, and it is perhaps through his absurd lens that the ludicrous nature of an early modern court – the factionalism, the infirmity of certain monarchs, the impact of personality on state affairs – can truly be understood or presented. The only film I know to consider the court to a similar degree (only with the addition of bookish accuracy) is Roberto Rossellini’s seminal The Taking of Power by Louis XIV, which propagates a contemporaneously-novel theory of how the Sun King exploited and advanced the ceremony of the court in order to establish his personal power base. The Favourite is a sort of inverse, considering how various members of the court and Parliament can slip behind a monarch’s ear for personal or political favour.

But if this suggests some sort of dry explication of historical academia (something Rossellini is wilfully guilty of), let any fears be assuaged – though a little different to Lanthimos’ other outputs, a surreal and sometimes unsettling comedy still awaits. The madness of the court simply allows yet more indulgence, with goose racing and giant dresses in lurid rooms of muted English opulence. Better yet at night, lit by candle and torch, characters illuminated orange against a surrounding black. The Killing of a Sacred Deer might have more impressive shot composition, but The Favourite certainly trumps it in texture – never has a late-night grain seemed so courtly. And if the saturated orange of the evenings might suggest a creeping angst of vying factions, the extreme wide angles used during the daytime fully encompass the off-tilt reality in which they live. We are given only an occasional glimpse at the world beyond the palace; we’re trapped in its circular rhythms.

While Lanthimos’ form is continuously interesting, it is in his leading lady that his film can be truly revelatory. Anyone familiar the golden age of British television comedy in the early 2000s is well aware of Olivia Coleman’s talent, and to see her finally granted such a significant role in a film such as this is gratifying. As Queen Anne, she embodies the contradictions of her character fully and consistently. The most obvious being in the comedic, with a gift for channelling the petulance and childishness of a monarch infirm. But more importantly – and this has often been the case in her television work – it is her dramatic performance that rounds the role. For all the absurdity this film encourages, it is in Anne that a sense of pathos can develop. Her tragedy, her occasional lucidity, the total lunacy of her position and the society that caused it. These things can all be read in Coleman, who only has to drift into a brief melancholy to entirely shift the film’s tone. Some moments are genuinely affecting, even if caught between a sex joke and a ballshot, as is often the case.

It is there that The Favourite occasionally slips. Its comedy is generally effective and a raunchy tone is certainly not undue for a period piece, only that sometimes the dialogue feels out of step with the atmosphere otherwise created. Peter Greenaway attempted a similar schtick but got away with it, as did Michael Winterbottom in his own meta-modern Georgian comedy. In their work, perhaps, it felt a little less like modern zingers given an antiquated brush-over; there are plenty of wonderful insults that can be borrowed from the past, most better than a ye olde ‘you’re cute when you’re angry’. A similar note can be made of a recurring dancing joke, in which modern dance is anachronistically inserted. It was sort of funny, but it doesn’t quite match the comedic tone otherwise struck.

Interestingly for a film otherwise so farcical, it does lay increasing attention to the actual progression of its plot, and largely succeeds in this development. Sarah (Rachel Weisz) and Abigail’s (Emma Stone) ever-escalating power plays are engaging and their dynamic intriguing. Sarah is perhaps the more interesting of the two; initially presented as the more obvious villain, it later becomes clear that, while she is evidently a cruel and exploitative woman, she does, in some twisted way, care for Anne. Abigail has an arc that is initially intriguing – a moral woman forced to contradict her beliefs for self-advancement – but later falters into a rather trite version of absolute power corrupting absolutely. This reflects a general issue in the tail-end of the film overall – as soon as Abigail and Sarah’s rivalry dies down in a direct sense, the narrative fails to find a compelling conclusion other than whatever might be made of Abigail’s ‘fall’, predictable as it is. Anne’s own decline was a little more interesting, but unfortunately largely unexplored.

But if not a triumphant closing (though certainly an adequate one), The Favourite is nonetheless very entertaining in the moment, a well shot and well-paced comedy bookmarked by a slew of strong performances. If it slips in the particulars of comedy or narrative, it does so against an extraordinary background – that rare period piece that totally defies the conditions of its genre and its history to deliver something far more original.

7/10

The Favourite is set for general release in the UK on January 1st, 2019. It will premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on October 18th, 2018. Take a look at the trailer below:

It’s festival season! The FilmSoc blog is covering the 75th Venice International Film Festival (29 August – 8 September), diving into the myriad of films and events on offer to deliver reviews.

Milo Garner analyses Alfonso Cuarón’s personal introspection of his hometown, Mexico City. 

Set in a district of Mexico City sharing the same name, ROMA is not the first film to bear such a title. In 1972, Federico Fellini released his own Roma, a series of semi-autobiographical vignettes that captured the Italian capital as he understood it. These varied from a symphony of traffic jams to a lewd display of religion-as-carburet – the ultimate aim was to create a kind of a cross-section of society as according to Fellini’s mind. Alfonso Cuarón’s film does not reflect Fellini’s at first blush, even seeming to be its opposite. It is set around a single family, is largely focused on genuine realism, and is limited within the confines of a single year. Yet it is in watching it unfold that a certain similitude becomes newly apparent. Cuarón is not simply using Mexico City and its environs as a setting, but rather as an essential part of the narrative. Every long traversal shot, or incidental detail, or lengthy tangent – these are not elements of pacing or plot so much as an attempt to recreate Mexico City of the early 70s, breathing and alive. Though we recognise the characters in them, these are, in effect, vignettes just as in Fellini’s film. Little moments that form the time and the place; this family does not exist in a drama extraneous to its surroundings, but one very much part of it.

An example might be a scene in which Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) goes to the cinema with her boyfriend. The frame is filled with detail: a man selling bouncing balls outside the door, the subtle change from an indigenous language to Spanish on the arrival of Cleo’s beau, and an extended scene from an old British war film, just a little out of focus and subtitled in Spanish. Cuarón is recreating the world of his childhood, permitting a sense for atmosphere that might otherwise be inimitable. Orson Welles once said of ‘the great supercutter’ Ernest J. Nims that he “believed that nothing should be in a movie that did not advance the story.” Welles went on to lament that “since most of the good stuff in my movies doesn’t advance the story at all, you can imagine what a nemesis he was to me.” So too would Nims find a foe in Cuarón, I think – it is between the beats that ROMA finds its heart; an endearing portrait of a past remembered. Not always a beautiful or pleasant past, but one that feels genuine; and lived in.

Against this lively backdrop plays out a largely straightforward narrative, but one that is just as emotionally accomplished. It is best surmised through reference to another film, one featured briefly in ROMA (and presumably figuring significantly in Cuarón’s youth): Marooned. The few seconds of footage presented are of two astronauts lost in space, comparisons to Gravity seem obvious. But more relevant is its reflection of ROMA, in which we find Cleo in a situation aptly described by that titular verb. She is indigenous and yet appears an outsider – the children she minds ask why she speaks in a language they don’t understand. She loses her virginity to a man who promptly up sticks when she reveals the baby she’s unwillingly carrying. The closest to family we can decipher are her employers. They are all happy together, but there is an inescapable distance separating them. That she is an employee always threatens to undo any sense of belonging, and thus she watches from the exterior. Cuarón understands the socio-political nature of this character but decides against didacticism, instead preferring a subtlety. Just hints at the wider picture, caught in the back of frame, or in a brief exchange. Most disruptive is a student protest that breaks into violence, but even this is treated as a passing event rather than a subject for comment or analysis. Cuarón’s Mexico is not an academic representation, but a snapshot. In one scene a wedding is taking place just out of focus – the end to another film perhaps, but nothing to do with this one. A world that breathes beyond the camera’s end.

Supporting this flowing and often moving story is Cuarón’s typically excellent formal ability. His style is consistent with his earlier works in that it emphasises long takes and conjoined scenes, but is also more specifically adapted for this project. His use of long traversals to capture the streets of Mexico City are almost tableaux, encompassing details without lingering. He also makes use of extended panning shots, exploring the family home with its corners and crevices. This is again an understanding of space and its importance – the home acts as a location, but also a tactile part of the characters’ lives. This is just as true on the rooftop, where an extended shot captures the various maids on various other houses all washing up at once to the rumble of the city streets below. This may be the story of one family, but so many others exist on its fringes.

More specifically, metaphorical imagery is also employed, and while clearly meaningful, it is always restrained enough to avoid being forceful. One such example might be the opening shot, of a paved floor being slowly encompassed by small waves of water, then followed by soap. Wiping the slate clean, perhaps, as might Cleo desire in some way. We later find that she is the cause for this water, cleaning the driveway from the mess of the family dog. This image is granted additional effect later, with Cleo walking against the far more imposing waves of the sea, being caught in their violent crashing. Her life resembles this wading, punctuated by moments of suffering; it is her inescapable truth. A deeply moving moment. Then there is the image of the plane, a distant flyover that repeats itself throughout the film, in reflections and backdrops. A symbol of motion and progress, forward momentum, and at once distance and powerlessness. But all-encompassing, ever present.

These grander ideas exist then with those smaller, but just as impressive. A scene where Fernando Grediaga ever-so-carefully manoeuvres his oversized car into a garage several sizes too small is as funny as it is incisive, made all the more so by his wife’s later but far less graceful attempts. And it is in that comedy that ROMA finds its soul. This isn’t a tale of disaster even if disaster is often its subject. It is one that understands the downbeat as much as its opposite – the annoyance of the family dog trying to run out the gate every time it’s opened versus how funny that actually is. It is a film that encompasses so much, and yet remains deeply personal. It is the philosophy of Fellini’s film through the soulful lens of Cuarón, and the result is a wonder.

9/10

ROMA will have its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on October 13, and is expected to be released on Netflix later this year. Check out its trailer below:

Milo Garner reviews Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cannes-winning romance. 

If Ida was once considered the announcement of a new voice in the tradition of grimly austere European arthouse, Paweł Pawlikowski seems set on contradicting this assessment with his belated follow-up. Cold War does have some (largely superficial) similarities to that older film, such as the high-contrast black and white photography, continued use of the academy ratio, and the setting: both films spend at least some time in the depressive environs of post-war Poland. But at this point the two diverge with some fervour. Ida is a film that emphasises stillness and contemplation; the camera moves no more than three times, and always with purpose. It is a film about national guilt, about conflicting identities. Its supposedly controversial subject led it to be condemned as anti-Polish by the country’s right-wing, culminating in a petition against Ida that racked up more signatures than the film had cinema admissions – a curious discrepancy. Cold War has instead met a wider commercial success, and its camera (again commanded by the talented Łukasz Żal) flows freely. It is not so much a film about the national as it is the personal. It is not so much a film about loss as about love.

But before delving into the specifics of this assessment, its exceptions must first be considered. The film opens with two Poles, composer Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and producer Irena (Agata Kulesza), exploring the hinterlands of Poland. They are searching for musicians who have kept the old traditions alive, recording their performances as they travel the wastes. They are also accompanied by a less scrupulous official (Borys Szyc) who sneers at beautiful music sung in Lemko rather than Polish. This small ensemble later endeavours to create a larger one – a folk music group that can amalgamate the various collected traditions into something modern and popular. Irena’s noble intentions are already threatened by the inherent artificiality of any resulting performance, but they are set further back by the intervention of Soviet authorities, who suggest the music might improve with songs about land reform and Stalin. The ensemble conforms, and makes way for, as it were, the anti-Ida: artistry that plays directly to the party line, stripped of much of its truth despite technical excellence. Pawlikowski seems quite clearly to be vindicating his own artistic choices in this progression, and again attacking a troubling reality in contemporary Poland. The conversely positive reception this film has received amongst the would-be critics of its predecessor suggests they may have missed the point.

But then, perhaps not. As for all the intellectual rigour that can be read into the background of Cold War, the flowing foreground is what catches the eye. As much as Wiktor dedicates himself to music, he finds even more interesting the sight of a young singer who auditions for his troupe. Zula (Joanna Kulig) is at once apart from the other girls, all apparently as pure in character as voice. She was imprisoned for mutilating her perverted father, and rather than being ‘authentically’ from the hills and purlieus of Poland, she is a city-slicker who had slipped through the net. The affair the two engage in might initially seem a subplot, but quickly consumes the picture. Their relationship is elliptical in nature, and the narrative reflects this. Sometimes years pass between meetings, their relationship stretching from the late forties through the fifties across borders and against a world in constant flux. Most notable is their time in Paris, in which the songs Zula sung in Poland are given new, bebop renditions, complete with pretentious French translations. This is not so much an attack on the way France consumes and regurgitates culture in its own special fashion than it is a reflection of the development in Wiktor and Zula’s affair. Wiktor is always quick to kowtow to prevailing fashion, while Zula is fiery in her dedication to the authentic self, whatever that may be.

It is in these characters that Cold War finds its greatest success. Beyond the effective acting, they are consistent to a degree that allows the elliptical narration to survive without unnecessary jolting. Each appears to exist beyond the purview of the screen, living lives we do not see but could surely guess at. The occasional insight into their meetings are more punctuation marks than full sentences; room to breathe in the otherwise real (and often gruelling) world they inhabit. At its best it reflects Linklater’s Before trilogy, in which three extended conversations reveal all that lives in between. But this strength does not follow through the film’s entirety, particularly towards it conclusion. At this point scenes become shorter, and the ellipses become more substantial. Pawlikowski’s efforts to cut out any redundancy are admirable, but some additional detail at the tail-end of the couple’s relationship would not have been awry, especially after such efforts had already been spent in elucidating their early and middle days. The characters never contradict themselves and always remain imbued with a certain reality, but film’s structure perhaps cuts their song just a little too short.

But while caught in its melodies, Pawlikowski and cinematographer Żal don’t miss a thing. Żal shoots the action in a high contrast monochrome, somehow suiting the colourful dances of the folk ensemble and the darkened basements of Paris’ nightlife in equal measure. His camera is also permitted literal levity, peering and veering around the various spaces it inhabits. To the rhythm of the music it will spin on an axis, follow through dancing crowds, or shake as the folk dancers leap and pose. The framing might reflect Ida, but the austerity of that film is lost in the music. That film considered jazz as an antidote to repression. Cold War needs no such antidote. And I suppose it is in that gaunt and tempo that it has found such an audience – in its midst, Cold War is little less than a joy.

Yet this same freedom from the weighty demands of a more intellectual cinema might also render it a little less impressive in retrospect. The film is clearly built from the mind of an artist (rather than an entertainer), and constantly hints that it may have a greater secret. The opening and closing scenes in a dilapidated church (that remind of both Ashes & Diamonds and Nostalghia) appear to be reaches at a wider and more affecting truth, but on the thin line between the transcendental and trite I feel Pawlikowski might veer just a little to the wrong side in what becomes a very laboured conclusion. There is a great film lingering somewhere in Cold War, but it seems we’ll have to make do with a very good one instead.

7/10

Cold War will be released in UK cinemas on August 31st. Catch the trailer below:

Milo Garner reviews Schrader’s drama thriller.

Paul Schrader has always been a director influenced by the high arts of cinema, though a cursory browse of his filmography might initially belie this assessment. His work is often pulpy, revelling in violence and pornography in a manner that would make the old masters squirm; yet his influences are never deeply-hid. Reflecting what Greg Cwik has named a ‘citational cinema’, his passion for the ‘transcendental style’ of Ozu, Dreyer, and particularly Bresson is an ever-simmering theme of his oeuvre. Taxi Driver, Schrader’s breakthrough screenplay, is in some senses a soft remake of Bresson’s Pickpocket, a film that encapsulates Schrader’s obsession with the alienated loner drifting into ruin. But even with that in mind, First Reformed feels removed from Schrader’s earlier work. It carries not only thematic and visual cues from the cinematic pantheon he so reveres, but also a tone unique to their style of slow cinema. In Ozu’s geometric fashion, all but five shots are entirely still (those exceptions with good reason), and their composition dark and painterly. Alexander Dynan’s digital cinematography excels in the low light, and is at its most expressive when characters seem to slip into the black completely, literally or otherwise. If this precise composition and visual austerity recalls Dreyer, the framing device is borrowed directly from Bresson, though the journal of the film’s sickly pastor is as much Taxi Driver as it is The Diary of a Country Priest.

But the reference felt clearest is to Bergman. The film is – especially for its first half – essentially a remake of his magnum opus Winter Light. They both begin in a church, its parishioners few and sparse. Following a sermon’s close, pastor Toller (Ethan Hawke) is approached by Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a pregnant woman afraid for her husband (Philip Ettinger). He has been ruminating, and behaving unusually – he finds himself obsessed with climate change, and the man-made apocalypse soon to engulf the world. In Winter Light pastor Ericsson is also approached by a worried wife, her husband caught in a similar angst regarding a supposedly oncoming nuclear catastrophe. Both are narcissistic in their certainty of doom and destruction, but more telling is the response of the priests in question. While Toller is certainly more effective in his disputation than the more dismissive Ericsson, both fail to address centrally the concerns of their subject, and both ultimately turn the discussion onto their own failings and regrets. Though First Reformed will dally in other plotlines for a while, both films result in the depressed husband killing themselves, and our pastor protagonists despairing in their failure to save a soul.

For Bergman, the silence of God is his primary theme, his story paying particular attention to a frayed relationship between the schoolteacher Märta and Ericsson. Schrader quotes Märta in his similarly bespectacled Esther (Victoria Hill), and one interaction between her and Toller is taken directly from Bergman’s film; but the focus of First Reformed lies elsewhere. Schrader instead homes in on the purpose of the modern Church, and of a priest in it. This is first clear in his presentation of the wider Church – the titular First Reformed parish is connected to the larger Abundant Life mega-church, a towering temple equipped with three enormous screens, state-of-the-art sound, and seating for thousands. A distinctly American phenomenon, Schrader digs further than the corporate appearance of the building itself, directing ire toward the ridiculous Christian prosperity theology that claims a shockingly significant following in the States. It was only this May that the infamous televangelist Jesse Duplantis requested donations from his followers for a 54-million-dollar private jet (his fourth), under the justification: ‘if Jesus was physically on earth today he wouldn’t be riding a donkey.’

While this thematic direction has its interest, and is certainly justified, it is where Schrader’s limitations are first made clear. His delivery is often blunt, with a repetition and redundancy quickly becoming apparent. Shortly after a scene with a youth group, in which an obnoxious conservative declares that he shouldn’t have to support the poor (they’re lazy, he says), we have a scene of Toller outwardly explaining the exact phenomena we just bore witness to with his superior, Jeffers (Cedric Kyle). Jeffers gives some platitudinal response about violent video games and social media, but the scene itself serves no purpose other than to make sure the audience understood that a) the conduct in the previous scene was ill, and b) that it made Toller very angry, which was already implicit.

Schrader’s more essential point seems to concern the position of a priest in the world at all – is it better to be commercial and mainstream, to touch many lives if only a little? Or rather uncompromising, intellectual, and ultimately righteous, dedicated in the service of the Lord and his creation? I am reminded a little of the dilemma in Scorsese’s Silence, which also contrasts an idea of absolute faith against a more pragmatic approach to religion, if no less true in nature. It also reflects Bergman once again, though this time not Ingmar – rather his father, Erik, a pastor who had initially rejected a position in Stockholm to remain with his (reluctant) flock in the relative wilderness. Like Erik, Toller’s church is of little importance in the larger scheme, and this permits his idealistic tendencies. Jeffers at one point reminds him that Abundant Faith is somewhere that offers religion and worship to thousands – a responsibility that trumps the high-minded philosophies of church intellectuals. While clearly lampooning Jeffers and his corporate-church, Schrader’s critiques of Toller are not hollow – like his many alienated protagonists, it cannot be said that Toller is wholly good or wholly righteous.

With this is linked the film’s other central concern, that of the climate change espoused by the doomed husband from the film’s start. While Toller does not appear particularly concerned with the fate of the planet at the film’s beginning, his meeting with Michael seems decisive. Serving as priest at his protest funeral (to the sound of Neil Young’s ‘Who’s Gonna Stand Up’, in a dryly humorous rendition by a church choir), he soon finds himself embroiled in the climate activism of his late parishioner. Most pressing is his discovery that one of Abundant Life’s key contributors is a certain Edward Balq (Michael Gaston), an energy mogul who ranks highly among the world’s polluters. Jeffers rebukes Toller’s new calling as political – a church cannot be political – whereas Toller considers it as Godly, a defence of his creation.

This dynamic functions best when it is placed on these almost abstracted grounds – the actual nature of climate change is somewhat irrelevant to the personal and religious crisis that consumes Toller, one where he is made ever more aware of his inability to affect the world or protect his parish. But Schrader seems to disagree, with Owen Gleiberman comparing the environmental extremism of the film to a ‘policy statement’. Schrader is want to include generic statistics into his dialogue, such as the dubiously applied claim that 97% of scientists are in consensus regarding climate change, or dropping in the fact that Congress does not accept man-made climate change as factual. Schrader’s aims are noble, but as abovementioned, blunt and contrary to the contemplative tone otherwise so effectively conveyed. The film’s most overtly expressionistic scene comes off as less Tarkovsky (as it appears to reference) and more an arthouse WWF advertisement for much the same reason; the fears and realities of climate change are best articulated elsewhere, as here they infringe on Schrader’s own artistic successes.

It is this unrefined style that slowly leaks into the narrative in general as the film enters its final act. Xan Brooks notes a ‘faintly hysterical air’, while Gleiberman celebrates the ‘highbrow exploitation film’ First Reformed reveals itself to be. For the latter, it is a reflection of the pulp that Schrader so often coats his films in, this time creeping into the austere 4:3 frame of Christian contemplation. And in a sense it is the most assuredly Schraderian element in the film, one that even invites a moment of the ultraviolence so infamous in many of his scripts. But my feelings lean toward Brooks; the ever more ridiculous trajectory of the film undermines its intellectual bent, transforming the corroded Toller into little more than another projection of Travis Bickle; a Holy Man who needs his release, no matter what. This is clearest in the ending, in which Hawkes’ tenacious and brooding performance is suddenly unleashed, resulting in physical contortion and animalistic grunts of anguish. The art/pulp is fascinating to see play out, and the Night of the Hunter-meet-Vertigo-meet-Schrader final shot is bracing in its abruptness. But it is at once deflating – for the initial half of First Reformed, Schrader was aping Bergman and, with rare talent, succeeding. By the conclusion it is pure Schrader; for better, or indeed, for worse.

7/10

First Reformed is out July 13th in the UK. Trailer:

 

George Moore-Chadwick reviews Wes Anderson’s highly anticipated return to animation.

The opening of Isle of Dogs informs us the Japanese spoken in the film will not be translated, unless by a TV interpreter or a foreign exchange student. All dog barks will be translated into english. Wes Anderson has finally reached peak Wes Anderson. This is both a good and bad thing, because Anderson is one of the most visually astounding and idiosyncratic filmmakers alive, but his films often fall short of true greatness because of it.

Anderson’s best film is his first, the criminally undervalued – and Martin Scorsese favourite – Bottle Rocket (1996). Here he demonstrated the magnificent visual style and quirky humour that have come to define him, but not at the expense of characters or themes. His style soon developed with brilliant Rushmore (1998) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), which consist of medium close-ups, perfect symmetry, a lurid colour scheme supported by a very ornamental production design, an eclectic soundtrack and offbeat, super-fast dialogue. His last film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), broke from relying on the die-hard fanbase he has built over the years and became a huge success, winning multiple Academy Awards. It was a brilliant film in almost every way, because Anderson’s instantly identifiable style, penchant for metafiction and self-reference were backed up by a genuinely thought-out screenplay, influenced by great directors of the past, based on the works of a great author, and benefiting from a masterful leading performance by Ralph Fiennes, who perfected the screenplay’s comedy.

None of this, except for the director’s style, is true of Anderson’ latest feature. Isle of Dogs seems to have all the characteristics of an Anderson film: distinctive and kinetic camera movement sliding perfectly horizontally or vertically; the same cast of actors as always in Anderson’s troupe; a token sixties song to underpin the soundtrack. But style is where it ends. The film is set in a futuristic Japan where a “dog flu” epidemic has led to the permanent quarantine of all dogs, housed on a desolate garbage-dump island (Anderson said that he was inspired by seeing a signpost to the Isle of Dogs in London, imagining what it was like, and then subsequently finding out it was not as magical as it sounded). It follows a twelve-year-old boy, Atari, whose “distant uncle” is the mayor of “Megasaki”, on a quest to find his dog Spots. Atari crash-lands a plane (yes, he just kind of gets hold of an aircraft for himself in an international airport) on the island and meets a pack of dogs played by Anderson veterans Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray and Edward Norton, and headed by newcomer Bryan Cranston. The dogs help Atari to find Spots, while back home in Megasaki an American foreign exchange student Greta Gerwig uncovers a government conspiracy and saves the dogs, Japan and the day. The story itself is reasonably predictable and fairly uninspired. There is a hint of Trump-inspired politics. But is much less convincing than Fantastic Mr. Fox or The Grand Budapest Hotel. The visuals, however, in true Wes Anderson fashion, and perhaps even more so than ever before, are fantastic.

Stop-motion is making a comeback. Laika has been making exceptionally good kids’ films like Coraline (2009) and, more recently, the technically-groundbreaking Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), also set in a fictionalised Japan. Stop-motion is not limited to targeting a young audience, though, as demonstrated by adult films like Charlie Kaufman’s cerebral and haunting Anomalisa (2015). Anderson is no stranger to the medium, having dabbled in stop-motion for fifteen years. In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2005) he used it for underwater scenes with wacky sea creatures, before making Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) fully in stop-motion. Isle of Dogs one-ups Fantastic Mr. Fox visually, not restricted to the puppet look required to mimic Roald Dahl’s visuals. I had the pleasure of visiting an exhibition of Isle of Dogs’ model sets, and I can say the visuals of the film are a blend of many different things that have already been done, but create something that has never before been seen, in a quite phenomenally beautiful way. Whilst Kubo and the Two Strings had a phantasmagoric realism, Isle of Dogs, like everything Wes Anderson creates, is pure artifice, but in the best way. The characters themselves are not hugely special, but the sets around them are exquisitely beautiful. The low frame-rate increases the artificiality of the film quite purposefully, and in stop-motion Anderson is most at home with his style – kinetic, artificial, and constant physical comedy which morphs camera and characters. In fact, the camera is the funniest character in the film, and its movement makes everything much more funny. The incredible and often hilarious kinetic visuals are supported by an exceptional Alexandre Desplat score (which by far outranks his work on The Shape of Water, 2018) that contains a combination of whistling, hypnotic drum beats also functioning almost as a character in their own right. There is also a central Christmas score, and of course, like every Anderson film, a song by a lightly-troubled sixties boy band.

All this overlooks the big issues of Isle of Dogs: neither the story nor the comedy are quite there. One of the central problems of the film is that however much the stop-motion allows to create unmatched, quirky, and, admittedly often funny visuals, the characters are left very, very far behind. Mark Kermode said in his review of The Grand Budapest Hotel that while Fantastic Mr Fox was “annoyingly smug” and “too smart for its own good”, The Grand Budapest Hotel’s razor sharp comedy “manages to break through that impenetrable, hermetically sealed world”. Here Anderson takes one step forward and two back. Isle of Dogs is even more tediously meta, clever-clever with little in the way of character-driven humour – most of the jokes in the first act consist of sniggering at the fact they are dogs and not people. Each flashback is labelled and numbered. Many of the sneering in-jokes seem like they were written by Abed from Community. The comedy does improve in the second act, and the visuals force you to keep watching in awe. Unlike in his previous films, though, Anderson does not utilise his ultra-talented cast. Edward Norton, who is perhaps the most perfectly suited actor to an Anderson film, is an exception, and Bryan Cranston has a decent run in the main role. The always wonderful Frances McDormand remains wonderful here as a translator. But magnificent actors like Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, F. Murray Abraham, Tilda Swinton, Ken Watanabe and Scarlett Johannson are completely lost in the background. I don’t know whether the stop-motion is to blame, because their voices are all so distinctive their appearance shouldn’t matter, like it does in The Grand Budapest Hotel. In Fantastic Mr. Fox the stop-motion has no reductive quality to the acting, with even more minor characters like those played by Owen Wilson, Michael Gambon and Willem Dafoe standing out brilliantly. It is the story of most aspects of this film; that the overload of quirkiness muffles everything else to a faint murmur.

Finally, one must question why Anderson decided to even make this film in the first place. It has already been labeled as “tone-deaf”. Sure, it is a celebration of all of Anderson’s artistic values, in many ways a true passion project, and his setting is largely perfect for this. But it seems reasonable to wonder why Anderson would make this film now, when he so obviously ventures into dangerous territory. On one hand it is a celebration and homage to Japanese culture and its great film history. Anderson makes an effort to do justice to the film’s cultural setting, and indeed the film’s protagonist is Japanese, as are many major characters. There is a sweet noble innocence to Atari much like Sam Shakusky in Moonrise Kingdom (2012), or even Zero in The Grand Budapest Hotel, which does come through despite none of his dialogue having subtitles. On the other hand, unlike something like Anderson’s Indian-set The Darjeeling Limited (2007), which respected its setting as a backdrop but not a source of insensitive comedy, Isle of Dogs’ never-ending sniggering leads to problems down the line for Anderson. Jonathan Romney of The Guardian said that “Anderson plays his linguistic hand subtly and wittily, leaving the Japanese dialogue largely untranslated rather than cater too obviously to a western audience”. Anderson’s meta jokes on the nature of translation in film could be hilarious, or, on the contrary, his linguistic hand could be superficially witty, but really plain stupid. Rather than cater more to a Japanese audience (I hardly see why a movie where most of the main characters speak English would be more enticing due to a lack of subtitles), it isolates the Japanese characters from the English-speaking ones. The film is an American film, and a great deal of its audience cannot understand Japanese. To provide the dogs with meaningful dialogue (to an American audience) and deny the Japanese characters to be understood, seems more reductive than progressive. At the screening I attended, I noticed many of the audience around me laughing at parts simply where Japanese characters were speaking their language, untranslated, perhaps because of its complete disparity from the American characters. Maybe that says more about members of that audience than the film itself, but I think – whatever the film’s intention – it risked hitting the wrong note many times. Greta Gerwig as the Pennsylvanian foreign exchange student essentially provided a white saviour role, as she alone uncovers a city-wide conspiracy orchestrated by the mayor. The quirky ridiculousness of it, pervasive of all of his films, for the first time here doesn’t always seem quite right. Where another recent American stop-motion film set in Japan, Kubo and the Two Strings, used its setting carefully, Isle of Dogs smashes together Anderson’s obsessions into something that seems to both celebrate the wonders and richness of a culture, whilst also sneaking in witty jokes at its expense. I’m not the right person to comment on the full extent (or not) of the film’s cultural appropriation, but it did seem that Anderson’s intention is more celebratory than anything malicious; just that his approach to the film’s comedy inevitably causes the film problems.

There is so much fault to find with this film. It has by far the most imperfections of any Anderson picture. Yet I must confess that it is very enjoyable. Anderson has a craftsmanship so unique, so incredibly alluring, that even at his most erroneous it is hard to not be marvelled. The film is exceptional because the auteur pushes his visual style further than ever before, even more impressively in stop-motion. The film’s visuals will be remembered as a true triumph of cinema in any medium, that people will either endlessly rip off, or not dare to mimic at all. The scene where the camera shows us in POV in shadows of people walking into a political assembly, with the camera moving in time with their erratic walking, is one of the most visionary scenes of a film in recent times. Anderson has perfected his style. But almost everything else is second-best, at best. It’s not that it’s bad – it’s enjoyable, superficially clever, often mildly funny – but that’s not enough from one of the most iconic living directors.

6.5/10

Isle of Dogs is released today 30th March across UK cinemas. Trailer below:

Images provided by author following visit to special free exhibition at 180 The Strand. CHECK IT OUT.