The Unloved (2009) – No charitable heroes in Nottingham

Last night I watched the much anticipated, feature length directorial debut from Samantha Morton, “The Unloved”. Set in Nottingham the film is a semi-autobiographical depiction of life in a care home. The protagonist is the quiet and “and risk” Lucy, who, rejected by her Mother and beaten by her Father is forced to become a ward of the state. Her gentle manner is at stark odds to the frantic, loud and volatile world of the care home and it’s troubled inhabitants.

Being a current resident of Nottingham it was distracting to see so many landmarks slipped into the film, but brilliant to see this city as it really is, not some Robin Hood tourist attraction. What makes The Unloved original is the uncompromised approach Morton has taken, there are long drawn out scenes with little action, movement or dialogue with just an ethereal soundtrack gently surrounding the images on screen – a technique which would have surely been cut if The Unloved was for a mass cinema audience. It seems to suggest that Lucy has her own private dream world, a place of tranquillity to escape to, an ability to shut out the world around her, even though the situation is bleak. Also, The Unloved only shows Lucy’s perspective, there’s no attempt to show the scenes from another’s point of view.

Lucy’s social worker is cold and distant, shuffling paper work, having temporarily been unavailable for Lucy due to “the office not paying mileage” she offers only adult ‘management speak’ answers to a confused and saddened Lucy. The care home workers are an equally troubled bunch, a set of poor role models for the vulnerable children housed there. Lucy often leaves the home to wander the streets of Nottingham for hours and there seems to be little in place to stop her.

‘Lauren’ Lucy’s older room mate is there to open the audience’s eye to why those mouthy kids you see in shopping centres are like they are. At 16, time is running out for Lauren and the care she will receive from the state, well known to the local police is seems as though her fate is sealed, especially when Lucy catches her abusing substances. Lauren’s lover is the care home manager, though their ‘romance’ seems one sided. Night time sexual encounters are not always enthusiastically met and Lucy has to hide from Lauren’s objections under the covers.

The Unloved culminates in the care home’s Christmas party, a drunken bonfire rave, with kids of all ages necking back the WKDs and revelling like a 90s Prodigy concert. The care home staff start a fight, revealing their own inadequacies and intolerances, one shouting “I don’t give a shit about this job” and accusing the care home manager of underage sex with Lauren. Lucy is left to witness this violent scene from the sidelines - suddenly her bleak home life with her parents seems a far more appealing option.

Best scene: Lucy seeking solace and comfort by wandering the streets of Nottingham - seeing a deer in the cemetery and the leaves dance in The Park Tunnel.

Star Trek (2009) a humorous homage

Last night I experienced the first of what I expect will be a summer filled with Hollywood blockbusters and it wasn’t a disappointment. For someone who’s not the biggest Sci-Fi fan (I didn’t watch Star Wars until I was 18, and that was voluntary) it was an enjoyable, easy and entertaining film. My understanding of the original television series is vague to say the least and, admittedly, has been formed though cultural references rather than watching the show itself (I owe The Simpsons for that) but I still managed to pick up on the odd joke, or wink to the original fan base, the film makes. The best being Spok the younger, meeting Spok the elder and being informed that his previously said, and usual farewell would seem “oddly self serving” – which in turn let the film continue to live long and prosper. There was no “beam me up Scotty” but I have a suspicion that a Trekkie could tell me this is a classic misquote and was never mentioned in the original show, so perhaps why it was omitted, or maybe it would have been one sound bite too far.

There are some interesting twists to the usual formulaic approach blockbusters take, the most notable being that it’s Spok who gets the girl and not the dashing action hero, Kirk. Hot girls like logic, clearly. There were no overbearing or endless action scenes, the pace of the narrative was engaging moving the plot along at the right speed to keep interest but not complicate things.

It’s a pretty basic story line man destroys planet by accident, war lord seeks revenge, the bad guys die, the good guy gets the girl, but with a sufficiently odd twist to keep interest. Time, space, continuum for a mass-market - Stephen Hawkins must be spewing. But the cinematography is spectacular if not limited. There is the slick, clinical hustle of the Starship Enterprise set against the jarred, industrial bleakness of the warlord, Nero’s ship. The space scenes are restricted to beautiful stand offs between the two ships, to sinister, creeping black holes to supernova and warp speed whizzery. I liked the fact that this was the first Sci-Fi I’ve seen which seemed to keep space localised.

I also liked the way the “future” was portrayed – Star Trek’s original 60s costume department was given a modern re-vamp but essential stayed the same, as did the hair and 60s flick’s make up for the women. The opening sequence sees Kirk driving an “antique” mustang being chased by a cross between Robocop and the Terminator. There’s shamelessly no explanation of how this car could have survived 2000 years of rust or where the petrol came from to run it, but I think that’s why it works, the “future” seems oddly real, which is essential if you’re going to engage with the narrative.

To boldly go? Definitely, worth a watch and without the big screen the effect could be lost.

Best scene: Skydiving to the top of the drill, Kirk and companions battle atop a blazing piece of planet destroying kit.

Blue Velvet - Modern Folklore

As part of the David Lynch course at the Broadway, last night I had the pleasure of watching Blue Velvet on the big screen. The pre-screening talk was excellent and highlighted the ways in which this film could be viewed. Jake Smith who is hosting this course introduced the idea of Blue Velvet being a modern folklore – a fairy tale for adults. He revealed the horrifying truth that the original Little Red Riding Hood saw the innocent young girl not only being tricked into drinking the blood of her dead grandmother, but also being forced to strip naked to “feel the touch of the wolf’s” skin before being devoured herself. I could see why the brother’s Grimm felt the need to smarten it up for a middle class audience - bedtime stories might not have had such a comforting effect otherwise.

Blue Velvet certainly shows an uncomfortable portrayal of modern life (well, 80s American suburbia) and the dark underside of society that bubbles beneath the surface of white picket fences and immaculate lawns. The infamous line from Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle McLaughlin) “why are there people like Frank in the world” has split critics to ask if this is ironic or not? Is this a desperate plea from a young man who has lost his innocence or just postmodern irony? It’s hard to tell to be honest.

It’s a pretty straightforward film for Lynch, the narrative is pretty linear, there’s a beginning, middle and end, which is perhaps why it received so much critical and cult acclaim, despite the content, it’s a very accessible film.

I felt this was a film about the loss of innocence, a young boy, Jeffrey, is forced to “man up” in several obvious and some unobvious ways. The first is his loss of child like freedom: Jeffrey’s father is left incapacitated after a presumed heart attack, so he takes the reins of the family business and begins to experience respect and power for the first time. Finding an ear in his neighbourhood he feels emboldened by his new experiences to solve the mystery behind this horrifying treasure.

The second his is loss of sexual innocence: Dorothy Vallens (isobella Rossellini) catches Jeffrey spying at her apartment; mistaking his detective intentions as voyeurism she becomes sexually aggressive and fellates Jeffery at knifepoint. This experience is immediately followed by Jeffrey being forced, out of circumstance, to watch Frank (Dennis Hopper) sexually abuse Dorothy Vallens (Isobella Rosellini). Like a child hearing the unsettling creaks and groans of parents in a distant room, Lynch magnifies this child-like experience of sexual revelation to the same disturbing experience for adults. How very Freudian.

The third is his exposure to a world outside his own: Frank kidnaps Jeffrey for a “joyride” through the dark streets of Lumberton. Frank’s home becomes a macabre, fabricated commercial in contrast to the “real world” – a bit like Tim Burton’s ‘perfect’ town in Edward Scissorhands which politely ignores the gothic horror which is built at the end of the road. His known world falls about him as he realises what

The film has been criticised for portraying violence against women, but I found this film difficult to take offence at. The violence is administered by Frank, a man with some serious Freudian hang ups about his mother and a drug addled maniac, it’s not surprising he’s violent towards women. Also, I don’t genuinely believe Dorothy enjoys the violence in any sexual manner, it seemed rather she had been programmed to expect this from men – though that could be wishful thinking as there’s no indication what her husband is like.

Dorothy and Sandy (Laura Dern) are such one sided characters that it’s hard to empathise or criticize them. It’s an all too obvious, dark-seductive-older- woman versus light-innocent-girl-next-door scenario. I guess they represent the two sides of male sexual desire – a fantasy of the bedroom and a saint – and it’s written and filmed from such a male gaze that it’s hard to see they’re real people at all – for example, Sandy cries melodramatically into the phone that she forgives Jeffrey for sleeping with Dorothy because she loves him. Please, what a male fantasy.

Visually it’s stunning, a modern twist on film noir. The soundtrack shows signs of classic Lynchian techniques – mechanical noises, the unsettling use of silence – and the theme song by Roy Orbison doesn’t seem to leave a scene. As a modern fairytale for adults I’m not sure what the moral of the story is, but I can guarantee that you won’t be able to easily get this film or “Blue Velvet” out of your mind for days afterwards.

Best scene: Ben, (Dean Stockwell – Al from Quantum Leap!), Frank’s partner in crime, lip-syncs a performance of Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" into a lamp in a full face of make up.

State of Play

oops, been a while since my last post, but with holidays and the lack of interesting films at the cinema I seem to avoided venturing out of the house to the local movie theatres. Anywho, having a Wednesday afternoon free I decided to hang out with the elderly and watch a film at 2.30pm in the afternoon. The film of choice? State of Play, the Hollywood adaptation of the successful BBC TV series.

Overall I felt this film was about as entertaining as a BBC drama series (I mean that in a positive way) but I just didn't feel it pulled off the "Thriller" (with a capital T) in the way that other political thrillers have done previously. I still don't really know why. The soundtrack has a suitable amount of high strings and pounding, ominous bass lines to heighten a sense of dred (particularly in the car park scene), the acting is solid though not exceptional and the cinematography diverse getting the 'gritty' underside of Washington to contrast well with the slick, polished corridors of Capitol Hill.

I guess I just couldn't quite marry the idea of Russel Crowe (who plays lead investigative journalist Cal McAffey) being 'old college buddies' with Ben Affleck (who plays Senetor Stephen Collins) i don't think it was a miss casting as both actors played thier roles extremely well. I already think Afflect is slick, so playing a politician seemed perfectly appropriate, but a polician who used to be a millitary hero? No, that's just Hollywood farce - perhaps an attempt to give some credibility to their heavily criticised previous government official? Who knows, even though it was vaguely important to the plot (the evil private security firm Point Corp ruined his army buddies) but it seemed ridiculous.

Also, the whole, you're-out-of-date-stick-in-the-mus-I'm-new-hip-exciting-blogger idea didn't really work for me. Rachel McAdams is pretty good at playing the Washington Globe's sassy, young internet blogger, Della Frye, but it's just to obvious a set up between her and Crowe's character. Yes, yes we get it old school journalism has little respect for opinionated blogging, and vice vera. But what's this, they are working together? Overcoming thier lack of understanding of each other's disicplines.. and what's this, they've produced a fantastic piece of joint journalism which, my goodness, they are jointly taking credit for. Well, as a writer, and working with many other, far better, more successful writers too, I find it hard to believe that it would be a joint effort. In my experience there would only be one name printed next to that title, and it sure wouldn't have been the blogger's. What a predictable and sappy resolution to that little conflict.

Helen Mirren is an interesting character too, but I felt she was an American's idea of a British female editor. Throwing around phrases like "tosser" and "bugger off" just sound a bit contrived to me. I think it was a lost opportunity as Mirren is an excellent actress, but the script was going to do her no favours.

Overall, I was unsure who were the police in this investigative thriller film? The Washington police seemed to be the distant parents who would stride into the Washington Globe's office and give McAffrey and his team a slap on the wrist for withholding evidence, and yet it is the newspaper who solve the riddle? Odd. But maybe that's how investigative journalists work, having the freedom to take an unorthodox route to finding information that the Police are restricted to follow.

State of Play opens with a double shooting in the dark, g'rimey back streets of Washington. Cal McAffrey arrives on the scene to start another day's work investigating the murder of one and the injury of the other party. Sonia Baker is congressional aide to Senetor Collins and Della is tasked to tune her detective skills and investigate her apparant suicide. All three murders are linked to private security firm Point Corp and there seems an imminate threat to the credibility of Senetor Collins. As Collins friend, McAffrey sets out to clear his friend's name and secure a front page story and along the way stumbles into a huge government conspiracy (of course).

Best Scene: the opening scene where a young man chases through the streets of Washington, to hide, desperate and panting in the bins of an underpass. Bang bang you're dead.

Overall: 3 out 5, definetly entertaining

Robin Hood – Sneak Peak

Love it, Ridley Scott is bringing my (present) home town hero to live on the big screen again, and who better to play the tough man in tights but Russel Crowe. Yes, Robin Hood is re-visited for cinema entertainment as “Nottingham”. Judging from the picture’s released the other day it won’t be a modern day tale (no drunken hen do’s to rescue from market square, no taxes to take from the offshore tax dodging rich residents of The Park, and no depiction of the all too sad reality that Sherwood Forest is just a field in north Nottingham).

The BBC today has posted an interesting feature about this country’s obsession with this midland’s legend. With Alistair Darlings budget being deemed to be “taking from the rich to give to the poor” I’m guessing it’s a theme that’s still a hot topic today. You can read it here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8013179.stm

Week 2 Lynchian Tone

David Lynch spent his childhood being raised in several towns across the Pacific Northwest and North Carolina, with an occasional visit to his grandparents in Brooklyn, New York. As a student he spent a portion of his early adult life in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. This odd combination of small town America and industrial metropolis may well have influenced his work, and seems to be a good place to try and figure out what the “Lynchian tone” is.

Lynch was an Eagle Scout and occasionally joined his father, who was a US Department of Agriculture scientist on research trips. As an artist, Lynch would fuse the biological textures of the real world with his work, incorporating dead flies, moths and even a dead mouse into his paintings. After a successful art show where his animated film entitled “Six Men Getting Sick” (1966) received critical praise Lynch acquired funding to produce “the Alphabet”.

The Alphabet is a nightmarish short film about the fear of learning - the sin of knowledge that leads to corruption and the destruction of innocence. As a painter and photographer Lynch seems to have slipped into film making as a way to bring images to life - his first films had no dialogue and used unique soundtracks to express emotions - he’s also consistently reluctant to offer explanations of his films and to put his thoughts on paper. Hmmm …

The Grandmother (1970), his first funded film was produced from a $5,000 grant from the newly formed American Film Institute. This might be a good place to see what the ‘Lynchian tone’ is. Well, not being an expert I didn’t know, so I rely on what the tutor told us. “The Grandmother” is grotesque, surreal and sentimental – a narrative theme which is repeated in some of Lynch’s later work, it is also the first chance to hear the work of Alan Splet, the sound technician Lynch has worked with on many films. The film (again) has no narrative and relies on the score to set the nightmarish atmosphere. Splet uses natural sounds like thunderstorms while the boy ‘grows’ the grandma and distorted dog barks for the parents.

The boy is dressed in a suit, and stands isolated against his possessions in rooms with black walls. It’s surreal; it makes the characters look disconnected and their white faces look dream-like and stark in contrast. The boy’s suit serves to further disconnect him from his animal-like parents and also illustrate the formality of Middle American society. I think Lynch is hinting that the surreal infiltrates the normal; the subconscious lives with the conscious and we live in a world where dreams and reality are seamlessly merged.

I think this idea of inner/outer psychological experience is best expressed in the Terry Gilliam style animations Lynch intersects with the film. The animations tell the same story, but as a different media, they represent imagination or subconscious. In later films Lynch moves away from film/ animation to show this and works towards film/ film and even further with dual characters (Betty/ Diane in Mulholland drive). Mulholland Drive I think shows perfectly how conscious and subconscious lives together and are one way the ‘Lynchian tone’ resonates in his work.

The animation also suggests that all the characters were ‘grown’ in the same way the grandmother was. It highlights Lynches themes of the natural and artificial world merging – an idea Lynch illustrated in his paintings. He seems pre-occupied with the biology of birth, of botanic things ‘oozing’ and dripping and this is a theme we see in grotesque detail in the infamous midnight movie, “Eraserhead” (1976).

Lynch’s work has been described here as “uncanny”, “surreal” and “grotesque” where his nightmarish images are perfectly matched to a sweeping sound scape designs. The ‘uncanny’ is the best way to sum up Lynch’s work – this Freudian idea explains why everything we see makes us feel uncomfortable - it is darkly familiar, it awakens primeval, repressed memories, in other words, the inner hidden voice is given a very visible outer amplifier. Inner/ outer, repressed/ expressed, dreamed/ experienced, nature/manmade – there is a duality in Lynch’s work and this can be seen as the “Lynchian tone” in my mind.

Auteur Theory: David Lynch

What is an auteur? Well blame the French for this. Cinema critics of the 1950s were tired of the conveyer belt approach that studio directors had taken towards filmmaking. There were no distinguishable characteristics by each director - just formulaic, commercial pap which was churned out time and time again.

Auteur critics wanted a new wave of cinema and argued the camera should be an instrument for art, just as the brush is for the artist. As a instrument, the camera should provide artistic integrity; the auteur should demonstrate technical mastery, a distinguished personality and provoke an interior meaning to their work. As such a group of select auteur directors deemed to meet these standards were born: Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and in recent times Kubrick, Lynch, Tarrantino and Wes Anderson.

This might seem strange to today’s cinema audiences, after all many film lovers could name their favourite director - suggesting that most films have a distinct look and feel. But a director like Stephen Spielberg is not an auteur (debatable) - even though his work is distinct and has repeated themes it arguably does not stir an interior meaning. Also, his work is commercial successful suggesting a popularist approach to filmmaking and a willingness to be influenced by the financial ambitions of the studio. Don’t get me wrong, I love Spielberg films, I’m just playing devils advocate.

An auteur might be a critic’s dream, but what are the limitations? Withstanding artistic integrity and vision in an industry which inherently relies on a team (sometimes an army) of people to produce. Keeping their unique stamp on the finished work without turning out the same old recognisable tricks. And finally, the medium. Producing a cinematic masterpiece is reliant on the theatre – the sound system, the oversized screen, the darkness, and the all-encompassing sensory experience. Once taken into the home, arguably, the film is no longer the work of an auteur.

Critics seem to deem the cinema as the pinnacle and playground of auteur work, and assign only directors to be worthy of this title (not producers or cinematographers) so can TV create auteurs who are producers? Or is this a ‘lesser’ medium not worthy of true, artistic and critical acclaim?

Well, we discussed today how a director like Lynch consistently manages to keep a distinct identity within his work. In an interview he described the film making process as an abstract cloud of ideas. He maintains the vision and everyone working with him subscribes to this - they can makes suggestions (which might be included in the work) but their suggestions only work as part of this wider cloud of ideas which is gently floating through the process with him at the centre. Nice and direct.

As a trans media artist Lynch manages to keep a “lynchian” tone to all his work – it’s always distinctly his whether it’s TV, film or painting. He uses repeated metaphors (red curtains, mystery sinister figures), music (industrial, ambient soundtracks) and a unique directorial style (camera angles, disjointed narrative) to make this stamp.

We watched a 1-minute short Lynch created to celebrate the 100^th Anniversary of the Lumiere Camera. 60 seconds of continuous filming with no edits, no sound (other than a dubbed on soundtrack) Lynch still manages to display extraordinary technical skill, style and authorship. The mark of a genuine auteur – to not have to rely on any one medium or additional people! It was a magical, engaging and eerie piece which even not knowing it was Lynch, you could make an educated guess by the tone and feel.

Sadly we were shown a “making of” clip which had filmed Lynch filming the short. Now, I’m not a fan of behind the scenes sections or even DVD director’s commentary to be honest. I prefer Roland Barthes’s “Death of the Author” approach to cinema going – I don’t need a director to tell me what their vision was, or how they created it – I don’t want it to influence my experience as ultimately it doesn’t matter what the director intended, it’s what I took away from it that counts.

The strange thing about films, which is unlike authorship in novels, is that with a book you don’t get the back-story – there isn’t an introduction which explains how Thomas Hardy wrote Tess of the D’Urbervilles or what was happening socially at the time to influence him (well sometimes). Good thing too, it’s really got nothing to do with how you interpret the book, the story, the narrative. This is why I like Lynch, he refuses to help out the audience, he doesn’t offer explanation, he doesn’t care if you draw conclusions or flap about in frustration. I watched Mulholland Drive for the first time 2 days ago and it’s still going round and round in my head, that’s why I think it’s an auteur film – anyone got any explanations they want to share, then I’ll pleased to hear what you got from it!