Film review – Broken (2012)

20 May 2013
Broken: Archie (Tim Roth) and Skunk (Eloise Laurence)

Archie (Tim Roth) and Skunk (Eloise Laurence)

People can be broken physically, emotionally and psychologically and few go through life avoiding being harmed in some way. The 2012 film Broken, adapted from the 2008 novel by Daniel Clay, portrays many different ways humans can suffer. At the centre of the film is a coming-of-age narrative, about an 11-year-old girl known as Skunk (Eloise Laurence) who experiences the cruelty and unfairness of life when she witnesses an act of violence. Within Skunk’s own home and that of her two neighbours, in a small cul-de-sac in suburban England, people are being broken in different ways. As the film unfolds, seamlessly portraying the joy of childhood with the terror of a community made to feel vulnerable, Broken questions why people are damaged and how they can be healed. What emerges is a film that can be shocking, but also deeply comforting in its belief that the truehearted can prevail.

Harper Lee’s seminal 1960 classic To Kill a Mockingbird was a major influence for Clay when writing Broken and that influence is felt throughout the film. Like Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird Skunk lives with her older brother Jed (Bill Milner) and her father Archie (Tim Roth) who is a lawyer. Even the names of the key characters from Broken are similar to their counterparts in Lee’s novel. Another key similarity is the pivotal plot point involving a wrongful accusation of rape, with the introverted Rick Buckley (Robert Emms) being a composite of the falsely accused Tom Robinson character and the reclusive Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley character from To Kill a Mockingbird.

However, it would be a mistake to simply categorise Broken as a modern day To Kill a Mockingbird. The film uses the core characters and basic scenario to set up themes of injustice, family, community and the loss of childhood innocence, but Broken develops the themes and narrative in its own way to beautifully complement To Kill a Mockingbird rather than rehash it. Perhaps most interesting is that Skunk is the focal point throughout Broken rather than her father Archie. While both texts are from the point-of-view of the Scout/Skunk character, To Kill a Mockingbird is centred on Atticus Finch as the moral authority that drives the narrative, while in Broken Skunk is the moral centre. One of the few things that unites the characters in Broken is their affection and love for Skunk.

Although, while caring for Skunk is something most of the characters have in common, Skunk is let down by most of the men in the film at some point. Through experiencing first love, unrequited love and family members experiencing romantic love, she is left feeling hurt, betrayed and abandoned. She learns that her father and brother are sexual beings and this difficult realisation is part of her coming-of-age narrative. However, it is the different expressions of parental love that becomes the most crucial component to Skunk growing-up.

On the one hand Skunk sees the borderline psychotic protective parental love as demonstrated by the brutal Bob Oswald (Rory Kinnear). Fiercely protective of his daughters, whose behaviour suggests they need guidance rather than lenience, Oswald is like a defensive animal. He tears off his shirt before attacking, eats raw ham from the packet and lives in an unfinished house – it is literally a broken home. As a result of his monstrous and delusional protective behaviour, he has raised three similarly viscous daughters who have grown up to view the world with aggression and suspicion.

On the other hand, Skunk receives far more considered parental love from Archie, who is affectionate but also firm. Both Archie and Oswald are single fathers and both are shown to have a tremendous love for their children and fear seeing harm come to them. The difference is Oswald has become savage to the point of terrifying the community while Archie upholds the law, even to the point of assisting a romantic rival because it is the right thing to do. Considering others and responding rationally are viewed in the film as essential for civilisation to prevail.

Notions of what it means to love and what it means to be civilised are not the only grand themes in Broken, as it also explores the question of fate. One of the many strengths of the film is its redemptive undercurrent, where a tragic event places a character in a position where they have the ability to prevent tragedy for others. This in turn invites speculation about what events caused the tragedy in question in the first place, challenging the audience to consider the cause-and-effect relationship between the order of events in the film.

The non-lineal structure of the film furthers this inquiry into how the film is suggesting a relationship between the different events in the film. Most interestingly is the way the film covertly skips over particular events, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions about the aftermath before the film then goes into flashback to fill in the missing details. Sometimes the film crosscuts between the scene about to end and the scene about to start, creating unusual spatial and temporal links.

This fractured – yet highly coherent – approach to the narrative also gives the film an at times dreamlike quality to suggest it is a collection of memories that sometimes overlap. It is not clear if the suggested memories belong to Skunk or Archie, and it is made even more ambiguous by the presence of images depicting Skunk in the future. The end result is to present the period of time the film takes place in as a defining one for Skunk as she begins the not always pleasant transition into adulthood.

The film’s director Rufus Norris has a background directing theatre, yet displays considerable talent as a filmmaker in his approach to not just the unconventional editing, but other elements of film style such as the cinematography. During the early scenes of the film, the adult characters are frequently shot from Skunk’s height so that their heads are cut off by the top of the frame. In the scene where Skunk has her first kiss with her boyfriend Dillon (George Sargeant), the pair stand up without the camera following them so their heads are similarly briefly out of frame. The camera then pans up and the technique of viewing adults from below slips away from the film, suggesting Skunk’s entry into the adult world.

The design and style of the film is also carefully crafted to deliver Skunk’s perspective of a world that is harsh, but also full of childlike wonder. Norris uses an unusual blend of social realist style shots with moments that are almost neo-romantic. In particular, the junkyard where Skunk hangs out is filled with broken cars and yet filmed with warm and soft light to present her imaginative view of the yard. Tellingly, a place filled with broken objects is one that Skunk can see beauty in.

Broken is a film of thematic, narrative and stylistic complexity that manages to remain highly accessible. The theme of learning to grow up nobly in a world of unfairness is very effectively transposed from To Kill a Mockingbird, but Broken pleasingly takes its own direction to deliver a very moving look at parental love. While a character such as Archie is comparable to Atticus Finch in terms of honour and inner strength, making Skunk the focus of the story was an inspired decision. By framing such universal issues such as the power of forgiveness, redemption and love through a coming-of-age narrative of a generous and kind 11-year-old girl, Broken delivers a moving and thoughtful cinema experience.

Thomas Caldwell, 2013

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Film review – Tabu (2012)

17 May 2013
Tabu: Ventura (Carloto Cotta) and Aurora (Ana Moreira)

Ventura (Carloto Cotta) and Aurora (Ana Moreira)

Under the veneer of civilisation, what ancient desires and impulses lie in our unconscious, waiting to surface like a crocodile patiently waiting for its opportunity to strike? Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes looks to an illicit love affair and his country’s colonial past to explore this question. Tabu adopts many of the visual aesthetics of a classical Hollywood silent film and takes its name and narrative structure from FW Murnau’s 1931 film Tabu: A Story of the South Seas. The title Tabu also refers to the setting of the second half of the film: a settlement near the Tabu Mountain in Portuguese Africa during the 1960s. Furthermore, the title evokes the English word ‘taboo’, used to describe something that is considered culturally forbidden. However, while an adultery narrative dominates the dream-like and melodramatic second part of Tabu, adultery is hardly a taboo theme in contemporary cinema. Instead the taboo topic explored by Gomes is the presence of colonialism in the not-so-distant past and how it manifests in modern life. Like the crocodile that is so often seen in the film, the echo of colonialism is ever present.

Tabu reflects personal and collective history through the filter of memory, mythology and secondary representation. The prologue, set sometime early last century when Africa was being explored, is a film being watched in the present day. The first part of the film titled ‘Paradise Lost’ is set in contemporary Lisbon, but is full of visual and narrative references to an earlier era. The final part, titled ‘Paradise’, is a memory presented as a narrated silent film, of an affair in Africa against the backdrop of the move for independence that led to the Portuguese Colonial War.

The Lisbon-set ‘Paradise Lost’ first half of Tabu depicts the relationship between middle-aged social activist Pilar (Teresa Madruga), her elderly neighbour Aurora (Laura Soveral) and Aurora’s African housemaid Santa (Isabel Muñoz Cardoso). While this section of the film may arguably seem dry compared to what comes later, it reflects the ways the events of Portugal’s colonial past resonate in the present. Racial tensions remain, as expressed by Aurora’s fevered accusations that Santa is using witchcraft to control her. Ironically Santa is improving her Portuguese by reading a translated copy of Daniel Defoe’s classic novel Robinson Crusoe, widely regarded as a prototype text for colonialism and known for its idealised representation of the obedient ‘savage’ servant. Meanwhile, images of Portugal’s colonialist past in Africa begin to infiltrate this first half of the film through details such as the pillars in a nursing home being covered with vines.

Tabu is shot in black and white, has the 1.33:1 aspect ratio associated with early cinema and is experimental in its use of sound and dialogue. The effect is different to the overt silent era homage found in The Artist, as it instead appropriates key silent era stylistic techniques to draw attention to the artificiality of the film while still taking the audience into the world of the film (something that Guy Maddin also achieves, but through slightly different stylistic approaches to Gomes).

Ideas of artificiality are spread throughout Tabu, reflecting how cinema is not a reliable historical document and the extent to which the culture created by a colonising country within another country will always feel false and out of place. The over-the-top melodrama of the narration during the prologue, about a melancholic explorer, signals Gomes’s intent to make a film that is removed from any notions of cinematic realism. During the prologue the camera is mostly static with only very slight movements. The figures shown onscreen are not unlike characters from a Wes Anderson film, standing without expression. The visual style juxtaposes against the narrator’s grand tale of loss and loneliness, indicating how stories are embellished in the telling of them.

When Pilar leaves the cinema after watching the film about the explorer, the increased camera movement suggests the handheld style commonly associated with contemporary social-realist cinema. However, Gomes quickly undermines any hint of realism when Pilar engages in a strangely mannered conversation with a backpacker. As neither Pilar nor the backpacker speak the other person’s language, they communicate in English, a secondary language for them both that they speak very formally. The almost absurdist exchange highlights a layer of artificiality in terms of the limitations of communicating in different languages.

The challenges to authenticity continue through ideas of distrust and false appearances. What Aurora says about her daughter is completely different to the reality of the situation, Aurora denies the contents of a letter she sends, Pilar only puts up a disliked painting on the wall in case its painter drops by to visit. After dreaming that her son-in-law was a monkey, Aurora muses of the symbolism and then declares that dreams are unreliable. Pilar goes on a date to the cinema with her painter friend, but he falls asleep so she experiences the film by herself with only the illusion of companionship. A Portuguese version of ‘Be My Baby’ plays on the film’s soundtrack, another fragment of the past returning to the present, made even more explicit when the same version of the song appears again in the second half of the film.

When the film begins its ‘Paradise’ second-half in Africa, the themes become far more pronounced just as the silent-era stylistic influences take over to deliver a mesmerising cinematic experience that reflects the memories of the film’s narrator. While the love affair between a younger Aurora (Ana Moreira) and the explorer Ventura (Carloto Cotta) takes place, the country around them is changing. Gomes never directly depicts the conflicts of the Portuguese Colonial War, but contains references to the violence through reports that are usually delivered during social gatherings.

Perhaps by focusing on the illicit love affair between Aurora and Ventura rather than the rise of the African nationalists, Gomes is making a statement about how trivial stories engage more than important ones. However, their forbidden romance does function as a metaphor for colonialism, where the indulgences of a few result in far greater damages to others. The reoccurring image of the crocodile, which was first seen as the bringer of misery in the film-within-a-film prologue, appears frequently in this second section. Like untamed lust that goes against social order, the desire to conquer and colonise, and the impulse to act violently, the crocodile is a dark, mysterious and ancient force that lies beneath the surface and causes unstoppable devastation when it rises and strikes.

Tabu is a rich puzzle film full of ideas and open to interpretation. Repeat viewings are extremely rewarding in terms of both making more sense out of the film’s distancing yet necessary first half, and for teasing out some of the reoccurring ideas to do with artificiality, cinema, memories, race, colonialism and forbidden love. While the path through this unconventional film is not always obvious, it is a sensuous, mysterious and intoxicating path worth taking.

Thomas Caldwell, 2013

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MIFF 2013: Next Gen

13 May 2013
Next Gen 2013

Image from Day of the Crows

When not reviewing films I work for the Melbourne International Film Festival on the programming team. The first part of  the 2013 MIFF program was announced today and I’m very excited, as it is one of the sections that I worked on. The following is a presentation I gave last Friday to launch the Next Gen program for this year:

Next Gen is a program of entertaining and challenging cinema selected for a youth audience.

The program was established in 2007 to enrich the cinema experience for younger viewers, as well as stimulate discussion and social awareness. Encouraging students to become active viewers, who question and challenge the moving image, is essential in a media-saturated era. The films this year were selected for their diversity, innovation and high quality, as well as being relevant and accessible to audiences of all ages. Through drama, documentary and animation, issues such as family, prejudice, injustice, violence, rebellion, identity and overcoming hardship are explored with integrity and depth.

With a handful of exceptions, these are not films many people would traditionally classify as ‘kids’ or ‘family’ films. Instead, they are a diverse, innovative and high quality collection of films that will appeal to people of all ages.

Valentine Road

Valentine Road

The documentary Valentine Road is something that will resonate with very wide audiences. It is about the 2008 murder of 15-year-old Lawrence ‘Larry’ King by one of his classmates. It becomes apparent that the murder was a hate crime, committed in response to King’s sexuality and gender identification. Director Marta Cunningham, who will be a festival guest, allows the teachers, friends and legal experts involved in the subsequent trial to speak for themselves without overt judgment. By doing so Cunningham delivers an insight into how young people are affected by the environments they grow up in, especially ones that cultivate and even excuse violent crime, as a response to somebody deemed different.

Another film to confront the impact of violence is the Irish film What Richard Did, by director Lenny Abrahamson. This extremely sophisticated drama is about the kind of guy Australians would consider ‘a good bloke.’ Richard is charismatic, friendly, attractive and a high achiever. He’s a good friend, a respectful son and looks after others. He then does something in the heat of the moment that has an unexpectedly devastating effect. This film about culpability, masculinity and the dangers of alcohol is particularly relevant to Australian audiences, many of who will no doubt recognise how closely the events in this film reflect various stories in the news from the past twelve months.

An interesting contrast to Valentine Road and What Richard Did is the Canadian film Blackbird, about a teenage boy falsely accused of planning a school massacre. Evoking recent films such as The Hunt and West of Memphis, this is a film about persecution as a result of mob hysteria. Many will identify with the young protagonist who identifies as a goth resulting in an outsider status that sees him bullied at school and then falsely accused after he vents his frustration by writing a revenge fantasy short story that he then unwisely shares online. Director Jason Buxton shared the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival SKYY Vodka Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film with Brandon Cronenberg for Antiviral.

I Declare War

I Declare War

On a lighter note, the Canadian film I Declare War is a sort of updated Lord of the Flies with a touch of Where the Wild Things Are. The film is set in a forest on one summer’s day, where two groups of kids play an elaborate war game. The kids carry sticks and water bombs, but the film depicts their ‘weapons’ the way the kids see them – as machine guns and grenades. Constantly alternating between fantasy and reality, I Declare War is a parody of war film clichés, a kid-centric adventure film and at times a disturbing look at learned behaviour. However, it’s mostly a lot of fun.

Also fun is the South Korean supernatural romantic comedy/drama A Werewolf Boy, which is thankfully far closer in spirit to Edward Scissorhands than it is to the Twilight films. MIFF regulars may recognise the name of filmmaker Jo Sung-hee as the director of End of Animal from MIFF 2011. However, it is unlikely that audiences will detect any similarities between the two films, which are completely different from each other in terms of style, tone and pace.

Another regional film in Next Gen is Touch of the Light, a Taiwan/Hong Kong co-production featuring the young vision-impair pianist Huang Yu-siang playing himself in a fictionalised story of his experiences entering music school. This crowd-pleasure was a huge hit in Taiwan and has been supported by the acclaimed Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai.

Capturing Dad

Capturing Dad

Also close to home is the odd yet endearing Japanese comedy/drama Capturing Dad, about two sisters awkwardly attending the funeral of a father they never knew. It’s refreshing to see a film with such a strong and sophisticated focus on the relationship between sisters (and between mothers and daughters), and Capturing Dad manages to be extremely charming without ever resorting to sentimentality. In fact, a lot of the humour is surprising dark.

Other films that edge more into crowd-pleasuring/family film territory are the Kurdish-language film Bekas and the German film Patty’s Catchup. Based on the experiences of the films writer/director Karzan Kader, Bekas is a spirited adventure film about two orphaned brothers trying to flee Iraq during Sadaam Hussein’s rule. Tina von Traben’s Patty’s Catchup is a fun family drama about three sisters attempting to run a sausage stand, despite one of the sisters preferring to follow her dreams of being a renowned chef.

The film most suitable for very young audiences is the lovely animated film Moon Man by Stephan Schesch, based on Tomi Ungerer’s classic picture book of the same name. However, there are enough Monty Pythonesque and surreal visual gags to keep audiences of all ages entertained.  It is also nice to see a film that aligns scientific curiosity with childlike wonder while satirising governments that are obsessed with jingoism and aggression.

Another animation in the program is the stunning beautiful and moving Day of the Crows by Jean-Christophe Dessaint. Although it is a French-language film, it contains more than a hint of influence from Studio Ghibli, not just visually, but with its blend of fantasy, humour and whimsy, with some very grounded themes concerning persecution and parental neglect. It also features voice acting by Jean Reno and the late Claude Chabrol.

Approved for Adoption

Approved for Adoption

The other impressive French-language animation in the program is Approved for Adoption, the Audience Award winner at last year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival. A sort of animated memoir in the vein of Waltz with Bashir and Persepolis, it is about the childhood experiences of Jung, the film’s writer and co-director (with Laurent Boileau). After the Korean War Jung was abandoned as a baby and adopted by a Belgium family resulting in a childhood where he struggled with his cultural identity and sense of belonging.

The final film in the Next Gen program is English language, but by French director Laurent Cantet, who won the Palme d’Or in 2008 for his film The Class. The film is Foxfire, based on a 1993 novel by Joyce Carol Oates. Featuring nearly all young female cast, the film is set in 1950s upstate New York and follows the misadventures of a group of teenage girls who begin to fight back against the patriarchy. The mixture of protofeminism, socialism and teen rebellion results in an exhilarating film that explores how criminality and organised resistance are regarded.

More information: miff.com.au/nextgen

School bookings and study guides: metromagazine.com.au/nextgen

Thomas Caldwell
Shorts & Next Gen Coordinator
Melbourne International Film Festival

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Film review – The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

9 May 2013
The Place Beyond the Pines: Luke (Ryan Gosling) and Romina (Eva Mendes)

Luke (Ryan Gosling) and Romina (Eva Mendes)

Cinema is often at its best when it presents characters and stories that teeter on the edge of civilisation and morality. More interesting is when a film itself walks a tightrope between conventional narrative cinema and something that challenges audience expectations about film form. The Place Beyond the Pines derives its title from a loose English translation of the Native American word Schenectady, the name of the New York State city where the film is set. This title also evokes the sense of an otherworldly space beyond the recognisable world, in a way not too dissimilar to the mysterious forest in the television series Twin Peaks (created by Mark Frost and David Lynch, 1990-1991). While The Place Beyond the Pines is a far less abstract work than something like Twin Peaks, it still possesses a mysterious examination of morality and fate through characters who mirror each other throughout the film’s unexpected shifts.

Director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance previously demonstrated his skill in handling interlinking narratives from different time periods in the tragic love story Blue Valentine. What he is doing in The Place Beyond the Pines is less obvious, but more ambitious even if it ultimately is not as satisfying as his previous film. Nevertheless, The Place Beyond the Pines contains a commendable attempt to experiment with film narrative in a way that emphasises the themes of the film.

Cianfrance has teamed up again with actor Ryan Gosling who as the character Luke Glanton is introduced breathing in darkness before a continuous long shot shows us his tattooed body as he plays with a knife and then walks through a carnival where he will take part in a motorbike stunt display. He is a transgressive character from the fringe of society who later leaves the transient space of the carnival in an attempt to create a ‘normal’ life upon learning that he has had a son with Romina (Eva Mendes), an ex lover who lives locally. At the climax of the impressive introductory long shot, Luke rides his motorbike into a large circular metal cage with two unseen co-riders as the performance begins. The structure of The Place Beyond the Pines is reflected symbolically by the cage as an enclosed narrative containing interlinking riders whose destiny is in the hands of each other.

As the film develops it becomes a study of the sliding scale of morality. It is established that prospects for Luke are limited so he makes decisions that challenge the audience’s perception of him as an underdog who is trying to better himself. Cianfrance and Gosling display considerable talent in making Luke a character who is in one moment likeable and in another compromising good will and common sense. Later in the film he is paralleled with Bradley Cooper’s policeman character Avery Cross, who exists on the opposite side of the law, but is also challenged with difficult moral decisions and as a result makes compromises and struggles to emerge unscathed.

As well as narrative and relationship similarities, both characters are presented through similar stylistic techniques, filmed by tracking shots from behind accompanied by the same ‘heavenly’ choral music to emphasise their fall from grace. With his blond hair and torn white t-shirt Luke in particular resembles something of a fallen angel. Considering the themes of fate and fatherhood that loom large over the film, the symbolism of a sinning angel who is cast out of heaven by its creator is fitting.

The thematic duality between Luke and Avery evokes the police procedural melodramas by directors such as John Woo and Michael Mann where class and social order puts two men who could have been best friends on opposite sides of the law. Also, like a less literal version of the split personalities of many of the characters in Twin Peaks and some of David Lynch’s later films, Luke and Avery could arguably be considered as light and dark versions of the same characters, although with each containing several shades of grey. Their duality in narrative terms is even more interesting and in the film’s most exhilarating scene, one character is seen from the point-of-view of the other, as if this character is seeing a projection – or an echo from the past – of his symbolic other self. It is like Special Agent Dale Cooper encountering his dark doppelgänger in Twin Peaks or perhaps David Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) encountering aged versions of himself before becoming what he sees. The use of narrative structure in The Place Beyond the Pines lends itself to considering the characters in a way that goes beyond what literally happens to them onscreen.

Perhaps the reason the film concludes in a way that does not fulfil earlier expectations is because it breaks free from its contained and interwoven structure, encapsulated by the circular metal cage containing the three stunt riders performing for the audience. The symbolic dual-sided identity evolves into something else that does not feel as sophisticated as what has come before it. The morality themes remain, but the film ultimately focuses more on the role of the father and the question of fate. It is a good ending, but it does not live up to the expectation set up by the film’s earlier ambition.

Despite the film’s focus on male identity, at the centre of The Place Beyond the Pines is Eva Mendes’s Romina character who goes through continual hardship while the male characters wrestle with their conscience, desires and drives. A reoccurring image throughout the film is a photo of her, Luke and their son. Luke has his hand over her eyes as an act that can be read as both him protecting her from the fact that the illusion of their happy family life is temporary, or as an act that suggests how much he is hiding from her. Like the nightclub singer who is blinded by the shootout in John Woo’s The Killer (1989), Romina suffers as a result of the men around her and this suffering includes being kept figuratively in the dark.

On the surface a crime narrative with social realism characteristics, The Place Beyond the Pines delivers an unexpected narrative structure where the viewer is invited to link together various characters, motifs and narrative threads beyond the obvious connections. While it is still a rewarding film on face value, The Place Beyond the Pines offers additional pleasures for viewers keen to delve further. The final segment of the film does disappoint when it moves away from morality and identity to instead focus on the role of the father and fate, but it is nevertheless an overall bold and intriguing film.

Thomas Caldwell, 2013

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Film review – The Hunt (2012)

1 May 2013
The Hunt: Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen)

Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen)

‘What do you know about it? Who are you anyway? Who are you? Criminals? Are you proud of yourselves?’ pleads Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert at the climax of Fritz Lang’s seminal masterpiece M (1931). As a serial killer who has been preying on children, Beckert is the reprehensible villain of the film until Lang deftly challenges audience sympathies when Beckert is set upon by an enraged mob and subjected to a mock trial. Pleading for his life, Beckert challenges the morality of the crowd who see fit to judge and condemn him, rather than allowing the police to do their job. A terrifying film about a child murderer ends with a savage condemnation of a society that lowers itself to Beckert’s level by taking the law into its own hands. Over eight decades later, Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt explores similar terrain except with the crucial difference that the protagonist, a primary school teacher named Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) who has been accused of sexually abusing a young girl, is innocent.

Vinterberg’s 1998 film Festen (aka The Celebration) was about a man who interrupts his father’s 60th birthday party with the news that his father used to rape him and his twin sister when they were children. Festen was the first and best of the films in the Dogme 95 movement, which Vinterberg co-founded, and its stripped back ‘pure’ filmmaking techniques facilitated a complex and even darkly humorous exploration of the ruptures that occur when a trusted and respected member of the community is accused of a crime most people cannot bear thinking about. The Hunt is a far more refined film in terms of its visual aesthetics, but Vinterberg’s social critique remains unflinching. Instead of depicting the mob mentality of Festen where the accusations of abuse resulted in disbelief and hostility towards the accuser, in The Hunt the accused is hounded and not believed by the mob.

A narrative about a man falsely accused of child sexual abuse could have all too easily pandered to the paranoia and rhetoric of hysterical men’s rights groups that regard challenges to disproportionate male privilege as male persecution. Fortunately Vinterberg ensures The Hunt remains a progressive film by avoiding characterisations and plot developments that could be interpreted as anything other than a critique of mob behaviour. This is not a film where women are the enemy and men are the victims. Lucas is a single father, but his unseen ex-wife is portrayed as reasonable and wanting the best for their son; both Lucas and the film are respectful toward her. Both men and women are portrayed as rushing too easily into forming a negative opinion against Lucas, and both male and female characters are guilty of asking Lucas’s alleged victim leading questions designed to confirm their suspicions rather than arrive at the truth.

If there is any gender critique in The Hunt it is directed toward Lucas’s male friends who move from being drinking and hunting buddies to violent aggressors. While the film’s title clearly suggests the witch-hunt against Lucas, it also captures the values of the small town the film is set in, where becoming a man is defined by being old enough to get a hunting license and be entrusted with a gun. It is a masculine and predatory environment, and the ease with which the men of the town assume the worst in Lucas suggests a dark recognition of the potential for themselves to inflict horrific crimes against the innocent. The violence against Lucas is arguably a symbolic act to rid the community of its potential for evil, even though Lucas is not the problem.

Most significantly, The Hunt is not an attack on the legal system that deals with child abuse investigations. The theme of the police and courts failing the innocent and protecting the guilty is a popular one in mainstream cinema based on prevalent myths of judicial leniency. While the legal proceedings into Lucas’s accusations are never shown on screen and only talked about, The Hunt very calmly suggests that the system does work. The threat to Lucas is not a Kafkaesque nightmare of legal dead-ends, but the self-appointed accusers from the community. Like the mob in M acting without the authority of the law, the townspeople in The Hunt are the true threat to social order and stability.

The Hunt is a confronting and fascinating work of cinema. The decline in civility towards Lucas is chillingly plausible, revealing the uncomfortable truth that fears about child abuse are so pronounced that it is all too easy to condemn somebody before all the facts are in. Emotions easily cloud rational judgement and while it seems straightforward as an audience member to disapprove of Lucas’s former friends and colleagues, it is difficult to guess how we may behave in a similar situation when faced with such heightened emotions. Vinterberg has created a disturbing mirror to look into, revealing the collective fears and prejudices of a community that only required the suspicion of a crime for it to take a step closer to savagery.

Thomas Caldwell, 2013

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Film review – Iron Man 3 (2013)

24 April 2013
Iron Man 3: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr)

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr)

One of the most fascinating examples of modern day mythology is the superhero narrative where god-like beings, or humans with the ability to be god-like, engage in larger-than-life conflicts that test their moral and spiritual strength as well as any physical powers. Their adventures and trials can be seen as reflections of the collective anxieties and values of the culture that produced them. The films contained within the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise are no exception, sometimes overtly and sometimes unconsciously delivering commentary on contemporary US identity in between the banter and action sequences. The original Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008) examined the culpability of weapon manufacturing, Thor (Kenneth Branagh, 2010) condemned the actions of warmongers and Captain America: The First Avenger (Joe Johnston, 2011) challenged the use of jingoist symbols. All are distinctively post-Iraq invasion and post-Bush Administration films, even though the sophistication of their analysis is limited. Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, 2013) is the most topical film to-date, exploring the nature of terrorism and the destruction of the self.

In many ways Iron Man 3 is a companion piece to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises (2012), albeit a far simpler take on the  themes. Both films contain a wealthy, human, self-made superhero protagonist who begins the film scarred from previous encounters. Both protagonists face villains that are products of the system they come from, and both protagonists question if they are losing their identity to their alter egos.  After a flashback prologue, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is introduced as obsessive and paranoid, burying himself in work and starting to suffer from anxiety attacks due to the traumatic events he experienced during The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012).

Stark compulsively works on new Iron Man suits, alienating his loved ones and neglecting work. He has become addicted to his suits, refers to them as separate entities yet seems determined to bond even further with his suit, fitting his body with mechanical parts like the deranged salary man in Shinya Tsukamoto’s appropriately titled Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). In one of the truly dark moments in Iron Man 3, Stark’s girlfriend Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) attempts to comfort him during a nightmare, but is momentarily attacked by one of the Iron Man suits. The sinister moment briefly suggests the potential for Stark’s fractured identity to manifest as a violent and abusive id.

Previously the symbol of innovation and power in the previous films, the Iron Man suits take on a more ambivalent meaning in Iron Man 3. In fact, the miss-use of technology and science in general is challenged, especially in the way research designed for medical purposes can be misappropriated, as seen in a subplot that evokes the moral quandaries raised in Michael Apted’s Extreme Measures (1996). In Iron Man 3 technology is predominantly represented by the Iron Man suits, which in this film are rarely shown as complete objects, often appearing fragmented, fallible and disposable. They are even used to deceive and restrict, sometimes functioning as a sort of giant metal coffin-like prison. Therefore, most of the film features Tony Stark the ‘real’ person, rather than Iron Man the alter ego that threatens to symbolically consume Stark. On a basic level this allows actor Downey Jr and director/co-writer Black – working together again after 2005’s outstanding Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – far more room to deliver punchy one-liners and verbal interplay, which is very much welcome.

While Stark is grappling with his sense of self, so is the country that he and most of the other Avengers hail from. Just like the threat to Gotham city in The Dark Knight Returns, the threat in Iron Man 3 is a terrorist manifestation of the sins of the past coming back to deliver judgement. In his broadcasts to the terrified people of America, the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) compares his acts of violence to violence done against other countries by American militarism and intervention. As Iron Man 3 further explores the nature of the Mandarin’s agenda, the film delivers an overt examination of the nature of terrorism and how a culture of fear is so easily constructed and exploited for political gain. In terms of the way foreign otherness is frequently portrayed so regressively in mainstream pop culture, Iron Man 3 is surprisingly subversive for how well it plays on audience assumptions. The film also ridicules the use of symbolism with jokes about James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) wearing the War Machine body armor, but giving it the more palatable name of the Iron Patriot, which does not fool anybody.

Iron Man 3 also surprises in the degree to which it critiques a large segment of its target audience – fans. One scene where Stark gets help from a fan is played completely for laughs towards the over enthusiastic man who unreservedly adores Stark despite the indifference he receives in return. Is this perhaps a sly dig at the types of fans who uncritically love the products of their favourite franchise regardless of the end product? A far more interesting moment, and the film’s other genuinely sinister scene, is when a previously fanboy character declares he will make a trophy out of a kidnap victim who spurned his romantic advances. It is a brief moment, but an expression of the type of misogyny that can be found within ‘nice guy’ males with a sense of entitlement and bitterness from sexual disappointment.

Unfortunately, the gender politics in Iron Man 3 is overall a little confused. There seems to be a deliberate effort to make Pepper a more substantial character rather than a damsel in distress and object of desire. However, every time Pepper does get some agency, it is then taken away from her and she is reduced to being passive again. Perhaps this can simply be read as another way the film is articulating contemporary attitudes in its well-meaning attempt to elevate female characters to the same status as the male characters, but always ending up being tokenistic and stopping short from achieving anything truly meaningful.

In the long term Iron Man 3 will most likely hold up reasonably well as a lighter variation on the deconstructed superhero mythology found in The Dark Knight Rises. In the short-term, the nature of domestic terrorism and identity will likely not be at the forefront of most audiences’ minds as they flock to see Downey Jr’s charismatic performance and the film’s action set pieces. The conclusion is disappointing in terms of the overused setting it chooses for the action to take place, and due to a key manoeuvre by Stark that he really could have used closer to the start of the film and saved everybody a whole lot of trouble. Nevertheless, the scenes of spectacle are mostly fun with a sequence involving people free-falling being particularly engaging. The Marvel films are now established as reliable sources of entertainment, and after Whedon’s work on The Avengers and now Black’s work on Iron Man 3, the series continues to build momentum.

Thomas Caldwell, 2013

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Film review – No (2012)

18 April 2013

No

The strange bedfellows of politics and publicity are at the heart of Pablo Larraín’s historical film about the 1988 Chilean referendum to decide if dictator Augusto Pinochet would remain President for another eight years. No depicts the workings of the anti-Pinochet advertising campaign that was allowed to air for 15 minutes a day during the lead-up to the referendum. It is Larraín’s third film about the Pinochet era and uses both the film’s content and form to address how politicians and the media manipulate reality in order to produce an emotional response to influence democracy.

No challenges the manipulative power of the moving image not just within the context of the advertising campaigns depicted in the film, but in the way cinema represents history. The film is based on true events, but features a fictitious advertising man René Saavedra (Gael García Bernal) as the protagonist. Participants in the campaign act in the film as versions of themselves, intercut with actual footage of themselves as they originally appeared in the various televised spots during the campaign. Larraín has shot No with the same low quality U-matic video cameras that were used for television broadcast in Chile throughout the 1980s, further blurring the boundaries between actual archival footage and fictionalised presentations of real events. This mix of actual participants in archival footage with re-enacted scenes starring a famous international actor deliberately creates confusion about what is real and what is a constructed version of reality. It is not blatant self-awareness nor is it a distancing technique as the film remains engaging throughout, but it stands as a point of difference to films such as Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012) where history is transformed into a classical Hollywood narrative genre film or Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012), which adopted a faux-cinema vérité style to deliver an aesthetic of realism.

The visual style of No very successfully informs the themes and narrative of the film, which concerns the extent in which René compromises the importance of the anti-Pinochet movement in order to produce a successful advertising campaign. The tension is between the desire to act truthfully and with integrity versus the desire to do whatever it takes to convert undecided votes into No votes. The politically active left members of the No campaign want to use the allocated airtime to finally speak out about the terrible economic inequalities and human rights abuses under Pinochet, while René wants to sell democracy like he would sell a consumable product. René wants a jingle written, the leaders on the campaign want their dead comrades to be honoured. The validity of René’s fun message versus the authentic and politically engaged message is deliberately left ambiguous throughout the film. As René argues, the culture of fear in Chile has resulted in a ‘learned hopeless’ that only an upbeat and forward-looking ‘happiness is coming’ message can seriously hope to overcome. However, the film also cynically portrays René as somebody who brings the same rhetoric and false enthusiasm to every client he is working for, regardless if promoting democratic freedom or Free Cola.

The Yes campaign are similarly portrayed as being preoccupied discussing image and, later in the film, how to undermine the message of the opposition through ridicule rather than actual criticism. At one point the pro-Pinochet camp even discusses their desire to have key members of the No campaign made to disappear, but cannot do so because of it would be a bad look considering all the international scrutiny Chile was experiencing. The Yes campaign identify the appeal of Pinochet’s capitalism as selling the free-market belief that anyone can get rich (as opposed to everyone can get rich) and everyone thinks they can be that anyone. René’s opposition in the Yes campaign is his boss and colleague Lucho Guzmán (Larraín regular Alfredo Castro) who also wishes for his campaign to succeed by doing whatever it takes. While working on another campaign he is shown to be developing a strategy to  ‘infiltrate the news’ by creating an attention-seeking media event, suggesting the calculated way news media has become compromised by commercial interests.

Given how the film begins and closes with René and Guzmán going about business as usual, despite being on opposing sides during the campaigns, it feels like No is making a grim and depressing statement about the superficial nature of media driven political events. And yet, the fact that the outcome is the desired one suggests that like it or not, reducing politics to emotional triggers is effective and can be used for good. But how does that ultimately serve democracy? Was wining the No vote against Pinochet worth the compromise that in the long run does so much harm to democracy? Larraín deliberately avoids conclusive opinions or statements. On the one hand it is hard not to feel cynicism by the film’s final scenes or by René initially being most worried about his car in a scene where a No rally is violently broken up by the police. René motivation to take the campaign is for the professional challenge, and possible prestige. He seems more annoyed and unsettled when witnessing violence or experiencing harassment, rather than outraged. And yet Larraín still portrays him as a sympathetic character who is reluctantly separated from his radical and politically active wife and attempting to raise a son.

Ultimately Larraín presents René as something of a tragic figure who even when being instrumental in achieving the No vote against Pinochet, is still a product of the regime’s unsustainable, aggressive and reductive economic liberalisation. Unlike the older and more pragmatic Guzmán, René does display a passion for his work even if the motivation and approach seemed to contradict the message he is broadcasting. However, through Bernal’s acting and Larraín’s direction, there are enough moments to suggest that while René may not ever feel politically engaged, he does get a sense of the momentum and exhilaration of being part of something bigger that his own immediate ambitions and concerns.

Even through the battle was won the residue of the system remained. And it is a system based on artifice and illusion: the illusion of equality and the artificial belief of a strong economy when 40% of the population lived below the poverty line. The prosperity of Chile was as illusory as a soft drink branding campaign, a supposedly glamorous photo-shoot of soap-opera stars or a film that pretends to be historically accurate without acknowledging its own limitations and manipulation of actual events for cinematic purposes. No is none of these things because it directly addresses its own artificiality and that of its protagonist and the artificial campaign his real life counterparts devised to end a deceitful and abusive dictatorship. René may be left looking exhausted and disillusioned while once more saying the same lines of dialogue he uses in pitches, but the conversation about how politics are packaged and presented go far beyond the confines of the film, making No an extremely perceptive and intriguing examination of the effect that media hype and spin have on the political process.

Thomas Caldwell, 2013

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