Did the new Bond make the sky fall?

The name Bond, James Bond is synonymous with certain things; scandal, sex, chases and gadgets. The Bond franchise prides itself on delivering a certain style of sophisticated stealthy silliness, enthralling us with a world of high energy, high glamour and deadly danger.

Hanging on to the coattails of the grandeur of the Empire, Bond represents the best of Britishness; reserve, elegance, grandeur, patriotism and pride. The popularity of the franchise is perhaps in part due to a much exaggerated sense of what it means to be British in a climate that is somewhat confused and scattered. There is no singular British identity but Bond embodies the sensationalised stereotypes of the idealised British gentleman; somewhat aloof, indebted to his country and thoroughly dependable in a crisis.

I have to confess that I am not a connoisseur of this world. Although I was a massive fan of GoldenEye, I have not seen many other Bond films and so my appreciation of this film stems from digesting it as a singular entity, rather than in comparison to its predecessors.

Daniel Craig brings a steely, stone cold, sinister cynicism to James; efficient and machine like, he is now teetering on the precipice of alcoholism, fatigue and apathy. He is a broken Bond, but the threat now is potentially higher than ever, as an unknown villain with anonymised connections to M is blackmailing her through technology – a medium that has high jacked the modern world and threatened to steal the stealth from the shadows.

This Bond is an interesting mix of the old, ancient Britain and the modern technology immersed society we live in. Is there a place for spies, secrecy and subtlety in the world of Facebook, twitter and YouTube? This is a world with which M is at odds, and a world where indeed a film that focuses on the nature of being unknown and anonymous must struggle to catch up with the impossibilities of achieving this today.

This is also a film about M, rather than Bond, who has always operated as a cold, unknowable figure. M could stand for mother, matriarch, and monarch, elevated as she is, but never warm. She is the mother figure for James, an orphan, and presumably for many other agents as well. In this film, we get to see more of her warmth and humanity and gain a greater understanding of some of her flaws and weaknesses.

In fact, I found the Oedipal context of this film very intriguing, for this is a film about mommy issues, about abandonment, disappointment, fear, remorse, the hunger for approval and redemption, a film about how the stifled secrets of our past are inescapable and like coiled snakes, are always ready to spring upon us once more in the calm terrain of our futures. We get to explore M’s relationship to her agents and the cutthroat nature of their existence. Bond and M develop more of a dysfunctional mother-son relationship in this film, which reaches its grand crescendo at Skyfall itself, the film’s title and theme song, crooned by the British success story of the past few years Adele.

Daniel Craig won me over with his ‘cold fish’ approach to Bond, whilst Judi Dench is always enigmatic as M. Of course we cannot discuss a Bond movie without mentioning the villain of the piece, Mr Silva, played by Javier Bardem who lends an eccentric, camp tone to this over the top former agent with more mummy issues that the whole world of psychology could possibly be prepared for. Bond Girl Bérénice Lim Marlohe, who describes her character as ‘half dragon, half panther’ sizzles as the spectacular Sévérine. Without spoiling the treatment of her character in this film, Bond girls have always harked back to an age of sexism, objectification, impossible glamour, sultry sex, eye candy and trophies for the male characters of the film, and it is most certainly what we have come to expect of Bond, but the disposable nature of her character sat uneasily with me and didn’t seem to be moving the female role within this type of movie forward with the times. Naomie Harris also makes an appearance in a few, cobbled together scenes and despite my initial resistance, she did grow on me.

If you come to Bond for the style, beauty and soundtrack, you won’t be disappointed here. To celebrate Bond’s 50^th anniversary we have a beautiful, slick film which will deliver all the chases, anticipation and raunch of its predecessors with a delicate layering of humanity added to this fast paced world of danger and desire.

Snow White and the Huntsman

Queen Ravenna: Men use women. They ruin us and when they are finished with us they toss us to the dogs like scraps.

Fairy tales are renowned for their ability to capture timeless truths for younger generations to enjoy. Snow White reveals the power of youth and purity and the envy it can evoke in others. Beauty and youth are blooms that reach their potent peak and then slowly begin to diminish, leaving the individual once in possession of their power, wearied and frustrated at nature’s fickle transience. This message seems even more meaningful today, in a world only growing increasingly enamoured with what it means to be young and beautiful and ever fatigued, even disgusted, with what it means to grow old.

The controversy surrounding Kristen Stewart’s affair with married director Rupert Sanders has eclipsed any attention the movie itself may be able to generate, as well as shattered the fantasies of Twilight fans everywhere but it’s still worth taking a look at Sanders retelling of a much loved story.

Kristen Stewart, fresh off the back of her fame as Bella Swan is endowed with an accessible girl-next-door type of pretty, and although she’s not ruby red lipped or raven haired, she does have the pale cream like complexion expected of Snow White. Charlize Theron abandons her leonine, gregarious nature to envelope herself in regal, detached, self-centred, icicle eyed beauty Queen Ravenna (like name, like nature – quite literally ravenous to consume the hearts of beauteous maidens to endow herself with their vitality). Chris Hemsworth (yes, I call him Thor too) is the solid, handsome, Neanderthal huntsman-cum-protector.

This film is visually striking, merging stark, bleak landscapes (like the woods) with fantastical, magical backdrops (like the fairies sanctuary). The language itself is poetic, simple but mesmerising, but unfortunately the film itself is forgettable. This is what I would refer to as ‘dark-lite’ storytelling; the film does centre on the darker nuances of the story, but this is ‘dark’ of the Twilight, teenage variety. Charlize is sumptuous as the beauty-mad Queen (although her accent can be a little slack at times) and the interpretation of her magic mirror is unique as is the all-female village where mothers have disfigured themselves to escape the wrath of the Queen, but the dwarves themselves (a hodgepodge of famous names including Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone and Nick Frost) lack the all-consuming personality you might have expected.

All in all, this is an enjoyable movie and worth watching if you keep your expectations low and lose yourself in the visual imagery and the struggle for the only power many women recognise: the ability that their beauty and sexuality has to divide nations, drive men to war and cause many to lose their minds.

Mise-en-scène: The Virgin Suicides

To revive my seldom used Media Studies skills I have decided to add a new section to my blog entitled: Mise-en-scene, to unravel what particular shots within various movies, in this case ‘The Virgin Suicides’ reveal about the characters, the tone of the film and its implications. Please do not read if you do not want the film spoilt for you!

Cecilia in the tree

Cecilia, the youngest of the Lisbon sisters, is depicted as a melancholy malcontent.  She is the first of the sisters to feel deeply discontent with life and ends up committing suicide. After her death, Cecilia haunts the sisters as well as the neighbourhood boys who revered them. The film juxtaposes the childlike fantasies of the girls with their deadening home life. The girls are constantly projecting themselves elsewhere; in dreams, costumes, photographs and in nature.

Here Cecilia is positioned on a tree. She is wearing white which represents purity and innocence but the adorning of her arm with a bracelet and her pose indicate that she is aware of her impending womanhood and all the implications this entails. She is looking upward, as if to suggest that even if this picturesque natural surrounding she is still restless. Her expression is wistful but also slightly bored, as if she is wishing to be somewhere else, but also understands that nowhere can fulfil her. The elm tree she rests on is dying which represents Cecilia’s own longing for, and eventual demise. Cecilia is part of the tree; part of its nature, its poison and its death. Cecilia almost looks like an angel, a bride for God, looking to heaven, bored and unsatisfied with life, and ready to depart. Cecilia is literally embracing her own death.

Cecilia’s bracelets

The focus on the film is the death of childhood as we transition into adolescence. For the girls this death is also literal. Here Cecilia sits with her arms bandaged but she has also adorned her wrists with colourful bracelets. The juxtaposition with beauty and pain in the film is almost masochistic. The girls physically, visibly suffer behind the beauty of their belongings and paraphanaelia. Their suffering, which is represented physically by her self-harm, is literally hidden by the adorning of jewellery. She is bound and contained by her suffering. She is not able or free to express it openly. Notice the position of her hands, as if she were there to catch water, only her hands are closed. The colours are muted, soft and feminine – a stark contrast to red blood, further showing the subduing of Cecilia’s despair. Her suffering is literally contained, stifled, repressed and decorated, displayed to the world as a childish error rather than a cry for help.

Sisterhood

Here, Lux, Bonnie, Mary and Therese embrace and comfort one another. The girls are in transition between girlhood and womanhood, a time that is a blur for many culturally and socially. There is no clear definition of when a girl ceases to be a girl and is now a woman. The paraphernalia surrounding the girls echoes childhood: the pinks and the teddy bear on the floor. Lux and Bonnie specifically seek the comfort of their eldest sister Mary, like children, nestling into her. Mary has a knowing and maternal look on her face. Therese in particular is cast aside from the girls, draped suggestively in white like a sacrificial virgin, looking submissive and alert. She is ‘apart’ from the others; she is neither childlike nor maternal. The girls represent three particular states of women: the child, the mother and the whore. This represents the confusion the girls feel about their identities as women in terms of how they see themselves and how they are seen by others.

Lux, the car and the cigarette

Lux is the last sister to kill herself. In this scene she is found by police whilst a police car and ambulance waits outside. Lux has made the transition from girl to woman. She is in the front seat of the car (possibly the driver’s seat) indicating that she is in charge and has made her own decision. She is clutching a cigarette in a limp hand which is indicative both of the poison in her own nature and the ‘maturity’ of her character. It is also an allude to her method of choice for suicide. Lux is happy to play at being a woman in terms of her promiscuity, but she doesn’t feel truly like a woman, as is evident in her boredom, her whimsy and escapism. The pose of the arm is almost suggestive and sexual, as if she is a grown woman soliciting attention.  Lux has been in the dark of the garage but the policeman (male figures) have opened the garage door and allowed light to enter. This might be indicative of Lux’s own awakening as a result of the loss of her virginity to trip, revealing to her another world which her parents refuse to let her into. She has been shut into her childhood, but eventually the light of adulthood will be let in.

Angels on the stairs

The Lisbon sisters are often depicted as unattainable, asexual and angelic. The boys revere and fantasize about them. They voyeuristically follow the girls, but they never know them. As such, the girls appear aloof, superficial and mysterious. This enables the boy’s fantasies of them to continue. To truly know them might dampen and damage their heightened perception of what the girls are. Here the girls are depicted before their prom standing on their stair way, like angels in heaven. This is exemplified by the sole use of the colour white. The dark rail alludes to the knowing nature that the girls cling to, the one link that binds them and also cements the idea that the girls have embraced death. The girls are not sexualised in this image. They are modestly dressed and appear virginal. Lux is placed at the highest point of the staircase as she is the girl most admired and adored by the neighbourhood boys. Interestingly, ‘Lux’ is Latin for ‘light’.

Cecilia in the bathtub

Cecilia appears dead, but she has slit her wrists and is lying in the bathtub. She looks tranquil, serene and accepting. The film often depicts life as misery and status and death as peace and freedom. Her gaze is fixed upwards as if she has found what she has been looking for. There is still a slight look of boredom on Cecilia’s face. This is typical of Cecilia, who is a fantasist but is essentially never pleased for very long. She looks like Ophelia, her hair splayed out around her. The blood in the bath is muted and almost pink and also signified the onset of Cecilia’s maturation. The light around her face is a blue white indicating purity but also coldness. The girls have always been seen as beautiful but unattainable. They are shiny veneers, but nobody has stopped to truly understand them.

Surrounding the tree

This picture is very telling. Again, the sisters look virginal, angelic and modest. They have shackled themselves to one of the local elm trees, which is due to be destroyed as it is contaminated. The girls feel a connection to the trees because they represent the girls own acceptance of and longing for death. The community wants to destroy the trees because they are sick and dying. They do not want the trees to contaminate the neighbourhood. What they do not understand is that the society inhabiting the neighbourhood is also sick. The girls realise this and are not afraid of death, unlike the neighbourhood, who would rather remove the trees than deal with the natural process of their demise.

Lux on the football field

Shortly after Lux loses her virginity to Trip after the prom, he abandons her on the football field. He later explains that he truly cared for Lux, but at that precise moment could not stand to be around her. He regrets that he was never able to tell her how he felt. The colours used are white, pink and blue. The colours are very muted as dawn emerges. Lux has woken up a new woman. She is literally no longer a child, in body or in mind. She has had her first experience of sex, disappointment and betrayal. This cements her own understanding life as a contaminated thing. She is lying on deadened grass on the football field (the traditional domain of men). She is still wearing her prom dress with the flower pinned to it. She is turning away from the camera, wistfully looking upward. The tone of the picture is melancholic. Lux looks vulnerable but also liberated. She has learnt that their love is crueller and colder than she expected. She now understands what her parents tried to shield her from, as much as she resents it. She is wizened by her first experience of love, betrayal and abandonment. Lux perhaps has a different incentive to the other sisters for suicide; she has learnt that she will be perceived as a fantasy object or as a sexual plaything; either the Madonna or the whore. As she does not see herself is either, she is forced instead to reject these inferences, removing herself altogether.

First love

Before Lux is betrayed by Trip, the two look like a fairytale couple. Lux is again looking upward, but this time not to the heavens, but into Trip’s eyes. Lux is dressed in white (again, virginal and innocent) and Trip in black symbolising experience but also corruption (his own corruption and his ‘corruption of Lux’). Again Lux means light, and Trip is the dark force that impedes her childlike existence and shows her the world she and her sisters are being protected from. We can visibly see Lux, after all, we are always voyeurs to the sister’s story, but Trip is hidden from us; unknown, deceptive and shady. The background is muted white and blue, looking like a starry night, but also warning us of the unhappy ending to the couple’s puppy love.

Surprise!

Death in this film is always shown as an escape or as something to be celebrated. Here Bonnie hangs herself, but she is dressed for the occasion and the room is strewn with party items, indicating that her death is more of a party than a tragedy. Of course, the imagery clashes horrifically with the family’s loss of their five beautiful daughters, but for the girls themselves, this was a premeditated plan with the intention to be liberated from the shackles of their family, religion and the expectations they have been entrenched in since birth.

Dreaming of Lux

Here, Lux is remembered by the neighbourhood boys. She and her sisters are immortalised by them. Lux is still depicted as an angelic thing, breaking through the summer sky amidst the puffy white clouds. She winks at the boys suggestively and teasingly. It is this contrast of innocence with maturity that the girls come to represent as if they know secrets that no-one else does. The faded essence of Lux implies that she is a memory, a fantasy – not a flesh and blood thing, and that the whole thing has always been a game.

Lux and the unicorn

The boys remember the girls through a filter. They envision them as fairytale things, similar to unicorns, the girls that the boys want can never really exist. Here Lux is faded again (she is still a dream/fantasy) and she is suggestively dressed. She represents joy, freedom and virility. This is the Lux that Lux wants to be (free) but also the Lux that the boys want (an intriguing mixture of innocent and sexual). She is mythologized beside the unicorn indicating the impossibility and naivety of their desire for her to be what they want. Lux can never be their fantasy thing. In death, she has become cemented as an idealised creation always available to them in their dreams. The sisters are as much an escape for the boys, as death is for the girls.

Girlhood items

Tellingly the girl’s belongings represent a clash of religious imagery and beauty products. The crucifix is pronounced and hangs over a perfume bottle like a noose representing the girl’s suffocation and guilt at being women. The items are chaotic and cluttered. Most of the items are coloured white and blue for purity, but the red nail varnish and amber bottles indicate a more sexual and attention seeking element. The products represent awareness of femininity, beauty and sexual appeal (highlighted further by the freedom represented by the birds) stifled or repressed by the religious icons, which evoke a sense of confusion and sin.

Cecilia’s diary

The boys know the girls through Cecilia’s diary entries. They imagine her writing in a cornfield. Cecilia embodies escape and a desire for freedom. She is not enamoured with the physical world. Cecilia is often perceived in nature where she can be a natural thing, and not a construct. The golden colour highlights the sense of fantasy and nostalgia surrounding her.

Sickness, anyone?

Green desserts and a green camera hue represent society’s sickness. The film focuses on the obsession with happiness at all costs and the inability to understand misery and mental illness. The green colour is a stark contrast to the earlier peaceful hues used, indicating that the neighbourhood is growing sicker, the contamination is here to stay and society is gorging itself on sickness.

Finger in the water

One of the girls has thrust her finger into a small tank of water, possibly housing sea monkeys. The hand itself is adorned with a ring, almost as if the child is a bride. The book below the tank reads ‘Sacred will of sacrifice’. The girl’s death is a preservation of themselves; their innocence, beauty and youth. Water is often associated with the unconscious and with femininity. The link between the girl and the world beneath the water suggests an understanding of her own subconscious mind (at the very bottom the need for sacrifice) and an acceptance of this, on her own terms. It also represents the effect of a penetrating outside force shifting the dynamic of a self-contained world. The girls own external experiences cause them to feel desperately unhappy in the stifling stasis of their childhood home.

Ted

Seth MacFarlane is the marmite of the comedy world, segregating audiences between a tidal wave of love and loathe. I am both a fan of ‘Family Guy’ and ‘American Dad’ but I just could not bring myself to enjoy Ted as much as was intended.

The plot centres on man child John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg), who as a boy, wished that his toy teddy bear would come to life and be his best friend forever. He makes the right wish on the right night and Ted springs to life comforting him on thunder filled nights. Fast forward a good few years, bypassing a blip of 15 minutes of fame for the bear that can speak and it seems that Ted is everything deplorable in a human being deposited into the sweet, enchanting exterior of a toy bear.

Perhaps this is the fundamental flaw with the character of Ted. He is simply unlikeable. He drinks, does copious amounts of drugs (he settles on ‘Mind rape’ after debating ‘Gorilla Panic’ and ‘This is permanent’), uses vegetables to penetrate hookers, is unemployed and throws the F bomb around at an explosive rate. Ted is essentially a 15 year old, responsibility free Peter Griffin, and not just in terms of the voice which is UNMISTAKEABLY Griffin, but the demeanour, the behaviour and the hostility. Ted’s sweet features and sentimental back-story don’t do much to deter us from the fact that is a rather repugnant character. Perhaps it is simply that I’ve outgrown McFarlane’s humour, or perhaps it’s that ‘Ted’ is too much like Griffin to be appreciated as a truly unique, one off character.

There is a certain audience that would gravitate to Ted. This would be the same audience that appreciates Stifler or Mary styling her hair with ‘hair gel’. It’s not an immature or unrefined audience. Most of us have a space or two in our bellies for a bit of toilet humour, but when the entire character is constructed around such gags with little to no redeeming qualities, the character becomes hard to stomach. The character of Ted is 98% jokes with only a 20-30% laughter success rate. In fact much of the humour was generated by other characters, rather than Ted himself, and he worked best with the odd quip or one liner, rather than any lengthy conversational exchange.

John and Ted’s friendship is one of debauchery, co-dependency and fun. Ted is John’s security blanket from his childhood but also a representation of simpler, happier times. Their friendship is dysfunctional but real and clearly of much importance and value to both. Two may be company but three is most definitely a crowd, enter John’s girlfriend Lori (panther like Mila Kunis), who wishes for a more mature relationship with John which is hindered by Ted’s predominance in John’s life. Whilst John dithers between his future with his girlfriend and the past cultivated between himself and Ted, father and son duo Donny and Robert would very much appreciate taking Ted off of his hands!

Ted is a mixture of humour and fantasy but don’t be fooled, this is primarily a romantic comedy with a wise cracking talking teddy bear thrown in.

The crux of Ted seems to be a man’s choice between childhood and manhood. Ted represents John’s ties to his former self and Lori represents the potential of his adult future. But does he really have to lose one to have the other? Or can a man’s inner child survive alongside his enlightened mature self? This is the classic ‘bros before hoes’ tale; should John choose Ted or Lori? His best bud or the love of his life? Does he have to choose at all?

Some of the jokes are pure and simple hilarity, as if ‘Family Guy’ animations were transported into the real world. There were moments that made me explode with demonic laughter, but for the most part the film falls flat and fails to live up to its immense potential. It could be that McFarlane has been heavily censored or perhaps it was his intention to deviate slightly from the controversial foundations of ‘Family Guy’ to breach a wider audience. Either way, something fundamental is missing and heavy segments of ‘Ted’ simply sag.

Mark, Seth and Mila fulfil what’s required of them, but the sneaky scene stealers are the bit parts. I can’t help but think that if their roles were elevated, the film might have drawn a few more laughs from me. Giovanni Ribisi is creepier than a creeky staircase as crazed fan-boy father Donny whilst his Susan Boyle lookalike son Robert portrayed by Aedin Mincks is the Veruca Salt of this story; spoilt and deplorable. There is a lengthy cameo appearance from ‘Flash Gordon’ front man Sam J. Jones and a cameo from Norah Jones that made little to no sense to me whatsoever. But for me the hugest accolade belongs to Patrick Warburton who famously voices Joe Swanson of ‘Family Guy’ as the undecided homosexual who eventually comes out with a mild mannered Ryan Reynolds.

Don’t get me wrong; parts of ‘Ted’ will have you cradling your split sides in tickled agony, but far too much of it falls flat, and if we take out the talking teddy bear, we simply have a hiccough between the love story of Mark and Mila, and therefore it essentially feels a little lazy.

The Dark Knight Rises

Selena Kyle: There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.

Some films are heralded by the sound of rampant applause and acclaim long before they even make it to the big screen. One such film is the third and supposedly final in Christopher Nolan’s revamp of the campy Batman series, to create a sleek, stealthy, sinister world of decadent darkness.

Eight years on from the harrowing events of The Dark Knight, Gotham resides in a state of melancholy peace following on from the tragic death of the cities former hero Harvey Dent and climactic capture of Batman’s warped  ‘dog chasing a car’ nemesis the Joker.

Millionaire socialite Bruce Wayne has also retired from the public sphere, whiling away time in his palatial surroundings at Wayne Manor, convinced that life no longer has anything to offer him since the murder of his long standing flame Rachel. Physically in detriment and mentally distracted, Wayne is no longer the powerful hero the city had come to depend on.

Unfortunately, he is forced to don his leathers again, roused out by the craft and cunning of cat burglar Selena Kyle. A new antagonist has ventured into town, an adversary far more physically powerful and brutal than any of Batman’s former contenders – Bane. Recruiting disillusioned men from the world above down in the sewers, Bane quietly builds a formidable army to assist him with destroying Gotham. It is not simply that Bane wants to eradicate Gotham from the map (though he does indeed want this). He firstly wants to give the people of Gotham hope, hope for freedom and hope for escape, before plunging them into total eradication.

Tricked by Catwoman into a confrontation with Bane, Wayne is defeated and locked in a cell in a remote desert prison. The aesthetic of the prison outlines Bane’s concept for defeating Gotham in perfect clarity. All prisoners, from their dank and dark surroundings, can glimpse the beaming light of hope and freedom above. All they must do to claim it is climb the rope and escape. Unfortunately, none of the prisoners have ever achieved this, except one, a child. Bane tantalizingly teases Wayne by providing him with video footage of the destruction and despair he reeks on Gotham in his absence causing Wayne to begin focusing on sharpening his mind and developing the potential of his body.

Meanwhile Bane isolates the city of Gotham by detonating several devices that render it impossible for the inhabitants to leave. He forces the wealthy and powerful into hiding, returning the city to the damaged, despondent, disillusioned, imprisoned and impoverished, releasing prisoners chained up during the Dent Act and revealing the truth about the actions of former Hero Harvey Dent. Now that the city belongs to ‘the people’, in a warped re-enactment of the Last Judgement, the accused are forced to choose death or exile, forced onto the frozen wastes of Gotham before plunging to their deaths in the water below.

Now that Bane has provided the citizens with a glimmer of hope, reclaiming the city from their rich oppressors, he can wait quietly as the bomb slowly ticks down. But Wayne has grappled with a very important finding. He cannot escape the pit when he uses the rope and inches his way closer to the top. Instead he mimics the actions of the child who escaped before him. A child who freed themselves by lunging their body forward, powered only by the fear of death, the desperation of escape and the tenacity toward freedom. Accepting his fear of death, Bruce manages to escape the confines and returns to his city.

What follows is the reunion of our protagonists and anti heroes, Batman, Gordon, Fox, Blake and Catwoman as they attempt to thwart Bane’s plans, save their city and expose an unlikely adversary.

The film ends in such a way that indicates the franchise could be returned to. This could be the closing of a chapter, or the gentle shutting of a book, but it could also be planting the seeds for an entire new direction. Certain facts and loose ends are left up in the air, leaving us only to assume that this is the end, or a new beginning for several of the characters involved.

Nolan is renowned for casting unpredictable wild card choices that tend to confound and polarise audiences. His decisions are never ‘obvious’. He gave the role of the Joker to Heath Ledger when he was only really known as a romantic lead in teen fair such as 10 things I hate about you, and what he received was a man who enmeshed and immersed himself in the role with such totality that he became the twisted face of manic insanity and chaos. In this film he bestows the role of Catwoman to a rather unlikely candidate, star of The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada, wholesomely lantern eyed Anne Hathaway who similarly transforms and transcends her limitations to become the sinisterly sensuous Selena. Anne surprisingly slips into the sombre mood with effortless ease, creating a crafty, cautious cat of a woman, scarlet lipped, kohl rimmed bottomless black eyes, lycra clad and buxom. I have a feeling Anne’s career is going to go in a completely different direction after her participation in this franchise.

It is Nolan’s faith in these seemingly random choices that creates a sumptuous cast that surprises and ensnares. Many mocked him for casting unconventional beauty Maggie Gyllenhaal as Wayne’s love interest rival, and likewise his decisions for many other roles are unusual, but work astonishingly to breathe life into their roles. It is interesting to see actors and actresses sizzle and intensify under Nolan’s watch, shedding former skins and showing their true capacities to become new characters.

Christian Bale brings his usual thoughtful, reticent intensity to the Batman role, Michael Caine astounds in more emotional, heartfelt exchanges between Alfred and Bruce, Gary Oldman is fantastic as ever, reprising his role as Commissioner Gordon, Cillian Murphy is suitably bewildered and dishevelled as Dr Crane and Morgan Freeman lends his gentle tenacity to the role of Lucius Fox. But there are two other newcomers that really steal the scenes for me.

The forceful intense tenacity of Tom Hardy who also incorporates a graceful, magnetic vulnerability is the villain of the piece Bane – literally the bane of Batman’s existence in this movie. His presence is startling and instant. It is at times difficult to understand all of Bane’s lines (something the Batman franchise consistently suffers from) due to his masked exterior, but Tom’s eyes and muscles do all of the talking to create a truly formidable and memorable opponent.

Nolan has brought in many of his Inception pals, gracing Joseph Gorden Levitt with the role of Blake, a police officer branded a ‘hot head’ who is promoted to Detective thanks to Gordon’s recognition of his talents. Gorden-Levitt has a youthful vulnerability hiding in a brooding exterior that make him perfect for this dynamic world of Nolan’s creation.

Another Inception star, the stunning Marion Cotillard plays the understated role of Bruce’s new love interest Miranda Tate, who is not all she seems. A startling face that only has a fraction of screen time most definitely deserves a shout out, the baby faced; adult eyed Joey King, who portrays the role of the child escaping the pit.

Nolan creates a dark, gothic, hyper realistic atmosphere compared to Burton’s earlier campy style. This world is a bit of NY, a little London and a sprinkling of Chicago. Not so unrecognisable to us, but a stone’s throw away. Shakespeare used to set plays picking apart London’s social and cultural issues by transposing them to Italian towns. Nolan behaves similarly. Particularly with the world as it is, many of Batman’s themes and points resonate poignantly. Have the rich and powerful held the poor and desperate down for too long? Are many of us dual, doing what we can to survive in the concrete jungles we’ve created? Batman is essentially a humourless franchise, with only the odd second of inferred humour. It is a thick, muddy, swamp like world of depravity, money and evil.  Hans Zimmer demonstrates this with his delicious soundtrack that will literally raise the hairs on your arms and tingle and jangle along your nerves. He creates music built for flight or fight, with a power and rawness rarely matched. Action fans will not be disappointed at the animal confrontations of Bane and Batman that had me hanging on my seat with apprehension.

Batman has always been a study in morality. Gotham is a world where good and evil do battle behind guises and masks very much mirrored in our own world. An exposed face can do more good hidden and anonymised. Unfortunately, this film will forever be tarnished by the real life actions of a crazed murderer in a small Colorado town, but this is not a film that glamorises violence, this is a film that shows the necessity of fighting for what’s right, appreciating what we have and not taking things at face value.

Film Revisited: The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

Katsuro: Hey girls! Hey mister! What an insane world we live in.

Horror is an interesting genre. Our media is saturated with reports of human violence and depravity on a daily basis. In fact, at the time of my writing, 24 year old James Holmes wounded and killed several cinema goers at a midnight screening of ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, another film that revels in the depiction of acts of terror and annihilation. Our society and culture is one in which real life crime and murder is sharply juxtaposed alongside sensationalised, no holds barred movie violence. Horror consistently lulls in exhilarated audiences. There is a definitive pull in people to witness, to inspect, and to voyeuristically be part of the dark damage and danger in others as they commit the most deplorable of acts. In 1998, artist Tracey Emin unveiled ‘My Bed’, a trashy ode to sex, alcoholism and bed ridden breakdowns, and called it art. In the same way Tom Six has made a film about three people being sewn together and called it ‘horror’. If true horror is about presenting audiences with the vile and unimaginable, breathing life into the warped, twisted and unnatural, then Six succeeds.

I’ve long been fascinated with the horror genre; at the insight and revelation it can provide as it enables us to delve into the darker, more nightmarish aspects of some of societies sicker individuals. Tom Six’s 2010 release ‘The Human Centipede (First Sequence)’ is a film that has extracted much curiosity and controversy from horror lovers and loathers alike. Many reacted and recoiled with horror at a concept that is truly distasteful and projected in a most harrowing and relentless way. For this reason, I decided to open Pandora’s Box and watch a film that both intrigued and revolted me in equal measure.

The concept of The Human Centipede is simple. Lindsay and Jenny are native New Yorkers on a road trip through Europe. Currently vacationing in Germany, the two are destined for nightclub ‘Bunker’ to meet a companion. En route their car breaks down and they seek solace at the home of Dr Josef Heiter. It soon becomes apparent that Heiter is not the most compassionate of hosts. He pretends to call a car company to resolve the girl’s problem, lacing their water with rohypnol and watching the drug take its drowsy effect. Lindsay and Jenny awake beside a man who Heiter announces is not ‘a match’. He promptly disposes of the man and replaces him with Katsuro, a Japanese tourist.

Heiter introduces himself and presents his idea. Through Heiter, Six introduces us to a concept that sickening sinks to a yet untold level. Heiter, a retired leading surgeon sustained himself with a career spent separating Siamese twins. This idea of separation led him to a fascination with the possibility of conjoining, of completing and creating. His first attempt at concocting a pet for himself emerged when he connected three Rottweiler’s to form a ‘three hound construction’. The Dr reveals that he now intends to concoct a ‘Siamese triplet’ consisting of components A, B and C. As he anesthetises his patients, Lindsay releases her binds and escapes, sealing herself in an upstairs room, but Heiter, growing increasing aggressive at his escaped victim, appears at the window with a loaded gun, smashes the glass and follows her as she runs away and falls into a swimming pool. Heiter picks Lindsay as the middle piece for punishment and pushes a button to entomb Lindsay in the pool. The electricity cuts out and she returns to the house to release Jenny, interestingly choosing to leave Katsuro behind. Lindsay manages to drag Jenny outside but is shot in the neck by Heiter’s anaesthesia dart.

The three awaken connected and bandaged – a new perverted, unnatural creation, laid at their masters feet. Heiter attempts to ‘train’ and ‘torment’ his pet but tires of the lack of cooperation from the lead Katsuro who he taunts and teases with racist slurs. Katsuro’s screams of anguish keep him awake at night and he realises that his pet is less of the compliant subordinate that he desired. The centipede rear, Jenny, is contaminated with blood poisoning and Heiter realises that he must replace her, creating a four person centipede instead.

Two detectives, Voller and Kranz investigate the area attempting to locate the missing tourists but find themselves targets for Heiter’s groundbreaking experiment. The film ends unapologetically with the deaths of Voller, Kranz, Heiter, Jenny and the suicide of Katsuro who believes his selection as part of the centipede to be punishment for his mistreatment and neglect of his family. Lindsay alone remains alive, trapped between her two dead ‘body parts’.

What I have witnessed is a stark, bleak, brutal, nihilistic exploration of the meaningless of human life and the bizarre, moronic ease with which it can be snuffed out and stripped away with relentless, immediate, unapologetic and unforgiving readiness.

How can I organise my thoughts clearly when a wave of numb, shocked, apathy washed over me upon completion of this film?

The first issue I wanted to address was language. Heiter targets three foreign tourists; two American females and one Japanese male. Prior to this, language itself serves as an unbreakable barrier for the women when their car breaks down and a German driver pulls up alongside them. He converses with the girls in German but the three are unable to understand one another. As such he is unable to assist them and instead regresses into crude sexual facial expressions. Heiter himself speaks in German when he initially becomes angry with the girls leaving them essentially excluded from the root of comprehending such unbound nonsensical hostility. He is angry, and the girls know he is angry, but they do not know why. The language barrier is an interesting way of making that which is already, by the very twisted sickness of its nature, impenetrable and unknowable, even more maddeningly evasive. We can never bring ourselves to understand the deplorable workings of such an evil mind, but even if there was some way, some insight to be garnered through communication, this is blocked too and inaccessible. The Doctor does not want to converse with them, he does not want understanding, he does not want to be understood, he wants to use them.

Katsuro himself speaks no English or German and so he is completely alienated. He cannot ask why, he cannot plead for help and he cannot beg for escape. Lindsay and Heiter regularly converse but Katsuro, ironically the front of the centipede, is completely unable to comprehend a word the Doctor says. He cannot comfort the girls, nor can he insult the Doctor. He is simply stuck in the limbo of his own language. However, language is not needed to understand this assault, because it cannot be understood at all. The issue of language is one further barrier, but even with words, there is no way to grasp the horror and pointlessness of Heiter’s experiment.

Language is one in which Six enables us to experience the dehumanisation of his three protagonists. Katsuro in particular, in not being able to communicate with the Doctor, is reduced to no more than a yapping dog that the Doctor cannot understand need not answer to. Lindsay and Jenny, the mid and rear of the centipede are stripped and silenced of language altogether, stitched and sewn up so that Heiter need not address them. They are not the head of the centipede; they are merely its body. He has removed any autonomy and independence and any sense of rebellion, of courage and of spirit is literally stuck and sandwiched. Lindsay, who puts up the biggest fight, is rendered the most helpless.

The film also got me thinking about common horror themes; the sense of disassociation and individualism that abounds in modern day civilisation that enables so many to commit such atrocities unprovoked and often undiscovered. You may be familiar with Josef Fritzl who imprisoned his daughter Elizabeth in his basement and impregnated her. Many feel separate and isolated, culture and community has broken down and so individuals live hedonistic, secular life’s, barricaded in their own fantasies and escapes. Some escape to alcohol, others drugs, some sex, or video games, others retreat into a deeper, denser madness. How must one perceive ones fellow humans in order to be able to treat them in this way? Killers commonly proclaim that they felt distanced and disconnected from other humans, that they saw them as animals, or lesser still. On the whole, we are disconnected from nature, from animals, from others, from ourselves.

Heiter is a misanthrope. He confesses: ‘I don’t like human beings’. What he likes is the idea of a pet, a slave. He can transform human beings into something animal, something he feels is subservient and malleable.

The film is also an exploration of perversion and what constitutes a perverted act. Most cultures and civilisations, bound by some form of modesty or decency, are unravelling at an alarming rate as our concept of freedom clashes with ideas about morality and respect. Sex is no longer taboo. Instead it is sensationalised, saturated, commoditised and capitalised as never before. The film insinuates that the acceptance, tolerance, perhaps even normalcy of everyday perversion has enabled and exemplified larger acts. It is these smaller, almost unnoticeable perversions that act as a microcosm of a larger, festering truth. The driver who initially appears to want to help the girls instead makes a salacious remark about ‘fucking’ and makes crude facial gestures. Heiter seems to receive some sexual pleasure from the fantasy of his centipede. He reacts with great joy when Lindsay is forced to swallow Katsuro’s excrement. There is something pornographic about his joining and merging of the three tourists, the implied threesome, the intimate physical connection forged and the humiliation and training of his new ‘pet’. The film is asking us: what is the line? How much can we watch? How much can we take? What is an analysis of the debauch of the soul and what is simply a peek into the vapid black hole of soullessness?

The nature of quick, fast, instant access to anything, including that which was previously taboo, means that every fantasy, every desire, every need and every want from sex to violence to fast food can be acted on immediately with little pre-thought and little analysis afterward. We no longer need to mediate on why we want what we want. We can simply have it. The horror genre is constructed in such a way that it must continue to out-titillate and tantalise itself. This is something sex and violence have in common. ‘Vanilla’ sex and ‘vanilla’ violence can only satiate the hungry viewer for so long, before the baying mob craves more to satisfy their cravings. ‘Scream’ revealed a potent horror truth, a sacred rule, sequels must have a higher kill count…and the killings must be more inventive. Contrasting Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ and ‘The Birds’ with modern day horrors such as ‘Saw’ and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, we can see a shift from horror of the mind (the warped Norman Bates for instance) and pure, brutal, unflinching, visual horror that leaves no room for exploration or understanding. In the Human Centipede, there is no strict, stark motivation. We are presented with a clean, sterile monster with no morals and a loose conscience, who seems to have no real reason to be doing what he does. And we like to rationalise evil with reasons because then we can understand it and box it away.

Many horror films provide us with a villain we can analyse because boy do we love to ‘understand’ the bad boy. Jigsaw is motivated by karmic redemption, Norman Bates was the victim of severe mental illness…but what intentions can we instigate for Heiter?  He is an intelligent, amoral man of great precision and skill who creates a centipede because he can, because his dextrous hands can breathe life to the brutality of his every fantasy, he can create his very own monster a la Frankenstein, and in a world of separation, disillusion and veneers of normalcy, he can do just that with complete protection and anonymity. We are protected from being uncovered because we have become unknowable.

The film generated further ideas for me also….

• What is the significance of a German doctor as the films adversary? Is it a parody, a spoof of German efficiency and history?
• What is the significance of three foreign tourists as the protagonists? Is this an exploration of the idea that the ‘other’ is always excluded, ostracised and exterminated by the native?
• What is the significance of Katsuro’s playboy tattoo? Does this represent the normalisation of hyper sexuality and the commoditisation of sex?
• What is the significance of Katsuro being at the front of the centipede? Does this reflect and represent patriarchy? Do women literally have to swallow the s*** of male leadership and influence from a position of enforced powerlessness?

The Human Centipede could easily be dismissed as something sick, irrelevant and banal, but I found it both disconcerting and worryingly relevant. I think Six’s style of straightforward, merciless cruelty reveals a great deal about the fragmented psyche of supposed normal individuals who commit abhorrent crimes. Our newspapers and TV’s are littered with them. Are we really any closer to understanding the true motivation of such consuming evil?

I’d like to explore some of Six’s own revelations and inspirations regarding the making of this film.

• Six explained that the motivation for this story came from a joke shared with a friend regarding an appropriate punishment for paedophiles. This for me introduced an interesting truth – perfectly normal people can envision pure evil as punishment for something they consider distasteful and morally abhorrent. Evil can be a reaction to other evil
• Six loathes political correctness and the Human Centipede is definitely as un-PC as they come
• Six was fascinated with shows such as Big Brother and more importantly the idea that people partook in unusual activities when they felt they were unmonitored. We are conditioned to behave a specific way when we are watched but when we are not, what comes out? What outlet do we have for the ‘darker’, uglier aspects of our natures?
• Six reflected that ‘The Human Centipede’ is in part a look at fascism and the ripples and repercussions of guilt felt by generations of ordinary Germans in the aftermath of WWII. He explained the film as a “grotesque [parody] of the German psyche”. We can dehumanise others when we feel they have dehumanised others in turn. History repeats itself. We are guilty of the very thought processes that have incited hatred in every corner and quadrant of the world
• Six enjoys using and breaking various horror movie clichés, such as the naive, gullible leads, the wandering through the woods and the broken down car. This sets an uneasy contrast between audience expectations and the gravitas of the subject matter

I believe that the horror genre continues to be an essential medium for the focus and exploration of our darker selves. I believe horror can be an important outlet and assist us with grasping and comprehending others completely alienating acts. Was this a film that needed to be made? This is not your typical slasher movie, nor is there a satisfying conclusion where there is a glimmer of hope for the victim. This is bleak, dire material, much like ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, ‘Dogtooth’, ‘Antichrist’ and ‘Melancholia’. There is no rhyme or reason, no sense nor logic, to the calm, static madness of Heiter and the insanity of his scheme. Is this a film to generate discussion or is Six merely seeing how far he can push us, laughing all the way? There are sensitive, psychological, poignant horrors and then there are relentless road runners that go straight to hell and don’t dwell.

Undoubtedly, The Human Centipede will continue to be a cult classic, dividing and polarising audiences for some time to come.

The Big Year

What would you do if you had one year in which you could do anything? Chances are it wouldn’t be bird spotting, but Brad Harris (Jack Black), Kenny Bostick (Owen Wilson) and Stu Preissler (Steve Martin) are doing exactly that, participating in a ‘Big Year’. During this year, they have to ‘spot’ as many birds as possible, from the common to the elusive. The participant with the most spots (no, not the acne kind) is crowned King (or Queen) of the Big Year. The previous Birder of the year, Bostick (Wilson) is desperate to defend his maddeningly excessive record of 732, abandoning his wife Jessica (Rosamund Pike) and their attempts to conceive a child in order to ascertain who of the frenetic bird watchers are his foes and opponents.

The film is an intriguing look at the reality of following our dreams.

Firstly, when you confess your dreams, most people will bluntly state: what the f***?  You’re giving up X, Y, Z to do WHAT? Or look at you with dementedly confused acceptance. The reality is, one person’s dream is another’s nightmare (or night in). Brad (divorced and unemployed at 36) has a father who simply cannot fathom his sons passion for birding and his desire to derail a year of his life in pursuit of cries, calls and sightings, instead of getting his s*** together. Stu’s firm cannot comprehend why he would throw away a lifetime building up a successful business just to abandon it overnight for a flight of fancy, and Kenny’s wife is infuriated and devastated that furry critters come first for her distanced, compulsive husband, leaving her very much a bird in her own cage struggling to keep the day to day running in his absence.

Secondly, what is your reason for pursuing this dream?

For Kenny, its glory, the cementing of his success, an achievement, which he  viciously guards like a mother hen fending off potential challengers to her young. Kenny would forsake a family and the actual continuation of his name and lineage for a title and the status and accomplishment that comes with that.

For Stu, it’s a shot at another kind of big time, away from business and board rooms.

For Brad, it’s about doing something that he genuinely wants to do.

Thirdly, what allows you to follow a dream?

For Brad, its easy….he’s already messed up his life. There is no real risk or danger. Without a job or family, he has the freedom to make mistakes and act for his own interests.

For Stu, it’s a supportive wife and the assurance to walk away from an established, decade’s long career.

For Kenny, it’s sheer tenacity and willpower to pursue that dream to the brink of the horizon and back.

Finally, what fulfilment do you receive from chasing or reaching that dream?

For Stu and Kenny, the contentment is in the taking part, the journey, even if both had a strong thirst to win.

For Bosick, the measuring stick is the victory at the end. He doesn’t have time to forge genuine friendships or nurture his outside obligations along the way.

It seems there are two types of dream chasers (there are probably more but maths was never my strong point).

The type that chase a dream for the view along the way, and the type that are out to meet an end goal.

I enjoyed this exploration of three men chasing a dream, all for different reasons and with different expectations, sacrifices and results.

You might remember the three leading men and star chasers for their comedic roles – Jack Black (School of Rock/Tropic Thunder), Owen Wilson (Zoolander/Wedding Crashers) and Martin (The Pink Panther/Cheaper by the Dozen) and although there are moments of hilarity, this is a touching drama and is unusually interesting despite the potentially dry subject matter. Don’t write this off as ‘just a film about birds’. It’s really a film about dreams and what we give up to chase them.

Film Revisited: Revolutionary Road

April Wheeler: Look at us. We’re just like everyone else. We’ve bought into the same, ridiculous delusion.

I remember first seeing Sam Mendes interpretation of ‘Revolutionary Road’ in the cinema with a friend. My relationship at the time was going through a ‘bleak’ patch and the film really struck a chord with me. What I witnessed was the disintegration of a once passionate and dynamic relationship; one that was transforming from desirous potential and intensity and festering into something hollow, stark and numbing. I have a slight obsession with the psychology of love and relationships, the climactic heady rise of the first few encounters and the steady plateauing that if not maintained leads to speedy disintegration. Because my views of relationships are less ‘Disney Princess rosy’ (I think monogamy and marriage are constructs and we are in fact designed to be with many partners, weathering the starts and ends of each experience), I am really drawn to films like this, which balance the early potential of new relationships, the abundance and fruitfulness of their fulfilment and the steady combustion as the passion wanes.

Frank and April Wheeler were once madly in love. They had expectations, dreams and desires for their future together. April wanted to be an actress, but that aspiration never really materialised in her life. Frank too had his own ambitions, and though he values the stability, consistency and prestige of his work, he despises the commute and tedium of his working life. April slowly becomes obsessed with the idea of relocating to Paris and of injecting into Frank a new dream or purpose. Having never achieved her ambition of being an actress, April seems to think the next best thing is helping Frank locate, define and achieve his own. The drudgery and disappointment of Suburban life only encourages the incorrigible April further. For her, the only solution is to relocate to Paris. In the suburbs, she is suffocating, drowning, flailing miserably in a sea of identical houses and white picket fences. Paris represents freedom, adventure, romance and spontaneity.

Frank coins the phrase ‘hopeless emptiness’ which is really quite a way to sum up the way that millions of people live their lives. The couple fire fight the maddening inertia of these two emotions, but all is not well in paradise. Frank embarks on an affair with a pretty work colleague and April sleeps with Shep, her neighbour’s husband, who has always secretly been in love with her. To complicate their plans, Frank receives a promotion at work which prompts him to rethink their choice to relocate and only intensifies Frank’s deeply engrained roots in the working world. April becomes pregnant and as such is literally shackled once again to the selfless role of motherhood, a role that she can no longer face with her keen awareness of a world beyond that promises freedom and relief from the narrow confines of her existence.

April quickly becomes unstable, disappointed and horrified at Frank’s desire to remain in the Suburbs and at her own bodies betrayal in becoming pregnant. Hysterical, unresponsive and temporarily insane, April sinks beneath the crushing weight of her evaded dream. Eventually, she decides that the only solution to her predicament is to abort her unborn child – the shackle, the weight, the prison that is preventing her from escaping Revolutionary Road, but the consequences of this act will finally shatter Frank and April’s paired unit, as escape she does, but not in the way she intended.

Shep and Milly Campbell, the neighbours, are the foils of Frank and April. They too are a young, idealistic couple, with tensions and half truths simmering beneath the surface. Their true desires, wants and dreams are left repressed and uncommunicated for fear of disrupting their artificially rich life – the veneer of Suburban safety and success – the pinnacle, the summit of 1940’s middle class experience. Who should admit to being unfulfilled, discontent, bored by the cushy lifestyle many aspire to and envy? The house, the husband, the children? The only character to understand April in particular is John, who is perceived by all other characters as deeply insane. Whether he actually is, or whether he was simply labelled as such at the time by society, John understands the hopelessness and emptiness the Wheelers are struggling against. He too is bored silly with life, and is locked away for it. John admires the Wheelers for planning their escape, but when their plans fall through, he becomes filled with venomous hostility and disillusionment, accusing them of cowardice and of facilitating their own downfall through the conceiving of their child.

There are many films made about the crushing discontent to be located in Suburbia (Little Children, American Beauty, Fight Club, The Matrix, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lolita, The Virgin Suicides). It’s a popular subject. The home, the heart of society, has come under constant attack for not being exciting or spontaneous enough, yet for many, it is still the dream – it is still the place to reach, the cherry on the cake, the sign of making it.

I can’t shake a stick at Suburban life. I was raised alongside my brother by loving parents in a beautiful home. We had regular holidays, went to school, had anything our little hearts desired and were raised well and raised happy. I made it to adulthood with few scrapes, bumps and misdemeanours. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without that safe and secure upbringing that my parents sacrified to provide. For a child, this foundation is bliss.

But looking with adult eyes, and perhaps its youth speaking, I can’t think of anything worse. I want a life of adventure, change, journeys, excitement, an element of unpredictability and danger. As such, watching Revolutionary Road terrified me. What if cohabiting, marriage and family is really like that? Silent, deadly, withheld hatred, resentment and disgust? Having spoken to many married people in my life, naturally the subject comes up and I’m always surprised and a little scared by the wistful longing and niggling regret that permeates a lot of these conversations. Regular warnings heed: “Live your life first”, “don’t settle too young”, “I wish I had done x, y, z first”, “my partner doesn’t want me to be x, y, z”, “I don’t think my partner was the one” and “no one tells you how hard marriage is. That’s one thing most people don’t want to talk about”.

What’s good about films like this as that they help viewers fall into one of two camps; those that will vigorously defend the importance of the family and the home and those that will desperately want to escape it, and that’s one of the interesting cornerstones of experiences that make humans so different and so fascinating.

I’ve never really wanted marriage, nor children, nor really a long lasting and forever relationship in the typical sense, but as I say, I’m young, and I have a lifetime to change my mind. For me, April’s life would be hell, simply because there’s so much I want to do from an independent standpoint and also because the losing of ‘love’ in its early, delightful stages saddens and bothers me. I’m terrified of the settling, of the slow dissipation of the maddening, Romeo and Juliet passion of the early days. Contrasting Frank and April’s early fight for freedom and castles in the sky thinking with their boring, ‘just like everybody else’ marriage made me sad and made me wonder, ‘is any love unusual, special or unique enough to survive this premeditated pattern?’.

This was a film about husbands and wives, two separate entities meshed as one, sacrificing dreams, wishes and expectations for a semblance of togetherness, and hating one another for it. April hated Frank for his cowardice, Frank hated April for her wanderlust and as Howard Givings turns down his hearing aid as he listens to his wife ramble at the end, we are left to bask in boredom, in the falling out of love, to wander in the husks that are left there, because the ruins were once a great civilisation.

Well worth a watch, but maybe not if you are dissatisfied with your lot in life at the moment. Today we have choices and that might be confusing and complicated, but thank god we have them. Today, if you don’t want to be a Frank or April, you don’t have to be.

The film also leaves you thinking that it’s not ‘settling’ that’s the problem. The problem is a culmination of factors ranging from differing expectations, lack of communication, deep rooted discontentment and even potentially mental illness? Is April a free spirit in a neatly stacked world, or is she depressive, anxious, permanently and pathological unhappy, and if so, what is the root of this? Is the issue the fact that new families are locked away in pretty secular isolated houses with no real sense of community or culture on which to depend? Would the Wheelers be any happier in Paris, city of history, love and culture? Or would their problems and maladies follow them? Are all women cut out to be mothers and wives, or are some women’s spirits simply crushed by taking on a role that ‘naturally’ fits them yes, but doesn’t suit them quite so realistically in day to day life? April wants to be special and she believes she is destined for something great. Is this the great, unshakable truth she’s forsakes, or is this the lie? Are any of us really special? Do any of us really deserve anything ‘different?’ April damns and reduces Frank in one quip that really caught my attention: ‘you’re just some boy that made me laugh at a party once’. Is this what we built our lives and futures around? The unreliability and inconsistency of fleeting romantic love?

Some have claimed that this film is what Jack and Rose’s relationship would have been like had they survived the Titanic together, but it is wonderful to see the beautiful Kate Winslet and the striking Leonardo DiCaprio together again.

 

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Sit down and be silent, because we need to talk about Kevin, something most people have been doing since the films debut.

Lynne Ramsays’ cinematic interpretation of Lionel Shrivers novel sizzled when it emerged in cinemas in 2011. Stark, bleak and unsettling, ‘We Need to talk about Kevin’ is the story of Eva Khatchadourian (the ever androgynous , astonishing Tilda Swinton), an independent, intelligent travel writer who soon settles into marriage and motherhood, whilst struggling to develop a functioning relationship with her unusual son, the titular character Kevin (mesmerizing newcomer Ezra Miller).

Kevin grows from a moody, bossy and sombre child into a sinister, introspective and highly aware young man; perpetually unhappy and bored. He enjoys playing his parents against one another, relishing the slow demolition of the family unit. He sadistically taunts his sister, savages the family guinea pig and projects a sunny yet sullen disposition to the outside world.

The culmination of Kevin’s erratic and unexplained behaviour climaxes with the massacre of his class mates with a bow and arrow. To Kevin’s ears, the screams of his peers merge eerily into the ecstasy of approving applause. The story, a weaving of past and present, unravels Eva’s past life of freedom and pleasure, kissing in the rain and travelling, the mundane hell of her personal experience of motherhood and the devastation and ruin caused by Kevin’s actions, as he steals from Eva her dream or illusion of family and the sacrifices she made, exchanging her past life of independence for one of motherhood.

As I haven’t read the book, the film roused many questions in me. What is Kevin’s motivation? As Eva asks him why, Kevin can only respond, ‘I used to think I knew’. Is the problem something innate within Kevin? Was he born with psychotic, even sociopathic, narcissistic, sadistic tendencies? Did he pick up on Eva’s lack of true love, claiming the only honest act she ever committed to him was breaking his arm? Was her lack of love the reason for his cold, harsh decision? Was the issue Franklins inability to acknowledge Kevin’s issues? Kevin is frequently described as uncomfortable, pointless, weird, something that his mother is ‘used to’ and harsh. Despite the emotional disconnect between Eva and Kevin, there is a clear connection; something that binds the two.

Everything Kevin does seem to serve as a punishment to his mother, perhaps an attempt to rouse a feeling of love or of hatred, but not of indifference and not of illusion. Eva tries to love Kevin and plays at loving him, but at least in the early years, she doesn’t and Kevin seems to sense this. The film is an interesting look at nature vs. nature. Are we born what we are, or do our environments condition us into being what we become? Kevin’s antagonistic dislike towards his mother and the usury, superficial relationship he shares with his father and sister are difficult to fully define and the film maddeningly refuses to explain why Kevin is the way he is, merely relishing the fact that Kevin represents the disillusionment of the family unit, the American dream, the potential of youth and the natural bond between mother and son. The film explores the child as a separate, wilful entity of the parents that has the potential to either elevate or devastate the parents’ expectations.

Contrary to many reviewers, I did not see Eva as a bad mother, merely a struggling one who was perhaps astounded herself by her lack of true maternal warmth. Despite this, she eagerly tries with Kevin but he thwarts her at every turn. Interestingly the only respite she receives from his caterwauling is the grating sound of road works.

Eva and Kevin are mirrors of one another. If Eva is acting at being a loving mother, then Kevin is acting at being a loving son with Franklin, and acting in the gymnasium when he slaughters his fellow students. Everything with Kevin is a veneer, a facade, reflected in his mother; actions that he hopes will inspire some feeling, but never do.

The film itself was slow to unravel but a fascinating portrait of a family falling away, tearing at the seams and an interesting insight into the difficulties faced by mothers in producing and raising healthy, functioning children. This is a film that focuses on silences, on what is unsaid and unknown, on symbols, alludes and colours, particularly the colour red, the most natural of colours, representing the blood of menstruation, of birth, of life ebbing away and finally, of murder and used throughout the film as Eva hides behind tomato soup, participates in a tomato festival, paints her lips red, drinks red wine and feeds Kevin jam sandwiches. It’s the colour of love, passion, rage, never quite freely expressed in this film, even in Kevin’s final acts.

.

Eva and Kevin are both pretenders, but despite intriguing me, I couldn’t push past the surface and gloss of this film. I couldn’t understand Kevin, I couldn’t pierce his veneer, and I wanted to turn his head inside out and pour the contents onto the table.

I wouldn’t recommend to expectant mothers, but to all else, ‘We need to talk about Kevin’ is well worth a watch. In a world where children are perceived as innocent, angelic beings, this film makes us reconsider and ask the question ‘who is to blame, who is responsible if a child ends up like Kevin?’

Perhaps the most insightful quote of all into Kevin’s mindset is the following:

“It’s like this: you wake and watch TV, get in your car and listen to the radio you go to your little jobs or little school, but you don’t hear about that on the 6 o’clock news, why? ‘Cause nothing is really happening, and you go home and watch some more TV and maybe it’s a fun night and you go out and watch a movie. I mean it’s got so bad that half the people on TV, inside the TV, they’re watching TV. What are these people watching, people like me?”

Perhaps then what Kevin craves is notoriety, fame – supposedly children deprived of loving family units find the love they crave in the deceptive glare of renown. Basking in the afterglow of his murders, Kevin seems to feel for a moment, recognised. The reaction of bile and horror is honest, more honest than Eva’s repressed barely veiled desperation and dislike. Even at the end, Eva embraces her son and confides that she loves him, but does she, or does she only love the husk of family that has been left to her? I think audiences will be talking about this one for some time to come.

 

This Means War

Ever girl fantasises about being the object of many men’s affections. The mam in the middle. The rose between two thorns. The lady of the moment with her pick of the litter. In Hollywood this woman exists. This woman is Lauren Scott. There are some who have questioned the choice of Reese Witherspoon as a suitable stick of man magnet lady candy, expressing that she lacks the raw, magnetic sex appeal that would cause men of such distinction to fight over efforts to paw all over her, especially when you could have a Megan Fox or a Jessica Alba, but how many machines of monstrous men forged from the remains of the Titanic itself have gone gaga gooey goo goo over the girl next door instead of Miss Super Hot, Super Sexy, Super Star, Super Model and with her luminous hair, ocean eyes and killer smile, Ms Witherspoon is still looking pretty damn good. Besides, she has felled such mantelope in her time as Ryan Phillippe and Jake Gyllenhaal so she must know that sweet and sugary wins the race. Anyway, it’s not a bad job being paid to have men fight over you…

Ms Lauren Scott might be Miss Successful, sweet and sexy but she is on a man hunt. Enter CIA agents and best buds, as well as contesting contenders for her heart (and loins) FDR (played by the usually straight laced Chris Pine), a smooth talking alpha male chauvinist and connoisseur of women who enjoys spying on bikini clad ladies in swimming pools and haunting the local video store to pick up lucked out singles, and Tuck (man of the moment Tom Hardy) who plays against type (delicious, dead eyed, bodacious bad boy) to emit a sweet, almost poetic vibe, as a family man who is infatuated with the idea of love itself. Tuck meets Lauren the modern way – via the internet, and FDR consequently bumps into her at his fave haunt (the video store of course).

What ensues is a ‘date off’ as Tuck and FDR spy on one another (and of course Lauren) as they attempt to out date each other with trips to the fair, art galleries, clubs and romantic restaurants. Slowly they uncover more and more about Lauren; her interests, ambitions and intrigues. There is a villain lingering in the background in the form of Heinrich, (shark-eyed scene stealer Til Schweiger) but he is merely an excuse for the odd car chase, explosion and get away helicopter. The real focus is on this three way freak fest.

Reese shimmers and shines as the sweet super sassy tweety pie cuckoo bird that we have come to know and love for her likeability and effervescence in roles such as ‘Legally Blonde’. What’s so workable with Reese is that you could see every thought cloud over in her baby blues and her face brightens up like a light bulb at just the right points.Chris Pine has moments of sheer hilarity and quick fire physical comedy. Hardy appeared oddly miscast. I simply couldn’t disconnect him in my mind from the intense, tenacious, magnetic, barbaric animalism he has previously channelled for such roles as Heathcliff and Tommy in ‘Warrior’ (a type that fits him better I feel). Mr Hardy is not ‘romcom’ man – this cheapens his dead eyed, bad boy, rough edged persona. Chelsea Handler is awkward-cringy- middle aged hilarity personified as Lauren’s best friend Trish, a woman who enjoys supping vodka from her baby’s beakers and eating Cheetos from the lardy roles of her partners’ stomach during intercourse whilst vicariously living through Lauren’s lustful love life.

Lauren does of course inevitably make a choice. She can’t ping back and forth, yo-yo like between these two hot bods forever. I was mildly surprised and disappointed with Lauren’s decision (anyone that knows my tastes will know now who she did not choose – friggin’ idiot) but everything wraps up nice and coherently (in true Hollywood style). I would recommend this as a light-hearted, pop corn fuelled rom-com that will make you laugh and even if it doesn’t, it’s so packed with man candy that your eyes will be thanking you for coughing up the cost of a ticket.