Joe's Palace

The first half of this movie was really enjoyable, but then it turned a little too boring for a long while. And also predictable, which was such a shame, because it had potential to be so much more. The ending was fine, I guess, although also predictable. The acting was good, and I since I didn't know what to expect, the movie didn't disappoint. And, TBH, I didn't get distracted by my phone as usual, which is a good sign. But...I just wanted more from this movie, because it began so well, but it never came.

British TV auteur Stephen Poliakoff (sadly not famous in America) has a different approach to storytelling and entertainment than his peers, wonderfully exemplified by this innovative feature starring the great Michael Gambon.

He's perfectly cast as a reclusive (and then some!) billionaire who lives in London across from a house inherited from his late father, that is kept up by a servant staff but empty -no one lives there.

Young Danny Lee Wynter is hired as a sort of doorman/guard and concierge for the place, and Poliakoff uses him as a sponge allowing the viewer to look at very ordinary aspects of the world around one with wonderment. He totally vicariously through this job, befriending Kelly Reilly and Rupert Penry-Jones, who play illicit lovers he lets use a bedroom upstairs, as well as Rebecca Hall, who works in a local shop where he buys cold cuts and cheese for Gambon.

Story unfolds in elliptical fashion, as we see commonplace interactions with wide-eyed Joe. The cast does a terrific job creating characters who we only see in brief snatches, but whose depth is exposed as Poliakoff injects his major themes of loneliness and of course "getting involved", rather than living one's life (as both Joe and Gambon's character) a merely an observer.

The climax to Gambon's story is shocking and powerful. Along the day are memorable moments, particularly an elaborate semi-spoof of the popular "Antiques Roadshow", which turns out to be important to the main story and its "secret" reveal. Poliakoff's only concession to commercial and popular tastes is the fleeting images of softcore sex and Kelly's semi-nudity, 15 years before her American stardom in "Yellowstone". Co-star Danny plays essentially the same role in a Poliakoff companion movie "Capturing Mary", starring Maggie Smith.

An extraordinary film that exposes the tortured and amoral empty world of power, position and possession. Michael Gambon plays Elliot Graham a man of deep sensitivity who has inherited a great fortune from his father, the symbolic opulent and empty house Joe's Place, being one of them. Graham is paralyzed by the need to find out how his father's wealth was acquired and fears the worst, I won't say what that is to not give the revelation, in itself an indictment, away; is seen in contrast to that of Joe Dix, a guileless Everyman character played to perfection by Danny Lee Winters whose performance was utterly mesmerizing. Gambon of course can, yes, make reading the phone book, riveting. See this extraordinary film.

It's always a bit of a surprise to visit here after I've seen a wonderful movie. There are intelligent people that see it through eyes that are as valid as mine, yet they saw nothing as I did.

I think it would be wise not to take too much from any of the reviews that you see here. If you are one of the lucky ones that see the film as I did, you will be rewarded by an experience that's as full as "Howard's End". If not, you'll likely know within the first 15 minutes and you can do something else.

I thought the acting was as good as anything I've seen in the past couple of years. It wasn't just Gambon, it was pretty much across the board. Wynter was unbelievably good. Kelly Reilly was perfect.

If you haven't read the spoilers yet, don't. This movie is subtle. Give it a try.

Michael Gambon is one of Britain's finest actors, and Stephen Poliakoff one of our more interesting dramatists; but rubbish is rubbish, and sadly, 'Joe's Palace' is not very good. Polliakoff has for a long time been interested in the aesthetics of aristocracy (and concordantly sympathetic to the beautiful), but in this film, he indulges these sentiments in the absence of any meaningful context. A reclusive billionaire does nothing with his life because he is consumed by what he fears his father might have done, although he apparently has no idea what this might have been; several historians fail to discover anything, but the girl from the local deli proves a better researcher than them and discovers that the father had been sympathetic to Nazi values; despite having always assumed that his Dad had been a Nazi collaborator anyway, this persuades the billionaire to think of suicide, although not very hard. Then he gives away a tiny proportion of his wealth (some things his father has stolen) and lives happily every after. Meanwhile, he employs a collection of social misfits (a familiar Poliakoff theme) to staff a huge London house he keeps empty; one of them, Joe, a young man with learning difficulties, is patronised by everyone telling him "what a bright boy" he is and watches silently everything that happens, commenting innanely in his diary but somehow becoming everyone's confident. A slick politician (played by Rupert Penry-Jones, who invests his lines with exaggerated faux-earnestness) and his beautiful mistress (plated by Kelly Reily, who emotes breathlessly but is also unconvincing), also feature for little apparent reason. Meanwhile, everywhere is empty: not just the house, but the streets and parks of London; in every scene, the background is blank, so the Polliakoff can maintain his trademark atmospherics, although you'll never see real life looking like this. The film as whole, meanwhile, is self-important but no less empty, devoid of real meaning and life, with no real dialogue (a scattering of monologues substitute for it) and, criminally for a film starring Gambon, desperately dull.