User reviews

This is a maddening movie, though a good one. The structure is just about perfect, and the family's dysfunction unspools in a very controlled way. The acting is universally excellent and clear. The movie makes wonderful use of the unique landscape of the Isle of Scilly, and all in all, I felt I was in the hands of first class creators.

But…

The rhythm is eternally and unchangingly slow. Every scene begins with long, long minutes of barely discernible action. There is, despite the simmering resentments, only a single explosion. This lugubrious technique is both effective and maddening. The movie seems like an experiment in just how far you can go into hazy somnambulance and still create dramatic tension.

Don't watch it when you're sleepy.

Few films in recent years have polarised audiences and critics quite as much as Archipelago, Joanna Hogg's follow-up to her much-lauded debut Unrelated. If the critics have had near-universal raptures over its long, very long, static wide-shots and natural murk, for many audiences it's simply the Emperor's new fashion range – arse-achingly pretentious art-twaddle.

Well, I say it's great: a superbly photographed, acidly funny dissection of class snobbery and familial dysfunction en vacance, where invisible elephants stampede through the guest rooms, and every infinitesimal gesture counts.

The characterisation is spot on, from Hiddleston's painfully wet young man to his moist-eyed mother, filling the watery void of her life with watercolour lessons. Easy targets perhaps, but less fish in barrels and more akin to the lobsters their poor holiday cook prepares: seemingly inert, then writhing in silent agony as Hogg turns up the heat.

The film's name Archipelago, is quite rich, whilst it summons the image of the Isles of Scilly, where the film is set, it also captures this sense of distance between the characters in the film, who are nonetheless part of the same family identity. Cynthia loves her brother Edward deeply, but is unable to express this other than through snide remarks, passive aggressive behaviour, and tantrums. Edward is at a quarter-life crisis, limply compassionate and full of weltschmerz, fashioned after Prince Myshkin, the "idiot" of Dostoevesky's eponymous story.

I also, haha, perhaps somewhat fancifully, like to think of Lyonesse in relation to this film, a kingdom that legendarily connected the Scilly Isles to Cornwall, and then sank into the sea. The Scilly Isles themselves are believed in Roman times to have been one island, named Ennor. Something happened and the connection to the mainland, and of the whole, disintegrated. This is much like what appears to have happened to the family in the film (it's hinted that a childhood visit to the Isles was much more light-hearted).

The film could be regarded as not much of a progression for Joanna Hogg. Both Archipelago and her cinema debut Unrelated (2007) concern upper middle class families on holiday in beautiful locations, the status of trapped outsiders, and feature the motif of an absent character continuously at the end of a telephone. However I think there's something genuinely different about Archipelago, the characters are definitely more sympathetic, and the family dynamic very different (although, such is the shock of actually seeing tangible upper middle class characters on screen that, full of schadenfreude, many British class warriors will make a bee-line for the rotten tomatoes).

The location shooting is somewhat of a kindness from the director to those of us who are so used to seeing British social realist dramas played out against bleak and unforgiving landscapes (Morvern Callar being a notable exception). There are passages in the film where Hogg lets the eye rest on pure landscape photography.

The only real happiness in the film occurs after a cathartic harangue from one character produces a genuine smile from Cynthia, who sees the healing in the foulness. This is symptomatic of a particularly British emotional constipation that is in dire need of mend.

Despite the emotional problems of the family, there are moments of genuine hilarity in the film that lightened my mood, the best being what is basically a comedy of manners sketch in a posh restaurant.

On a personal level I think I will be haunted by Tom Hiddleston's performance as Edward, too sensitive for this world, a sad and noble man, who lacks any expression of passion, and misplaces his affection. All the more remarkable given his quite opposite performance as a shallow, obnoxious and cowardly youth in Unrelated.

We start and finish with the star of this film. The helicopter. Otherwise, this is a rather unremarkable soap of a story that sees a family reconvene on the remote Scilly Isles. You just know that when they have all arrived, familial discord will soon be in the air and although the film certainly looks lovely, the subsequent melodrama develops little substance to the characterisations and is chronically middle-class and pedestrian. Tom Hiddleston is a positive drip as "Edward" delivering his overwritten lines to his sister "Cynthia" (Lydia Leonard) who seems only capable of replying in tones of disdain and contempt. The narrative seems bent on contriving scenarios - both past and present - to force the thing and the characters to become interesting. For Joanna Hogg, it seems she is determined to bring some authenticity to this tale of wealthy people enjoying the privileges and pitfalls of their social status - good or bad! Maybe the title has a (not so) hidden meaning about those folks joined by birth but separated by constant personal maelstroms, but for me it is just far too wordy and up itself with far too much - admittedly beautiful - shots of the scenery. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood - but this just wasn't for me.

I'm not sure why this film was made. I don't see the point. I felt no empathy with, or interest in, any of the characters - because we never learnt anything about any of them during the course of this seemingly endless account of a familys' holiday to a desolate, rock strewn island.

The conversation is tedious and I couldn't imagine spending more than an hour with any one of them without wanting to hurl myself off one of the many available cliffs.

The script, if there ever was one, is clumsy and lumbering. The shots of the views are lingering and trail after the characters as they wander up a hill, or down a hill, or along a coast, or gape at a shellfish or gaze at shellfish cooking. At one point it was pointed out that shellfish cooking by a particular method fall into a coma ... I know how they felt.

Do people like this really exist ? I sincerely hope not.

Archipelago is a most certainly a 'love it or hate it' film which sharply divides opinion. It's not every day you see a film set on the Scillies so it was a must see for me personally. I'd read both good and bad reviews before I saw it so knew largely what to expect and yes, I can understand why many find it difficult and slow with long still takes and angst ridden silences. Agree that the characters are hard to engage with or like and yes it's infuriating and overly pretentious at times.

However, because of, and not in spite of all these things, it ultimately succeeds in its portrayal of a very different type of dysfunctional family and brilliantly conveys the interactive awkwardness between the characters and there's quiet, suppressed comedy in the twaddle they speak.

It generates a unique and almost claustrophobic atmosphere, although being too raw in its lack of script. It's a reminder that wealth and privilege don't necessarily equate to inner happiness - in this case loneliness and bitterness pervade. I felt very slightly on edge throughout. If you have an open mind you will gain much from Archipelago which deserves but probably won't get a wider and more appreciative audience.

I watched this movie last night. I couldn't make out what the actors were saying most of the time(I'm old)so I'm not too sure what the movie was about. The mother was angry with someone when she was on the phone. There was emotion in that brief scene as well as elsewhere, I think. There was no storyline. It wasn't like War and Peace. However the acting was amazingly good and the movement hither and thither could be taken for real life. If they'd had a decent story--say a few murders in the basement--the movie would have steamrolled through the Oscars. I watched the whole thing and then I woke up. Cheers. Whoops. I need more lines. Okay. I liked the cook. She was blond. Okay, I give in. I think the movie had certain amazing elements. It really did seem like a slice of a real life. That's not necessarily good, unless it's about a piece of real life that's interesting. May I go now? Cheers, Don.

Reviewers of this film seem to fall into two camps. Those who think it is high art, full of significant silences, meaningful exchanges, astonishing cinematography and (good grief) moments of intense humour, and, well, those who don't.

It may be that this film is so sophisticated that only those who have refined their critical faculties to a fine edge and learned the vocabulary of high cinematographic art can properly appreciate it. In the same way that some people might be able to distinguish between the exquisite flavours which subtly identify the boiled intestines of different Mongolian Marmots, or who think the finest coffee is only that for which the beans have been eaten and excreted by an Asian Palm Civet (that's true by the way). Unfortunately I am just an ordinary Joe, and eclectic as my tastes might be, I found this to be a pretty pointless, boring film.

I understand that the dialogue was improvised. It's a strange thing, you would think that professional actors would know how to generate dialogue that resembled natural speech, instead we got something on a par with the sort of improvisation a crow uses when it makes a hook from a twig to fish stuff out of a hole. Oh, except that's actually clever; and interesting to watch.

As to the "humour" which various commentators have observed, I can only assume that their measure of jollity is to stare at a blank grey wall for half an hour, and then to turn slowly to a distant image of dead sheep. Laugh? I could have.

So, should you see this film? No.

" As regards Edward's holiday (in which Hiddleston appears more introspective and idealistic), Tuscany's radiant sunlight and historical cathedral are supplanted by chilling coast wind and bleached craggy hills. Edward's family isn't really behind his noble cause, compounded by an absent father, ARCHIPELAGO is essentially an attack on the middle class's blinkered conceit and ingrown snootiness, the latter is also perceived through the character of Rose (Lloyd), a working-class cook. A restaurant contretemps cringingly divulges how entitlement can be abused, and when Cynthia eventually blows a fuse (you only hear her ranting), she does it obliquely, not directed to Edward but to Patricia, with the former within the earshot. But Cynthia's resentment feels ungrounded which could be a problem owing to Hogg's style of abstraction, audience needs a larger context and more information to relate to it."

read my full review on my blog: Cinema Omnivore, thanks.

The opening scene has birds merrily singing in the background and you settle yourself down for what you hope will be a treat to the eye and a "Festen" style family bust-up. What you actually get for the next interminable 2 hours is extended shots of scenes out of which the characters have disappeared some minutes before - the characters having said very little or nothing - and moody landscapes with birds singing or wind blowing (Blow-Up anyone?). There is a 2 minute shot (although it felt like 10) of the cook stumbling over some rocks out of a cave. Why? Were we to assume she had some kind of illicit assignation with Edward? I don't know and after an hour I couldn't have cared less if they had all fallen into a threshing machine.

I thoroughly sympathised with the father who only appears on the end of the phone who, quite wisely, makes up excuses for not being able to make it down to this family holiday. I wished I had made up any excuse NOT to have seen this film.

A fretful Englishwoman joins her fragile adult children at a familiar vacation spot, a guesthouse on Tresco in the Scilly Isles, for a feast of locally caught lobster, locally shot pheasant and painfully awkward smalltalk. There's plenty of drama, but not much plot in the usual sense. My wife and I didn't get much out of Joanna Hogg's latest film, "Exhibition," but this one, from 2010, was weirdly involving from start to finish.

The troubles of this trio of gentlefolk (including Tom Hiddleston, the reason we decided to watch this film in the first place) may not amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but the way the camera lingers after a character's left the room or climbed a staircase, the dim interior light, even the birdsong and dreamlike landscapes (from glacial boulders to spiky subtropical palms) all contribute to the atmosphere of tension and expectancy.

The title "Archipelago" might refer to the Scilly Isles (of which there are over a hundred) but also, I'm guessing, to the characters in this film, who are linked by blood and memory but isolated from one another by some pretty rough currents. (There's a big framed photo, "Storm off Tierra del Fuego," hanging over the mantelpiece when they arrive at the guesthouse; it makes them uneasy and they take it down.) Fans of Alan Ayckbourn and Edward Gorey, as well as Vinterberg and Haneke, might want to take a chance on this one. Tom Hiddleston fans might stop to consider whether this wussy, neurotic, self-doubting Tom Hiddleston is the Tom Hiddleston they first fell in love with.

The only mildly interesting scene in this film was when being advised how to tell whether a lobster is a male or a female. It is a terribly dull film about an upper middle class English family who go on holiday to the Isles of Scilly where absolutely nothing happens. They invite an artist who paints the scenery whilst spouting twaddle, and a cook who they agonise as to whether she should be allowed to join them at the dinner table. Yes, this is about as interesting as it gets. The father of the family for some reason has decided not to join them on this trip, which was a very wise move indeed, because long before the end of this movie, I had also wished I had kept away. People should watch this film then form their own opinions, mine being that it was a dull and pointless piece of film making. On the other hand, connoisseurs of the awful could revel in it.

The idea of a director 'painting with light' in the making of a film has become something of a lazy cliché. In the case of Archipelago, the new British film scrutinising every painful and discomforting nuance of a dysfunctional family holiday on the Scillonian island of Tresco, it is possibly the most apposite description of filmmaker Joanna Hogg's technique.

The film opens with a shot of the shoreline in the process of being captured on canvas by the artist (Christopher Baker) employed to give the mother (Kate Fahy) and daughter (Lydia Leonard) of the family painting lessons during their stay. One of the first of many lingering static shots concentrates on his palette as he mixes the colours of the landscape. Modest yet subtle, the chroma of the coastal environment as recreated in the paints prefigure the spectrum of tones that director Hogg employs for the film's many interior scenes. This narrow range of colours runs to dull mauves, dusky pinks, diffuse yellows and drained eau de nils, investing the house in which the family plays out most of its crises with a bruised approximation of the island's autumnal turbulence.

Just as the watercolour pigment seeps into the wetted paper during the women's attempts at painting, so light seeps gradually in the spaces they inhabit; there are several shots of table lamps as the single light sources in rooms, with the resultant murkiness throwing a pall over attempts on the part of the family to settle their arguments, most of which centre on the decision of the son Edward (Tom Hiddleston) to take up an eleven-month VSO position in Africa. The interactions are shaded, sometimes the remarks and behaviour are vague, veiled as they are by the family's upper-middle class tendency to skirt around the issues.

A daytime scene in the kitchen, a room like all the others that betrays the stale safety of a Farrow & Ball colour swatch chart in its decoration choices, features the cooking of lobsters. The hired hand (Amy Lloyd) explains how the colour of the lobsters will alter gradually from dark to pink during the cooking process, a delicate metaphor for the gradual shift from anaemic obfuscation to bloodshot temper as the emotional heat increases.

The shifting, seemingly unscripted dialogue complements the indistinct nature of the visuals. Often it is hard to tell what, if anything, is happening, but this is a film in which meaning is often communicated through what is missing from the picture rather than what is seen. The father of the family is not present – held up on the mainland by reasons unknown – and the effect of his non-appearance is perhaps echoed by the rectangular mark on one wall in the sitting room of the house left by a picture, taken down for the duration of the holiday. The different in colour and tone between the clean space and the tidemark of dirt emphasises that there is a hole in this family's relationship. When the painting is returned to its position towards the end of the film it is an image of cold, empty, silvery-grey waves, suggesting that even when the blanks are filled in the members of the family are still adrift and disconnected in an unrelenting ocean.

In the hands of a craftsman (eg Bergman) this could have been a deeply moving tale about the dysfunction within a seemingly comfortable middle class family. HOWEVER: is it laziness that causes film makers not to bother writing a script? It is awful having to watch actors unable to do their job properly as they squirm with embarrassment, realising too late that they have just uttered some banality that the alleged director will likely use? This causes inconsistencies, flights of fancy, dullness and, frankly, ridicule.

The static camera has its place in film making grammar. HOWEVER it appears that in this film the static shot is simply used in the absence of an ability to conjure anything else up. Should we even mention the shot on the staircase? Why not: used twice, it is locked off and held long enough for a character to walk down the stairs. WHY!? Is it thought that the audience is too thick to work out where in a building the characters are? Or is the staircase seen as an emblematic bridge between two states of mind: the upstairs and the downstairs?

The UK produces too many script-less films that the film establishment and critics seem unable to bring themselves to describe as what they are: work in progress. The emperor's new clothes had the same effect on his courtiers. Why are the British in awe of writer/directors who do not/cannot write? This trend is sadly crossing the pond and we are seeing this 'style' (arguably lack of style) replicated here in the US.

I am sure Joanna Hogg is highly talented, but on this showing, she has kept her talents deeply hidden.

Well, this is my first review, and, sadly, it's for an "awful" film (ie I rated it 1 out of 10). But therein lies a message: it's so bad that I felt compelled to go through the lengthy registering procedure at IMDb in order to tell you this. It really is that bad.

OK, here, in a nutshell, is my reason: "Archipelago" is very, veeery boring. Just as well I watched it via the BBC's iPlayer, because that allowed me to 'fast-forward' the film to see if anything actually happens - but nothing did. Nothing.

I think it would've been really easy to make this film entertaining and the Scilly Isles beautiful. But I can only assume the actors played their characters as intended and the atmosphere was meant to be like the weather: cold, wet and windy.

However, I will say this: please do watch some of "Archipelago", I imagine about a quarter of an hour's worth should do, to experience cinematic depression. Then, like me, you might find yourself shaking your head in disbelief...

I am ashamed to say that I have actually watched this film! It is the worst film I have ever seen, filled with pointless scenes that seem to be extended for minutes more than needed. It becomes more and more painful to sit watching this film knowing that, after realising half way through the film that there will be no storyline and not one single bit of action or interesting dialogue, the finishing line is completely unpredictable - it could be several hours before the torture comes to an end. There are no words to describe this film apart from dull - what is the point of any of it? There may be some deep meanings to it, but they are not obvious and not even that good when you think about it. I could have easily made this film, taking a few shots of a rock or a window or a flower and throwing in some standard regular nobodies who can't even keep up a conversation without repeating themselves several times. The fact that I have felt the need to even write this, even though I have nearly fallen asleep from watching it, shows just how much I detest this film and what I can not believe is how interesting people make it sound on their reviews.

To sum up, if I filmed paint drying on a wall for two hours, it would probably be more enjoyable than this. - relief of the end = general consensus of the audience in the cinema.

I saw this film some weeks past and I was most taken with its cinematic beauty and disturbing undercurrent of family relations in a 'privileged class' family.

As an American I can see this story as conflicts not just in this one family we see but in the entire class system found in Britain and to some degree here in the US. I believe the pivotal scene in this story is found when Christopher wants to invite the cook/housekeeper to eat dinner with them because it's the polite thing to do. His sister will have none of this and takes offense at the very suggestion. The mother is undecided but agrees with her daughter. Christopher asks why not and no valid reason can be given other than its inappropriate for staff to eat with family. When Christopher offers to help clean up the table and dishes the housekeeper ask "What am I suppose to do, this is my job". She too is an island.

The family here cannot communicate between themselves nor with those they see as beneath them. Like it or not there is a separation between classes in society and family members. Like an Archipelago it's all one unit but we are our own island.

Here we see just one interpretation of this human problem. And beautifully told.

This movie is an utter mess and pretty much one giant long awkward silence. The most boring thing I've ever seen, unless you're particularly entertained by one woman losing her mind over undercooked meat, a family being unable to decide where to sit in a restaurant, or some guy talking about how the height of his life's excitement is going to Africa to teach people about safe sex. The whole movie is a compilation of awkward moments and conversations you dread in your everyday life. Also, what even happened in this movie? I feel bad for the chef lady because I don't feel like she knows either. She's constantly being forced into awkward conversations and pulling random backstory out of her butt. Why did this movie happen.

Waiting for Godot cleverly disguised as Fawlty Towers. A beautifully shot slow-burner that reminds me of many of my own family holidays. Probably not for everyone, because it is bleak and slow, but in my opinion, beautiful and memorable, and Hiddleston certainly elevates the film when needed. I think that anyone considering watching this should be aware of the style that Hogg prefers to use. The film goes at its own pace, has some beautifully framed shots and the slow pace allows you to become immersed in some exceptional drama. Some of the characters (the Mother and Cynthia) don't provoke much sympathy but are still fascinating to watch. Christopher is the voice of wisdom, and has some great lines, and the sweet but forlorn Edward is both likable and watchable. If you like all of your movies large scale and fast paced, this is not for you, so give it a miss and don't come trolling on IMDb giving it one star and complaining about being bored.