alexlangholm

Carol (2015)

A disappointing film with very little emotional content

**WARNING: Contains plot spoilers**

I don't normally write reviews but this is a case where the critics seem to be totally disconnected from what they are supposed to be reviewing. It is weird to see so little dissent in the press about this film. Carol has many good points but more bad points.

The good points are the amazing production design and costumes, and the interesting 16mm cinematography (which does get quite grainy at times). The technical side of things is fine, it looks very beautiful and old-fashioned.

The main problem is that there just isn't any emotional connection established between the two main characters, or between anyone really. The film doesn't make you care about people or their fates, and doesn't explain why they would care about each other.

The very first meeting between Carol and Therese highlights this. Carol tries to seduce Therese because... well, she just does, from the very first moment she lays eyes on her in the department store. We don't know why, Carol has never met her before so presumably it's just because Therese is young and pretty. We don't even see Carol reacting to Therese's beauty, Carol just has this predatory gaze from the very first frame, as if she was determined to find someone, anyone. How much sympathy would we feel for a middle-aged married man doing these things instead of Carol?

Because of the way the story unfolds, it is also very hard to shake the feeling that Carol is a rich person who is, in the end, able to get whatever she wants.

There ought to be sympathy for Carol being stuck in a dead marriage, but she is getting divorced and already having an affair.

There ought to be sympathy for Carol losing custody of her daughter Rindy, but we never really see the mother-daughter relationship enough to understand what this means to her. For example, in the first scene Carol buys her daughter a train set instead of a doll in order to impress the young shop assistant that she lusts after. We later see Carol playing with the train set by herself while thinking of her own problems, we never see the daughter using it. The daughter seems to be little more than a plot device or a prop.

There ought to be sympathy for gay lovers being parted by a bigoted 1950s society, but we never really see them as lovers. We see them make love, but there isn't really a scene where they display any kind of chemistry or deep affection. They come together because... well, they just do. To make matters worse, they split up almost as soon as they have got together, so we don't really get the time to feel anything significant has been lost.

The saddest part is when Carol dumps Therese so she can go to fight for her daughter's custody, but then when, thanks to her lawyer's manoeuvrings, Carol has a realistic chance of getting joint custody of her daughter, she waives her rights to it. Why? Because it means she can avoid the hassle of a nasty court case. How deep can Carol's love for Rindy or Therese really be if these are her priorities? And why tell us that the custody of Rindy means so much, more than her love for Therese, and then show her abandoning custody? Perhaps the novel explains why this makes sense, but the film certainly doesn't.

The two hour running time should have been long enough to get proper emotional connections built up, but instead the director squanders it on overextended scenes that should have been much shorter. It makes the whole film drag on without any character development.

At one point Carol's husband Hodge has a door slammed in his face, it ends on a nice shot of his partially-covered features, but it then goes on to show him walking away from the house, getting in a car and driving off. Extending the scene didn't serve any purpose, we know he's annoyed and isolated but he's been annoyed and isolated for the entire film. Another example has Carol and Therese arriving in a hotel, they enter the lobby, they enter the room, they admire the room and then... it cuts to them leaving the hotel. What did we learn about them from this? That they enjoy the decor of expensive hotels? Wouldn't, for example, adding a scene earlier in the film showing Carol doing nothing but playing with her daughter Rindy been a better way to build up the emotional stakes?

"Carol" seems to be the kind of film where the subject matter and the reputation of the participants has totally replaced objective assessment of the work itself.

Gay rights are important, Blanchett is a great actor and Haynes is a great director. "Carol" is not an important or great film though, it's telling the story of an affair without telling us why the affair happened or why we should care. Its reviews seem to be based on what "Carol" should have been, rather than what it actually is.

Attack the Block (2011)

Oh Joe, what have you done?

WARNING: Contains spoilers

This is really frustrating: Joe Cornish, the director and writer of Attack The Block, is very funny, intelligent, self-aware and has deservedly gained a cult following as one half of Adam & Joe on TV and radio over the past 15+ years. With such a strong track record, you'd expect his first film to carry that clever satire onto the big screen, wouldn't you? Unfortunately that's not what happened. At all. Attack The Block just left a really bad taste in my mouth and I never want to see it again.

To be fair, there are some good things in the film: the basic central concept, the acting and the effects are all solid. Thanks to some good casting the characters felt surprisingly real considering the unrealistic plot, and this is the strongest thing about ATB, though it is also a major source of problems when you see what the characters actually do.

The negative aspects of Attack The Block are far more numerous:

• By far the worst thing is what many reviewers have noted, the amoral and unrepentant "heroes" of the film: a gang of teenage muggers who surround a terrified young woman, draw their knives and repeatedly threaten to kill her. Very, very late in the film one of them offers to give back her ring (though not her bag or phone), but he never really seems to regret his actions and just mumbles something about not knowing that she lived locally (as if mugging outsiders is okay). The director seems to recognise this is a problem and makes the victim voice our concerns, but the gang just tell her to stop whining, so it's as if the audience is being told to stop whining too. They even tell the victim quite late in the film that threatening her with knives was good for her because it speeds up the robbery. This kind of twisted worldview just drives a huge wedge between the audience and the gang members, it's not building any bridges.

• The plot revolves around monsters being a threat to the characters, but this threat isn't really set up properly. The teenagers casually (and rather gratuitously) kill the first alien with barely any effort, they parade its body and laugh about it for the opening scenes, and even the bigger aliens that appear later on are dispatched fairly regularly with items such as kitchen knives. You never really get the feeling of anything unstoppable being on the way.

• Despite the map at the start of the film, the geometry of the estate doesn't come across. The action starts to become scene after scene of people running between similar-looking flats down identical-looking corridors without much idea of where they are going or why, and this gets much worse when the corridor fills with smoke. You also wonder what exactly is preventing people leaving the estate.

• Even after several violent murders (including two policemen killed very early on), gunfire, explosions, car crashes etc we never see any emergency services turn up, except brief glimpses of police towards the end. We don't even see any other residents, it's as if the whole block is just the gang and the aliens, which undermines the supposed protecting-the-community message.

• The police are especially hard done by, they are portrayed as totally corrupt and not to be trusted under any circumstances. One of the gang speculates that the authorities are letting the aliens attack in order to wipe the residents out. When the mugging victim tries to call the police, the gang leader snatches the phone away and takes out the batteries, saying that "the feds" shouldn't be involved. This attitude is followed through right to the end of the film, even the mugging victim seems to be experiencing Stockholm Syndrome with her last line.

• I'm not generally a fan of political correctness in art, but there's a disturbingly strong misogynist atmosphere in ATB. The supposedly-heroic gang of knife-wielding muggers is all male, very macho and constantly trying to outdo each other in their ability to kill or maim. The only criticism they face is from weak female characters who are unable to defend themselves, and who rely on the various male gang members for protection from violent outsiders. When one of the gang members is injured, they force their mugging victim to tend to his wounds and continue to treat her with contempt afterwards, pausing only to tell her how fit she is. The ending seems to celebrate these attitudes rather than sending them up.

The Adam & Joe Show used to regularly criticise the drugs-and-guns stereotypes of south London and their depiction in films, but now Joe's spent £8 million actually making a film reinforcing all of these stereotypes.

Why Joe, why? :(

...maybe this is why: Joe was apparently inspired to make Attack The Block after being a mugging victim himself, and he mentioned that the mugger seemed to be more frightened than he was. It's an interesting observation and this is even the basis of some dialogue in the film. The trouble is that the dialogue as presented just doesn't ring true: the gang leader doesn't seem frightened at any point, so when he threatens to kill people it seems to be a lifestyle choice rather than a sign of desperation. There's no way to feel any sympathy for him if he is choosing to do these things, and the tiny hints of a difficult childhood towards the end are too little too late.

Whatever the original intention, Attack The Block in its final form comes across as pro-violence and thoughtlessly amoral, with surprisingly little humour to make it palatable. It feel like an earnest, serious version of Speeding On The Needlebliss, which is frankly a terrifying prospect.

The Proxy (2012)

Weird to watch but promising

(Note: Although this is listed as a series of ten mini-episodes, its currently only available as a single half-hour online film. I would never have guessed it was edited together from such tiny pieces, perhaps the director originally planned it as a single whole?)

Although a lot of the Proxy is made up of generic sci-fi components, especially The Matrix and Blade Runner, its format appears to be something original: a drama written and shot entirely with YouTube in mind. This script wouldn't work on TV because the context would be wrong: The Proxy depends on the viewer watching one kind of video in exactly the same way they might watch another kind.

The introductory scene looks absolutely identical to a typical YouTube video blog, but that's because the film is on YouTube and features a real life well-known video blogger. After a minute or so of completely convincing reviewing action, it unexpectedly takes a rather disturbing turn. Ashens suddenly swept into a serious drama on his home turf. Really weird.

Just to make that a bit clearer: Imagine if you were watching Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman, and he began a totally believable report on some political shenanigans, and it then suddenly morphed into a fictional action film... starring Jeremy Paxman playing himself. How strange would that be?

Putting aside the mind-bending cameo-that-isn't-a-cameo, the Proxy is a slightly campy but generally seriously-played sci-fi thriller. The cinematography's pretty good (excellent in fact by YouTube standards), the effects are too, and although the plot seems impenetrable it does start to make some sense on a second viewing. The acting is variable, some of it is solid and some isn't, but there's enough pace and humour to keep it all going.

Whether this finds an audience is another question, it's very early days for original dramas online and no one has yet proved it can be done commercially without a subscription. However, it's good to see people trying new things. If there's one thing that's become very clear on internet videos, it's that no one has any idea what will be the next hit.

Father Christmas (1991)

Brilliant!

This is a really lovely short film which revolves around a very British vision: Father Christmas (aka Santa Claus etc) is an old man in a small terraced house somewhere in the north of England, living a very normal day to day life and approaching his unusual work as any other self-employed tradesman might.

There's almost no sentimentality here, which is what makes it work and what distinguishes it from the legions of clones seen elsewhere. As you would expect Father Christmas is a good man, but he's also an real man, and we see him do things that are so mundane and unglamourous that they are a delightful shock: for example while on a camping holiday in France he suffers an attack of diarrhoea and runs to the bushes (a later leg of the same holiday sees him gambling in Las Vegas as well as sampling whisky in Scotland). Despite how it sounds on paper it does actually work well, emphasising a genuine and good-natured personality underneath the grumpiness. Mel Smith is perfect for the role, and though it is not his best-known role this is arguably one of the highlights of his career.

On the visual side, the animation is top notch, accurately reflecting the style of the Raymond Briggs books it is based on. The rough pastel textures are distinctively British and a good contrast to the pure colours of American and Japanese animation. It also ties in nicely with its more famous companion piece The Snowman, it's well worth watching them together.

In a very crowded and hackneyed field this is a Xmas-themed short that justifies its existence: a new and charming slant on a familiar figure from all our childhoods, realised on its own terms.

The Railrodder (1965)

Strange but charming

I would almost rather not give The Railrodder a rating because this isn't really a pure film, nor is it a straightforward commercial, but something in-between: it has the overall structure of a promotional film but the charm of a work of art.

Nominally created to promote Canada as a travel destination, Railrodder takes a completely leftfield approach from its very beginning, where Keaton's Londoner spontaneously jumps into the Thames and swims all the way to Canada. Shortly after reaching the coast, he accidentally stumbles onto a maintenance railway car and begins a journey across the continent, which provides as good an excuse as any for a parade of visual gags as Keaton's nameless character tries to make the best of his situation. This is not the kind of thing that any modern marketer or focus group could possibly come up with.

In theory we're meant to be admiring Canada going past, and the cinematography is a nice backdrop, but it is Keaton's antics that are the real centre of attention. This is all the more remarkable as Keaton was quite old when the film was made, and in the pre-CGI pre-greenscreen era stunts were just as dangerous as they looked. Keaton's commitment to his work was clearly as strong as ever, he must have really enjoyed doing films.

It's perhaps slightly slow-paced for a modern audience (not as explicitly wacky as Mr Bean for example), but anyone familiar with the classic silent comedy era should enjoy this parting shot from one if its masters.

On a side-note, some of the jokes are so strange and disconnected from reality, it's almost like a live action version of a bizarre animation. Perhaps the silent era's comedians contributed more to the surreal comedy of the Goons and the Pythons than most people realise.

Frankenweenie (2012)

Frankenweenie vs Frankenweenie

(WARNING: spoilers) A full-length version of a short television film, Frankenweenie is basically the same subversive suburban vision of Frankenstein but with lots of other horror and monster movie clichés weaved into the background to give it a longer running time.

Our protagonist Victor is sullen, introverted and otherworldly in the mould of many other Burton heroes such Edward Scissorhands. His parents and surroundings are deliberately-clichéd depictions of suburban America (again, slightly Scissorhandish) and into this mix are all sorts of clever references to characters and concepts that are more usually found in Hammer films. From the strange science teacher to the neighbour's dog's haircut, the strength of cinema Frankenweenie is in blending this additional Gothic layer onto an already-familiar template.

There are some additional sub-plots thrown in such as a school science fair, but these remain sideshows and the original main elements of the story dominate it.

But is the cinema Frankenweenie better than the original television Frankenweenie? There's only one way to find out, fiigh... no, let's compare them instead.

The original short is punchier thanks to its shorter running time, and has the same core joke of something a child might mistakenly believe (that they can bring back dead loved ones) actually turning out to be true. On top of that, in many ways it's far more disturbing to see a live action child actor digging up his dead dog (also played by a real life canine). This might well be what made Disney go ballistic when Burton presented it to them back in the 1980s, but it's also what makes it stand apart from mainstream America and why Burton was an interesting young director to watch. This starkness probably put some people off who expected Disney films to be easily digestible, and without the happy ending the original Frankenweenie would be a fairly bleak film about lost innocence. It definitely wasn't the kind of thing to help sell lunchboxes.

The modern full-length Frankenweenie is much more mainstream, easier to handle, easier to accept, probably because the stylised animation adds another protective layer between you and the gore: if a dog starts falling to pieces it's much less distressing when it's animated, just as Tom & Jerry is more acceptable than Sam Peckinpah. Cinema Frankenweenie is clearly much more compatible with both the Disney branding and the merchandising that accompanies it. Whether that accessibility makes it a better film depends on your own personal requirements from a work of art (and maybe your mood too).