rory-campbell
Joined Jun 2005
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rory-campbell's rating
This was clearly a carefully crafted film (despite the microphone appearing several times in frame - which really tears down the 'fourth wall'. Do film-makers still make that mistake?), whose success and failure both seem to be down to leaving the 'creatives' unattended with the film.
Indeed it feels very much as though the actors, screenplay writers and editors all indulged themselves to the full, and made a film without the interference of meddling businessmen who dare participate in the process of making this 'art'. But they actually perform a role those businessmen, a role of taking the film back to those who will consume it. There's only so much a viewer will pick up in the first screening of a film, and an actor, director, even editor, can easily lose sight of this.
Which is what has happened here.
We linger for a long time on Tilda Swinton's naked aged person, which helps the plot none, nor me in my chair, nor Tilda in her Woodstockesque grassy love scene, nor anyone. I would have rather seen the (underpaid in my opinion, whatever he was paid) plucky male protagonist naked, close-up. And indeed I might ask, as we are discussing a film which challenges formulae of film-making, why didn't we see more of him instead of Tilda and her distracting evidence of a lumpectomy winking at you.
While my wife liked it a lot, I was left ruing my inability to sleep on planes, trains, and now cinemas. What is it with chairs?
Two post-scripts: first, there is not a flicker of a sense of humour anywhere to be found. Nada. This should ring alarm bells.
Second. Tilda is wonderful, but let's not join some credulous reviewers in praise of her new-found ability to speak Italian and Russian. If we hear her speak three words of Russian and 100 words of Italian in the film, rest assured, that is probably as much Russian and Italian as she can speak.
Indeed it feels very much as though the actors, screenplay writers and editors all indulged themselves to the full, and made a film without the interference of meddling businessmen who dare participate in the process of making this 'art'. But they actually perform a role those businessmen, a role of taking the film back to those who will consume it. There's only so much a viewer will pick up in the first screening of a film, and an actor, director, even editor, can easily lose sight of this.
Which is what has happened here.
We linger for a long time on Tilda Swinton's naked aged person, which helps the plot none, nor me in my chair, nor Tilda in her Woodstockesque grassy love scene, nor anyone. I would have rather seen the (underpaid in my opinion, whatever he was paid) plucky male protagonist naked, close-up. And indeed I might ask, as we are discussing a film which challenges formulae of film-making, why didn't we see more of him instead of Tilda and her distracting evidence of a lumpectomy winking at you.
While my wife liked it a lot, I was left ruing my inability to sleep on planes, trains, and now cinemas. What is it with chairs?
Two post-scripts: first, there is not a flicker of a sense of humour anywhere to be found. Nada. This should ring alarm bells.
Second. Tilda is wonderful, but let's not join some credulous reviewers in praise of her new-found ability to speak Italian and Russian. If we hear her speak three words of Russian and 100 words of Italian in the film, rest assured, that is probably as much Russian and Italian as she can speak.
This brief documentary profiling a Pakistani shopkeeper in Barcelona opens with an earnest shot of a lowly, hard-working immigrant, and all seems set fair for a worthy, hand-wringing look at the global society we've created.
Far from it. Very soon it becomes clear that the film-maker wants primarily to portray the tailor as a person, as a flawed man. He bullies and fleeces his employees, deceives and harangues his customers, and is selfish, shiftless and lazy. Unlike many short films on global migration (which this is emphatically not), this story is the opposite of the 'success through hard work' model, but rather an unexpected tour of the Peter Principle.
His secondary aim is to show the reality of life for the world's social flotsam, as the characters reveal the choices they face, the pittance they earn, the battle they fight for basic human needs. In this respect the film is interesting rather than ground-breaking, contrasting the good characters in the film with the tailor, as unfortunates whose bad luck is a tragedy, while his is just desserts.
The film-maker's skill is his transparency, or more probably his temporary absences, which push the characters into behaving with no self-awareness. This creates some very amusing episodes, one of which is accidentally ingenious, which I will not ruin, but which involves the two protagonists discussing the film-maker himself, with richly ironic asides about the film in which they are the stars.
Far from it. Very soon it becomes clear that the film-maker wants primarily to portray the tailor as a person, as a flawed man. He bullies and fleeces his employees, deceives and harangues his customers, and is selfish, shiftless and lazy. Unlike many short films on global migration (which this is emphatically not), this story is the opposite of the 'success through hard work' model, but rather an unexpected tour of the Peter Principle.
His secondary aim is to show the reality of life for the world's social flotsam, as the characters reveal the choices they face, the pittance they earn, the battle they fight for basic human needs. In this respect the film is interesting rather than ground-breaking, contrasting the good characters in the film with the tailor, as unfortunates whose bad luck is a tragedy, while his is just desserts.
The film-maker's skill is his transparency, or more probably his temporary absences, which push the characters into behaving with no self-awareness. This creates some very amusing episodes, one of which is accidentally ingenious, which I will not ruin, but which involves the two protagonists discussing the film-maker himself, with richly ironic asides about the film in which they are the stars.
Based on truth, the Army in the Shadows takes the French men and women of the Resistance as its theme, at a point near the end of the war when the Resistance movement and Nazi intelligence about its work and staff are both firmly established. As well as giving a thrilling history lesson in the workings of the Resistance, from the rural ladies who operated safe houses, to the chateaux-dwelling aristocrats whose lawns played host to light aircraft smuggling collaborators in and out of France, it also is a fascinating essay on the gruesome realities of heroism: including moments of hopelessness and complete failure of nerve. Events test our group of collaborators, so that each one bumps up against his or her personal limit, as to what they are intelligent enough to understand, brave enough to endure, and determined enough to achieve. Excellently acted and directed, it is a classic uncompromising Melville thriller.