The Living and the Dead

Imagine a retelling of "The Shining" (1980) by Stanley Kubrick - but instead of Steven King's menacing snow storm and ghosts of the dead at the Overlook Hotel - this nuclear family is threatened by the bankruptcy of the landed aristocracy by health care, death by terminal cancer, and an over-protected adult son who is permanently child-like and requires vast infusions of anti-psychotics. Add to this helplessness, depression, anxiety, guilt, anger, and an oedipal-complex repressed by English manners, and you have the explosive makings for "The Living and the Dead" (2006).

Kubrick's famous emotional distance from the story is replaced by Rumley's intense personal need to pull the audience into the madness which modern medicine creates with false hopes and budget efficiencies, and especially, its patent inability to assist the emotional needs of both the terminal patient and their families. Rumley succeeds where others fear to tread by plunging the audience into the thick of it.

'The Living and the Dead' portrays the lives of a British noble, his wife and their adult son set in a spectacular country estate. The good days are long past. The estate is in disrepair and at risk of forfeiture, the wife bedridden most of the film and the son clinically psychotic. That sums up the bulk of what can be said with relative certainty about the plot.

The rest is a tumbling mash of conflicting alternate realities, displaced time-lines, hallucinatory visions and fast motion. Director/writer/producer Simon Rumley loves the fast motion. Leo Bill as the son spends much of the film at ten-fold speed, racing through vast expanses of interior, arms and face animated in a failed attempt to impart the viewer his perspective. It doesn't work, quickly growing tiresome and obvious. Rumley's so committed to the technique that clouds, the advancing sun, branches, vehicles, doctors and nurses eventually join the fray. Repeatedly. It's difficult to comprehend why since it has no bearing on the quiet desperation Rumley's grasping at, instead evoking the feel of an Eighties music video or a VW commercial.

It's symptomatic of the film's jettisoning coherency for atmosphere. The first half contradicts the back with no hint of resolution offered. The son proves more criminally insane than clinically yet no reason offered why he wasn't institutionalized. Early in the film when still portrayed as a happy idiot the father is constantly abusive and stern. Fatherly warmth doesn't appear until unconscionable acts are committed. The son roams free past the point any modern Western nation would have seen him incarcerated. We never know why. Likewise the rest of the plot is so artificial and bent to the requirements of intense moments all believability is lost and with it any concern for the characters. The one bright spot is Kate Fahy's terrific portrayal of the wife. She creates the few and fleeting scenes in which the film works as intended. Not content with these minor successes Rumley brushes them aside to make room for more mind-bending plot twists, snatching total failure from the jaws of mediocre success. A movie for the patient only.

After seeing the list of superlatives and awards on the DVD cover, I figured that this would be a pretty safe watch. In order to keep from spoiling my enjoyment of movies, I often try to walk into them without knowing much of anything (which seems to frustrate other people sometimes when they ask what I'm watching); so, when I started watching this movie, I figured it was probably about vampires or zombies or something. Wow, was I totally wrong! It's actually more of a tragedy about mental illness than anything else, though it's also got some surrealist and absurdist elements. That might put off some people. As a huge fan of David Lynch, I recognized that the surreal scenes were kind of homages/ripoffs of his work, but, really, it didn't bother me nearly as much as it apparently did some other Lynch fans (and, of course, surrealism will always have its detractors, calling it pretentious or stupid). In particular, one dream sequence, where a character has a strange, symbolism-laden conversation with a nightmare version of Zippy the Pinhead, reminded me VERY strongly of Lost Highway. I'm sure fellow Lynch fans know the scene that I'm talking about ("That's f***ing crazy, man."). Regardless, I liked the scene, and I thought it was done well. It's always nice to see people being influenced by Lynch, even if they're taking the influence a *bit* too far, into territory that might involve lawyers, if it were a different form of media.

Moving on...

The acting was stellar. I totally bought each and every character. The directing was a bit, shall we say, stylistic. I suppose it might not be everyone's cup of tea. Again, while it was slightly derivative of the style of other directors (someone is apparently a Darren Aronofsky fanboy), I liked it. The plot was told from a combination Memento and Repulsion viewpoint, mixing the out-of-order scenes of Memento with the unreliable narrator from Repulsion. In fact, the whole movie seems to take some major hints from Repulsion, while not being nearly so much of a outright homage; instead, individual scenes and the overall theme remind me of that movie.

So, what are we left with? A rather strange potpourri of Lynch, Aronofsky, Polanksi, Nolan, and perhaps even a bit of Kubrick thrown in. Does it work? Yes. Is it highly derivative of other directors? Yes. Are there strange plot holes, that are never really explained (why is there only one phone in such a huge house, and why doesn't the wife have a cell phone? Why did the father leave before the arrival of the nurse? Why did... and so on)? Oh, yes, definitely. Perhaps you'll be able to forgive all these issues. Perhaps not. If you can, then I think you'll like this movie. It's powerful and intriguing.

If the director can make a movie that is more original, in his own style, and work on reducing the number of bizarre plot holes that make no sense, I will become a fan. He could really have a strong future.

I thought this movie was great, A lot of people commented on it falling short of the 'horror' genre, but I don't think it was ever meant to be one. Watch it as a tragic drama, and these disappointments fade. I think Leo Bill did a fantastic job and I felt drawn into his character even further by the camera's exceptional use as he moves about the house. I don't want to spoil anything, so suffice to say it was a well acted movie with great camera-work, an exceptional cast and the overlying doom which permeated throughout the movie drew me in sometimes - enough to identify with some the universal aspects of the story and at times feel a shudder through my back, more so than any 'horror' show I've seen in the last few years.

I found this film particularly painful to watch for entirely personal reasons.

First, I am an ex-psych nurse. I am currently a Social Care Worker dealing with some of the worst cases around. I am also mentally ill, though not critically so. As such this film touched home on just about every level.

This film is black and raw and real. The acting, especially of the son, is utterly superb very much akin to cases I have dealt with, which made the rapid descent all the more believable. I sat for a majority of the film thinking of just how easily this could really happen - and likely has happened many, many times.

There is an interesting quirk of time-line throughout, which highlights the reaction of the father to the actions of the son, which at its best involves a dual view of the stairwell. I felt this was something of a pivotal point and quite superb direction. The differing states of the building itself likewise reflect the state of the mother, which is again subtle but effective.

Do not expect a standard horror here. It isn't. It feels more like a snapshot of real lives and as such is vastly more effective than any straight horror flick could ever hope to be.

I would urge anyone with even a passing interest in mental health to watch this film. Consider it a warning of how easily the system can fail, and consider yourself forewarned.

That is all.