Prometheus (UK/US 2012)

Noomi Rapace as archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw in ‘Prometheus’

Prometheus is a good example of ‘Global Hollywood’ and its release in 2012 points to several aspects of how Hollywood is coping with the evolving global film ecology. The film is a prequel of sorts to the Alien franchise which began in 1979 with three further instalments (and two more related to the Predator franchise) over the next thirty years.

The production cost an estimated $130-140 million to produce and a great deal to market ($60 million if the 50% of production cost rule applies). Only a Hollywood studio could afford that kind of money. It was produced by three companies, two American and one British for the studio major 20th Century Fox. Producer-director Ridley Scott is British, the scriptwriters are American. The principal technical credits are for Europeans who are all US residents (Polish cinematographer, Italian film editor, German music composer). There are thirteen speaking parts in the film and these are played by five English, two Scottish, one South-African, one Irish-German, one Australian, one Swedish-Spanish and two American actors. Having said that, all the principals are known to American film and television audiences. As if to add to the confusion, the art director Arthur Max is an American who has worked mostly in the UK. The film was shot mainly on Pinewood sets in the UK and on location in Iceland, Scotland and Spain. The extensive visual effects work was carried out in the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand.

Trying to assign ‘nationality’ to a film like Prometheus is clearly pointless. IMDB currently describes it as a ‘US’ production. That must be wrong. If anything it is a British production using international talent and facilities, all of which are paid for with American money (though of course that money probably comes ultimately from a variety of sources).

Prometheus is a ‘tentpole’ release by 20th Century Fox, a News Corporation company. Its release strategy follows that of Avengers Assemble (or whatever it is called internationally!) in releasing to the ‘International’ market a week before the ‘domestic’ North American release. I haven’t yet seen a convincing argument as to why this development has taken place. We know that ‘international’ is now twice the size of ‘domestic’ but that doesn’t explain why it necessarily comes first. In the UK, Prometheus opened on 1,019 screens with 73% of box office coming from 3D presentations (UK multiplexes are now almost completely converted to digital projection). Given that the opening date coincided with the Jubilee celebrations this was perhaps an odd decision. On the other hand, it was also a school holiday (it’s a ’15′ release) and the weather in the UK has been terrible – which is always good for the box office. I expect a healthy total for the full week following a weekend screen average of $10,000 (though the inflated cost of 3D presentations disguises the admissions numbers). The film opens in the US today.

But what about the film as a narrative? It deals with a mission at the end of the 21st century to find an alien civilisation which may have visited the Earth 3,000 years ago – as seen on cave paintings. (This idea is loosely drawn from The Chariot of the Gods, the 1968 book by Erich von Däniken.) The ship’s crew find the remains of an alien base, which at first appears derelict, but then . . . etc.

I confess that I’m not a Ridley Scott fan. His films are brilliantly ‘visualised’ and always contain exciting sequences – but most of the time they are also confused and messy in their storytelling. On a few occasions Scott has had a decent script and a strong cast and the film is a standout – I give you Thelma and Louise and Alien. (I still can’t forgive the scriptwriters for what they did to Phil K. Dick’s work in Blade Runner.) Unfortunately, I have to agree with what I think is the majority verdict on this, his latest film. Prometheus looks great, the cast is terrific and the script is pretty ropey. (I watched a 2D version.)

Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender are terrific, Idris Elba and Charlize Theron have less to do but certainly have a presence and with supporting cast as strong as Kate Dickie, Sean Harris, Timothy Spall and Benedict Wong there shouldn’t really be a problem (the casting and the theme of the film are very reminiscent of Danny Boyle’s underrated Sunshine).

There will no doubt be a sequel (i.e. at least one more prequel to Alien) but I hope that more work goes on the script. I’ll just mention one irritating script element. At the beginning of the film a credit tells us that the ‘Prometheus’ has a crew of 17 – yet only 10 of the crew have lines of dialogue. In a confined space like the ship, doesn’t it seem lazy to have nearly half the crew as simple, mute spear carriers?

I think in the end that this ‘global film’ isn’t in fact ‘global’ enough. It will be interesting to see how it fares at the box office outside Europe and North America. An English-speaking audience will hear its ‘Britishness’ in the dialogue but that will be lost in dubbing. In the first week, Prometheus was released in 15 territories and entered the international chart at No 3. It failed to beat Men In Black 3 (in 90 territories) and Snow White and the Huntsman (in 45 territories). The comparison with Snow White is significant. That film was in its second week in some territories but its screen average was still higher than that of Prometheus. The grittier, more ‘realist’ end of science fiction is not such a global attraction as comedy and romance/fantasy.

Many territories will see the film as simply ‘American’. On the other hand, there is not a specifically American ideological feel about the story – though it does have a ‘creationist’ discourse which I assume will resonate more in the US than it does over here. It’s worth remembering that the original Alien was written by Dan O’Bannon (co-creator of one of my favourite science fiction films Dark Star (1974)) during the counter-culture years in Southern California – indeed, Wikipedia suggests that the Alien script was developed from Dark Star. I don’t know if that influenced the sense of corporate exploitation of space with its truculent crew but the Alien films seem quite different in ideological terms to the Star Trek franchise (which has always felt like an odd combination of progressive, liberal ideas married to an American military ethos).

It’s going to be interesting to see how feminist film studies approaches this ‘re-boot’ of the Alien franchise. And I’m particularly looking forward to the analysis of Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw v. Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, triangulated with Noomi as Lisbeth Salander. I suspect that Ms Rapace is here to stay. She looks and sounds different – and she is an outstanding acting talent.

In Time (US 2011)

Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried 'on the run' – a reminder of 'The Adjustment Bureau' (but without hats!)?

In Time seemed to come out of nowhere. That’s what happens when you don’t watch American films or TV on a regular basis. The plot sounded interesting but when I heard that it was  an Andrew Niccol movie I was determined to see it. Niccol is the closest filmmaker I know to aspects of 1950s/60s science fiction literature. His script for The Truman Show was quasi-Dickian. Gattaca is a favourite film for many reasons – not least its production design and cinematography. (Niccol, a New Zealander, worked in the advertising films business in London and he seems to have good contacts.) S1mone was, if nothing else, an original idea that satirised Hollywood and celebrity (simulacra and celebrity – another Dickian theme). I haven’t seen Lord of War – a satire of a different kind – but it has many supporters. In Time is said to be very similar in its narrative ideas to a Harlan Ellison short story ”Repent Harlequin! said the Ticktock Man’ written in 1965. Ellison appears to have filed a plagiarism suit against 20th Century Fox but there doesn’t seem to be any injunction against the film’s release.

In Time finds Niccol back in potentially Dickian territory. It has elements of Minority Report (a dogged policeman chasing the hero through an alternative future/present landscape), some design ideas that at least remind us of the intelligence of Gattaca, an underclass borrowed from Soylent Green and The Matrix and it ends like Bonnie and Clyde. What’s not to like? Best of all it offers the most sustained critique of a capitalist system (in which time is literally money and is accumulated by the few to oppress the many) that you are likely to see in mainstream cinema. Perhaps this is why the film has been deemed something of a flop in North America, but a hit in the rest of the world. With plenty more openings to come the ‘International Box Office’ is nearly twice North America. According to Box Office Mojo it has taken $13 million in Russia, but only $30 million in North America. In the UK, audiences have made it into a successful release despite only moderately good reviews. In some ways I think that the film is working like The Adjustment Bureau – which it resembles in narrative ideas and overall feel. With senses dulled by a succession of clunky action pictures, I imagine some mainstream audiences have been surprised to find a film that has intelligence, a romance of sorts and some good performances in amongst the obligatory car chases.

Cillian Murphy as the 'Time Keeper' – the display behind him lists 'time as money'.

The basic premise is that this alternative society has evolved to the point where genetics and medicine are able to keep the population alive indefinitely. But to maintain control, the rich have developed a system which decrees that when anyone reaches the age of 25 they must ‘buy’ extra years of life in order to stay alive. The ‘life bank balance’ is displayed on the forearm and paying for anything is like giving up blood or receiving a transfusion of new funds when payments are received. When your time runs out, you die immediately. The elite have thousands of years available but the poor live, like the working classes have always done since the start of the industrial revolution, ‘on the edge’, borrowing time or pawning goods. The ‘inciting incident’ sees the hero, Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) ‘receive’ over a 100 years of time unexpectedly. This young man from the ‘ghetto’, who is used to living with only a day or so ‘in the bank’, determines to visit the rich gated enclave in order to make a statement of some kind. He is driven by personal grief and an overall belief in living on the edge  but also a genuine sense of sharing whatever he has – the nearest Hollywood gets to a socialist hero. (I don’t want to spoil the narrative, suffice to say that there are many interesting inferences about past insurrections, including perhaps actions by Will’s dead father.) Inevitably, Will ends up seducing/abducting Sylvia Weis the daughter of the richest man in town, a genuine ‘time lord’, and being pursued by a determined cop – a ‘timekeeper’ (played wonderfully by Cillian Murphy). The cop, of course, is from the ghetto himself and attempts to keep a ‘professional attitude’ towards his job even if his sympathies might be with the poor rather than the rich. Each day he works with only a limited number of hours on his arm so as not to attract too many time thieves, the piranhas of the poor communities. Alex Pettyfor plays a gangster with a British accent straight out of a Guy Ritchie film leading a group of time thieves known as ‘Minutemen’. This seems like a good bit of satire. As well as the pun on ‘time thieves’, ‘minutemen’ were American militia groups fighting the British in the War of Independence and subsequently the name of the US silo-launched missile defences against the Soviets. The cynical amongst us might see them as agents of the American ruling class – personified by in the film by Sylvia’s father (played by the curiously soft but vampiric Vincent Kartheiser).

Alex Pettyfor as Fortis, leader of the 'Minutemen'.

Amanda Seyfried as Sylvia, playing the Patty Hearst role. This image is so fetishised (the gun, the dress, the shoes) that it refers to Faye Dunaway in 'Bonnie and Clyde' as well as 'Nikita'.

The film looks great photographed by Roger Deakins in various shades of blue and sepia-gold. Production designer Alex McDowell worked on Minority Report and Costume Designer Colleen Atwood has a very long list of credits including Gattaca and most of Tim Burton’s films. However, I guess she was partly resonsible for my one niggle with the film. The rich girl hero is played by Amanda Seyfried who spends most of her time in the action sequences running and climbing/jumping in various short skirts and vertiginous heels, both stiletto and more substantial but all designed to ruin her feet. I wondered if this was some kind of hommage to the Anne Parillaud character in Luc Besson’s Nikita. (Ms Seyfried also sports an Anna Karina bob.) The first time we meet her, the little black dress and heels are appropriate for the setting but after that I was almost wishing for some product placement that would allow her to don skinny jeans and trainers. The rich girl with the poor boy is a genre staple of course but in this case a reference to heiress Patty Hearst, abducted by the ‘Symbionese Liberation Army’ in 1974, seems appropriate. There have been many sniffy reviews about Timberlake and Seyfried and their acting abilities but I thought that they were both fine in their roles and exactly what this kind of material required.

The main sensible criticism of the film focuses on the difference between the ideas heavy first half and the action-packed second half. The first half certainly has a very clever script – possibly with too many ideas. I’ve seen some reviews that suggest that the writer has not thought about the ideas at all. Perhaps this isn’t surprising as the promotion of the film has followed the same misguided route as that for The Adjustment Bureau. The trailers we sat through before the film were all for violent action films.  I’m not an action fan but the sequences in In Time seemed OK to me. There are some interesting twists in the closing stages and the final shot is terrific. Take this as a genre film which makes satirical points about greed and inequalities in capitalist society (while simultaneously fetishising youth and the promise of sexual excitement – not actually shown) and you have an entertaining night out. The more I think about the film, the more the ideas come. The central premise means that no-one looks over 25 and the actress playing Justin Timberlake’s mum (Olivia Wilde) is actually younger than he is. This is a neat comment on Hollywood and roles for older women – cf Cary Grant and Jessie Royce Landis, the actress playing his mother in North by Northwest who was actually a few months his junior.

Super 8 (US 2011)

"Look to the skies!" A Spielbergian moment for Kyle Chandler, Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning and Ron Eldard. © Paramount Pictures

When the closing credits began to roll on this film, my main thought was “Why go to all this trouble not to say anything?”. The short film that actually appears in the credits is in some ways more interesting than what precedes it. J.J. Abrams appears to have made a Spielberg tribute film. It’s well-made and engaging most of the time with good performances by the young actors at the core of the narrative – but it doesn’t add up to anything. On reflection the final third of the film is a bit of a mess as the plot doesn’t make much sense and I didn’t really understand why some things were happening. But by then I didn’t really care.

The story rehashes bits of Close Encounters and ET with elements of Alien and Poltergeist, Minority Report and probably several other Spielberg-related films. Set in the Summer of 1979 (three Mile Island is mentioned on a news report) it places a group of young teens making a zombie picture (referencing George Romero’s early Living Dead films) who witness a train crash close to an isolated town. But this is more than just a crash and soon the US Air Force are in town cleaning up the mess and starting to behave suspiciously. You can pretty much invent the rest of the plot from there. The boy and girl at the centre have both lost their mothers and have to live with inadequate fathers. The boys ride round on chopper bikes as in ET etc. I stress that it is well done and Abrams seems to have gone as far as selecting the most appropriate filmstock and colour grading to mimic the 1970s/80s films set in small towns. Unfortunately he is as sentimental as Spielberg so it doesn’t get beyond a film for 12 year-olds and those who wish they were 12 again – nothing wrong with that and I hope they enjoy it. It’s also much longer than it needs to be. Pruning the action sequences would make a tighter leaner film.

Of course, there is no reason why a genre film shouldn’t aim for being simply entertaining but it does need a twist or a new element to create ‘difference’ with the ‘repetition’. I couldn’t find the difference here and after all the hype (and the big budget spend) I was hoping for something more. While I was watching Super 8 it occurred to me that there was another film set around this period with a pair of protagonists of about this age. Let the Right One In has quite a few strengths that J.J. Abrams could learn from. I also thought about Monsters with its beautiful gas station scene on a budget of peanuts. Abrams also has a gas station scene that works pretty well but I’m guessing he spent a lot more. The Korean movie The Host borrows some of the same tropes as Super 8 but also offers a critique of the family and of Korean domestic politics and foreign policy. Super 8 is being touted as the ‘intelligent’ blockbuster of the year which doesn’t bode well for Hollywood.

Source Code (Canada/France/US 2011)

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michele Monaghan as commuters – are they a couple? She knows him, but he doesn't know her.

It’s turning out to be a good season for intelligent and well-crafted science fiction/speculative fiction. Following Monsters and The Adjustment Bureau, Source Code again offers a cerebral SF movie with a strong romance element – although very different from the two earlier films.

The only surprise for me was that the movie cost so much. Box Office Mojo suggests $32 million – I wonder how much of that went to Jake Gyllenhaal? Or perhaps it was all those aerial shots of Chicago? I wonder how much of it was CGI? The budget is interesting because this is an independent film with no Hollywood involvement. A Brit director (Duncan Jones), an American story (from Ben Ripley) and a largely French-Canadian crew (in Montreal) worked for a couple of independent production companies and the film has generally been released by independents. Business has been pretty good with $63 million worldwide so far and only three major territories (North America, Russia and UK/Ireland) on the release slate. One explanation for the film’s genesis is that Gyllenhaal was attached to the script for some time without a director being signed up. He saw Moon and suggested to the producers that they should hire Jones.

Plot outline (no spoilers)

Jake Gyllenhaal is Colter Stevens, a US helicopter pilot in Afghanistan who wakes up on a Chicago commuter train not knowing what is going on when the woman opposite (Michelle Monaghan) calls him ‘Sean’ and appears to know him well. Eight minutes later there is an enormous explosion. Stevens blacks out and wakes again in some form of capsule. Is he part of an experiment in a simulating experiences or is he dreaming? He talks to a ‘controller’ who explains more about his brief . . . and sends him back to the same train at the same time. This cycle will be repeated several times.

Genre

This fits the ‘speculative fiction’/science fiction definition pretty well. The plot depends on the possibilities of developing technologies concerned with direct connection to electrical impulses in the brain. In that sense, the ideas are familiar from decades of SF. Many SF film fans have complained that the film isn’t ‘original’ in terms of its ideas and I’m sure they are right. The ideas could be argued to be ‘Dickian’ in origin – i.e. similar to those of Philip K. Dick in several of his stories. However, what is original – or at least, less familiar – is the genuine interest in relationships. You can see why Gyllenhaal would have thought that Jones could direct the script after he had made Moon since the mixture of SF, limited ‘action’ sequences and relationship dilemmas in that film is repeated here. I think we really do care by the end of the film what happens to each of the characters and how Stevens’ decisions affect them.

Another genre repertoire that is important is the ‘puzzle film’. At first I thought we were going to get a version of the Rashomon narrative – perhaps as in the Lola rennt (Run, Lola, Run) mode, but I think that Source Code is slightly different. Those narratives require a repeated presentation of the same events from the viewpoint of different characters (i.e. potential ‘unreliable narrators’). In Source Code, the events change each time since Stevens learns a little more about what is going on and attempts to change what happens in the eight minutes. But he doesn’t do this by ‘time travel’ so much as gaining intelligence from the past that could help to change the future. The narrative has a final twist that suggests that he also does something else – but I won’t spoil how the narrative enigma evolves over the course of the film. I suspect that many in the audience will want to watch the film a second time to check out their own understanding – I certainly will as I’m not sure I’ve got it right.

The restricted narrative space also makes this a ‘train thriller’. The obvious connection here is to Hitchcock and North by Northwest, not only in the on board train meeting (see the still above) but also the scenes in the station washroom. It’s great to see American films returning to trains – always more interesting than car chases for me. (I went straight to the Chicago Commuter Train website to check out the system – it looks impressive.) The thriller also has a contemporary feel because of the intimation of a terrorist threat – and the assumptions that creates.

Vera Farmiga as the 'Controller' and Jeffrey Wright as her boss.

Reception

There were stories in the first couple of weeks on release that this film was too clever for its own good – that some audiences weren’t bright enough to ‘get it’. This is nonsense of course. The film has reached beyond the fans of Moon I think to pick up mainstream SF fans and others. Some haven’t enjoyed the film but most have. The box office doesn’t lie and Source Code has ‘legs’ – at least in the US and UK. The weekly drop in audience numbers has been much lower than for comparable Hollywood SF films.

Like Moon, Source Code has a limited number of main characters (five) and only a few locations. Casting was clearly important and I think it works very well. Gyllenhaal is slightly unconventional for a leading man/action figure (although it may be just because I still tend to think of him as Donnie Darko) – has he always had that slightly manic eye, horribly reminding me of Tony Blair? But what most intrigued me was that I took Michelle Monaghan to be the same age or younger than Gyllenhaal and Vera Farmiga to be the ‘older woman’. In fact Monaghan is three years older than Gyllenhaal and just three years younger than Farmiga. Clearly she acts/dresses ‘younger’ but I also wonder if the uniform and her authority makes Farmiga look/feel older?Either way it’s good to have decent roles for women in SF.

Here’s the trailer (WARNING: it gives away more of the plot than this review):

The Adjustment Bureau (US 2011)

Anthony Mackie (nearest camera) and John Slattery (in focus)

I’ve been asked to run a day event on ‘dystopias’ – especially as envisaged by the American SF writer Philip K. Dick. A good excuse then to catch The Adjustment Bureau which may become my study text. It’s interesting to note that most of the films based on Dick’s work have drawn on the short stories that he wrote as a ‘pulp’ writer for various magazines in the 1950s (the exceptions are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (as Blade Runner), A Scanner Darkly and Confessions of a Crap Artist). Radio Free Albumeth is awaiting a distributor, I think. This short story focus may be because some of the early 1950s work is now in the public domain or was acquired cheaply some time ago – Dick only saw a few dollars from many of his stories.

Orbit Science Fiction was published for just five issues in 1953-4

The Adjustment Bureau is ‘freely adapted’ from a story called ‘Adjustment Team’ (written in 1953 and published in Orbit Science Fiction in 1954). Writer-director George Nolfi has expanded the 24 pages offered by Dick to a full length feature script. In the process he has changed the central character from an ‘ordinary Joe’ into a potential Presidential candidate and placed him in a romance and a form of ‘conspiracy thriller’. Dick’s story was much simpler – but more terrifying in its exposure of the ‘unreality of the everyday’. It begins with a talking dog – Dick wrote several ‘fantasy stories’ in the early 1950s – and finishes with an open ending but one that is definitely not part of a romance. Witnessing an ‘adjustment’ is a much more terrifying experience than is depicted in the film. Dick’s protagonist is married and his wife doesn’t trust him. Having said that, Nolfi appears to know his Dickian stories and several aspects of his film work in recognisably ‘Dickian’ ways. Overall, I’m not sure that the film works completely but it is an enjoyable diversion and as Dick adaptations go it sits alongside Imposter and Screamers as one of the better ones. (I would agree that the narrative also resembles those of classic TV shows such as The Outer Limits.)

The simple premise of this dystopia is that a mysterious group of ‘adjusters’ are able to ‘fix’ future events by carefully nudging individuals into particular meetings and situations. At various points of history and geography they can then ‘stop’ time and re-arrange the world to ensure that events follow a set pattern. This is a perfect scenario for speculative fiction since some schmuck somewhere will inevitably fall through the gaps in the planning. In this case it is an adjustment operative who dozes off and fails to stop David Norris (Matt Damon) from boarding his morning bus to the office. As a consequence, Damon not only meets again the young woman who inspired him to make a great speech after he lost a senatorial election but also to arrive at his office in the middle of an ‘adjustment’.

Norris now finds himself trapped in a situation where he will risk forcible ‘re-adjustment’ (or a ‘lobotomy’ as he terms it) if he pursues Elise (Emily Blunt) the woman who has stolen his heart. The Adjustment Team warn him in no uncertain terms about what might happen. They appear to be like ‘angels’ in their powers and motives. At this point astute film fans might think of A Matter of Life and Death (or Stairway to Heaven in the US), the classic Powell and Pressburger film in which David Niven defies Heaven in order to pursue his love for Kim Hunter. Unfortunately, Matt Damon isn’t David Niven – or Roger Livesey. He’s a good actor and clearly a bright guy but for me he doesn’t have any charisma. I’ve read that some think he is the ‘sexiest man in America’, but I can’t see it. Emily Blunt on the other hand is terrific in this film. I’m not quite sure if she’s meant to be a Brit in the script but she doesn’t attempt a strong American accent and her dialogue is peppered with colloquial British English. I don’t think I’ve heard someone dismissed as a ‘tool’ (i.e. a ‘prick’, a ‘dick’, a penis) since the 1970s. (I realise ‘tool’ means something else in modern American slang, but this is Elise/Blunt speaking.) And to hear an actress in a Hollywood movie saying ‘bugger’ is a joy. In fact there seems to be quite a lot of swearing that’s got past the censors for a 12A. The image below is quite suggestive of all kinds of possibilities for Nolfi’s mise en scène and the overall look of the film lensed by John Toll (New York locations in particular) is attractive but I’m not sure it all adds up to much.

Elise (Emily Blunt) and David (Matt Damon) meet 'by chance' at the start of the narrative.

In some ways Damon is perfect as a Dickian ‘ordinary Joe’ – rather than as Presidential material. The possibility that the adjusters are some kind of divine intervention also fits in with the Dickian sense of paranoia and interest in various religious ideas which is there in most of the stories but comes to the fore in the later work. Dressing the adjusters with coats and hats like 1950s/60s FBI agents (see the image at the start of the post) is a stroke of genius and casting Anthony Mackie, John Slattery and Terence Stamp is also a good move. Overall then this movie has things going for it. Of course, a lot of the latter part of the narrative is based on chase sequences. But if that draws in audiences and makes a Dickian adaptation more successful, I guess that is a positive.

The reviews/user comments on the film are interesting, partly because of the divergence towards science fiction or romance rather than both and for the inevitable claims that the film is ‘Inception lite’. The truth is that Inception was inspired by Dick, as are dozens of contemporary films. In fact the Dickian view of the world has now almost become the norm – in itself a Dickian outcome. Dick wrote over a period of thirty years or so. He was amazingly prolific in terms of story ideas and his writing developed during major changes in American society – and dramatic changes in his own personal situation. Adapters are able to take the ideas and attempt to fashion them into workable narratives for contemporary audiences but I’m not sure that mainstream Hollywood is the best place for such adaptations. Presumably Nolfi needed Hollywood to stage his story and this meant that he needed a star like Damon. An adaptation of the original story closer to Dick’s intention would have worked well without stars in a low-budget flick. It’s the terror of discovering that behind the façade of everyday reality there is a team of adjusters that should be the draw, not the excitement of a chase or the possibility of a fulfilled romance. Dick did feature strong emotional relationships in some stories – but rarely are they fulfilled.

Never Let Me Go (UK/US 2010)

Andrew Garfield and Carey Mulligan as they appear in the 1980s segment of the film.

Never Let Me Go is an interesting film that is, in relative terms, ‘failing’ at the box office. It’s in some ways a brave film. It doesn’t always happen, but the spread in Sight and Sound (March 2011) in which novelist Kazuo Ishiguro and writer-director Mark Romanek make their case for the film, is for me quite convincing. Unfortunately, the audience who do go to see the film probably won’t read the journal and may well be disappointed.

I’m not going to ‘spoil’ the film narrative, but most potential viewers will know that the film is ‘dystopian’ and will therefore expect the characters to be struggling against some form of tyranny or chaos. But many such stories end with a triumph of some sort. Some potential viewers may also expect a strong romance element and a consequent depiction of the agonies of love – the pain and the passion. All of these expectations might be dashed.

Ishiguro’s novel is set in an alternative history of the UK. This makes it an example of speculative fiction. All we are told at the beginning of the film is that medical science has helped to transform lives. In the Sight and Sound piece, it becomes clearer that the basic premise is concerned with an alternative to the success British science had in the 1940s re nuclear physics. ‘What if’ all that research work had gone into medicine and ways had been found to extend life-spans to 100 years or more for most of the population? I’m not sure if this starting point was more explicit in the book, but in the film, apart from a single onscreen statement, we first see 28 year-old ‘Kathy H’ (Carey Mulligan) watching a medical procedure. This is the mid-1990s and we flashback to the late 1970s when Kathy is at a boarding school with her close friend Ruth and new boy Tommy, who is having problems settling in. Later, we meet the three characters when they have left school but have been transferred to a hostel in a remote rural setting – this is the mid 1980s. The older Ruth (Keira Knightley) has by then developed a relationship with Tommy (Andrew Garfield), but Kathy remains celibate working to maintain her friendship with Ruth and repressing her desire for Tommy – she was the first to befriend him. So far, so ménage à trois, but we know something terrible is going to happen (we actually learn what this is, but not all of its consequences, during the boarding school phase).

Audience expectations

Part of my fascination with this film is to disentangle the original proposal and its treatment in an industrial/commercial context and the ways in which it has been approached by several distinct potential audiences. The first adaptation of a Kazuo Ishiguro novel was The Remains of the Day in 1993 which proved to be a major arthouse success starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. There would certainly be an audience of Ishiguro readers who would consider another adaptation favourably, although speculative fiction offered by ‘literary’ authors is sometimes a more difficult sell. This audience may also be concerned by the ways in which film adaptations can emphasise action over reflection, changing the tone of the novel. With this audience in mind, Never Let Me Go could perhaps have been a small-scale ‘specialised film’. When the film production got underway, this might still have been possible. Carey Mulligan was cast on the basis of early sightings of her performance in An Education – before she became a celebrity figure. She persuaded her friend Keira Knightley (and the producers) to appear as Ruth. Knightley is a major star/celebrity figure, but she has appeared in smaller films without noticeably disrupting those films via her star image. However, I think that in this case the casting of Andrew Garfield probably helped tip the scale. As with Mulligan, when production began Garfield was a highly regarded young actor, but not a big ‘name’ Hollywood star. Now he is a lead in a hit film, The Social Network, and is currently ‘in production’ as the new Spider-Man . When Never Let Me Go opened in the UK, there must have been a potential young audience, longing for a sight of these stars in a mainstream romance film. At the same time, the specialised cinema audience which enjoys intelligent and intriguing speculative fiction/science fiction may have been put off by the prospect of a Hollywood-style romance. So, three different audiences all with possible problems. My first inkling of the problem was during the London Film Festival when I couldn’t help overhearing the woman behind me telling her friend that she’d seen Never Let Me Go as the Opening Film of the festival. She had found it so harrowing that she had immediately bought the biggest box of chocolates she could find and taken it to a screening of the Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz film Knight and Day as an antidote.

How can I explain what Never Let Me Go is about without a spoiler? Let’s just say that the three young people face a terrible prognosis of what is in store for them. This is hinted at quite cleverly in the opening sequence of their early schooldays. They don’t have full names – just a first name and an initial, rather like the character in Kafka’s tales of paranoia. There is something decidedly spooky about the school – not least Charlotte Rampling as the headteacher. In a Hollywood movie our heroes would intuit the danger, find out the true story and then fight to be free. In real life, as Kazuo Ishiguro argues, most people faced with a terrible prognosis don’t fight it in a Quixotic way (though a handful do – and they often become the subject of biopics or melodramas). Most of us would focus on mundane daily routines and on our relationships with those nearest to us. Under pressure and frightened of losing control we look for something we can hold on to. In this film, the trio have only each other and the complicated feelings they have for each other. They each love the other two in different ways. But what is love? What do you want for the person you love and how do you express that love?That’s what this film is about and how it ends, how that love is expressed, is the key to the film’s resolution. The film’s title is echoed in a ‘fictional’ song that the child Tommy gives to Kathy on a music cassette and in a way ‘letting go’ becomes the crucial question for the characters – whatever it may mean. I confess that while I enjoyed the film as I watched it, I found the Sight and Sound material very helpful and I’ve thought about it at some length since.

Technically, the film is very well made with cinematography, editing and sound beautifully representing the tone of the narrative and the fictional world – the ‘not quite there’ feeling of the time periods and the strange but familiar English landscapes (at least one location in Scotland though). The casting and acting performances are excellent all round and the young actors morph into the well-known faces in quite an uncanny way. I did feel sorry for Keira Knightley in that her role is as the least sympathetic of the main characters and the least likely to gain favourable notices. On the other hand, Carey Mulligan couldn’t ask for a better role and she is extremely good. She’s now at the point where she will be offered the roles that could make her a major star. I hope she chooses wisely.

Afterthought: I meant to mention that the script adaptation is by Alex Garland, known recently for his two science fiction scripts for Danny Boyle (28 Days Later and Sunshine). This may have contributed to audience expectations. By all accounts, his script keeps close to the novel’s narrative.

Monsters (UK 2010)

Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) and Sam (Whitney Able) as the couple in Monsters.

Monsters is an important film for several reasons. The most obvious observation is that it proves that you can make a convincing genre film with impressive CGI for under $500,000 (or even much less according to some reports). There has never been better evidence of the possibilities for filmmakers who understand how to get the best from relatively inexpensive equipment and how to conceive a viable production idea with only two professional actors and a basic script.

Following other British films by first-time directors, such as Skeletons and Moon, Monsters also demonstrates that despite the thousands of words on the fragile state of British filmmaking, there are still new talents to watch. Writer-director Gareth Edwards previously worked in TV, mostly documentary and dramadoc/docudrama as writer/director/cinematographer and visual effects creator. He utilises all these skills in Monsters and has been deservedly rewarded with several prizes.

But most of all, Monsters looks like being the perfect film for teaching about the way in which film culture is developing and that’s what I want to explore. I should confess that I’d heard rather a lot about the film before I could get to a screening. Therefore I had a good idea of what to expect – which took away some of the possible pleasures of the narrative the first time round. I was also aware of the male lead, ‘Scoot’ McNairy who starred in the under-rated indy rom-com, In Search of a Midnight Kiss. I mention this since many reviewers refer to the two leads as ‘unknowns’ – but I felt invited in because of my familiarity with McNairy (I’ve used the earlier film successfully with students). I was also aware that many mainstream audiences for the film had felt ‘taken in’ by the title which led them to expect something that wasn’t really forthcoming – a ‘monster movie’. When I queued up at the multiplex, I realised that the group of young teenage boys behind me were discussing going to see the film and, for a moment, I thought of warning them that they might not enjoy it. I’m glad I didn’t. I’d rather risk a negative reaction than keep audiences from seeing something different.

You only have to look at IMDB and various other film websites/blogs/forums to see how this film has divided audiences. Much of the conflict focuses on expectations of what the film will offer – it was released ‘wide’, not to as many multiplexes as a blockbuster, but to far more than most specialised or ‘art’ films in the UK (164 screens compared to the 250 plus of most mainstream films). In North America, the release has been much narrower (only 25 screens, but possibly also on VOD?). I suspect that in the US, only science fiction/action fans knew about the film in the mainstream audience (the film received significant critical support which might influence the more cinephile audience). In the UK the mainstream audience was much more exposed to the trailer. So, what were they expecting?

Here is the official US trailer for Monsters. If you’ve not seen the film, please be aware that the trailer briefly shows some of the best scenes which might spoil your enjoyment of the unfolding narrative:

and here is the UK trailer:

I think the UK trailer is better – i.e. a more accurate representation of the film, though still potentially misleading. It’s inevitable that the trail will focus on the genre elements of science fiction rather than the romance/relationship drama that is at least as important. Several critics have also referred to the road movie as part of the generic mix and there is certainly a case to be argued but I think that the film is more concerned (intentionally or not) with a distinct sub-genre or extended cycle of films about migration from Central America to the United States. This involves ‘border-crossing’ and refers to a host of movies, both American and Mexican – the most recent being Sin Nombre. In the case of Monsters, the decision to make the lead male character a journalist ties the film into an0ther cycle of films about ‘journalists in warzones and their ethical stance’. One such reference might be to Nick Nolte as a photographer in Nicaragua in Under Fire (1983). Kaulder (the Scoot McNairy character in Monsters) is in Central America to take photographs about the war against the aliens. We presume he is a freelance who is nonetheless dependent on his major clients for work and he is effectively ordered by his client, a media mogul, to escort the rich man’s injured daughter back to America. He tells the young woman, Sam (Whitney Able), that photographs of happy children are worth nothing but he could get $50,000 for an image of a child killed by an alien. This has an interesting narrative pay-off later in the film. There isn’t in fact a great deal of direct critique of media corporations or US policy – which of course makes the few examples more powerful. I felt that this underplaying of metaphor was quietly effective, but it seems to have offended several internet posters. I wonder how many American viewers realised that this was a British film? The majority of films that I can think of which deal with the migration North from Central America tend to be sympathetic to the migrants and critical of the American presence at the border. Possibly the most enjoyable moment in The Day After Tomorrow is when the Americans escape to safety as refugees in Mexico.

I’m hoping to use Monsters with students and I look forward to analysing their responses.

Skeletons (UK 2010)

Bennett (the taller one, Andrew Buckley) and Davis (Ed Gaughan) at work! (The film is in full colour, only a few sequences have this tone.)

I think this is one of my films of the year and it is a delight to find a small British independent film which, without any studio backing or major stars, more than holds its own. My only slight concern is that as part of the very strong critical welcome it has been dubbed a ‘cult film’. The tragedy is that audiences are now so cowed by conventional tastes that a film like this is assumed to be far outside the mainstream when in fact it is funny, warm and hugely enjoyable. Or perhaps it’s just me? I’ve seen references to David Lynch, Terry Gilliam and Withnail and I – none of which do much for me and Ghostbusters which also seems wrong in tone. Charlie Kaufman I understand, but he’s too American. This is a very English film (despite Lottery Funding channeled through Scottish Screen – I don’t quite understand that unless it has something to do with EIFF) and I thought it was more a cross between the 1960s/70s Avengers TV series, Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, M. R. James and Michael Palin in Ripping Yarns. But even that’s not quite right. It isn’t a genre film as such but there is a strong element of gothic ghost story and British science fiction. It is being called a comedy, but I think that the comic elements are always there in certain kinds of British horror/science fiction.

Plot outline (no spoilers)

Two unprepossessing characters march through a British upland landscape (the Peak District – the film is produced through EM Media) dressed in black suits and carrying small brown suitcases – the type used by craftsman to carry their tools in the 1950s. They visit remote houses and perform some kind of service – all the while discussing the death of Rasputin. As Nick pointed out after the screening we only really find out what they do after about 20 minutes or so. In the meantime we learn more about their intimate but slightly tense relationship in which Davis is the irritable and more adventurous partner and Bennett is more steady. As the title suggests their job involves the ‘skeletons in the closet’ found in many houses. The location of events is never revealed and the period setting is not defined – clothes and decor are not ‘now’ and the pair travel by train (clearly a preserved railway giving the feel of 1950s/1960s Britain). The pair’s boss is a stereotypical sergeant-major type ironically known as the ‘Colonel’ and played with vigour by Jason Isaacs. In the second half of the film, the pair are given a new job which plunges them into a family situation, prompting rather more self-reflection than appears to be good for them. But rest assured, there is a satisfactory outcome.

Commentary

Writer-director Nick Whitfield comes from an acting background and he certainly handles the cast very well. The camerawork is accomplished and the images of British landscape look very good in ‘Scope. I do wish more directors/cinematographers would use ‘Scope and ignore what it’s going to look like on TV. There is a slight sense in which the film does feel like a first time effort – perhaps some of the framings and compositions are just too textbook perfect that they seem to stand out. Research suggests that Whitfield has no specific training and his DoP Zac Nicholson is an experienced operator gradually getting bigger jobs as DoP so perhaps my analysis makes sense? This isn’t a criticism, just an observation. The project was well worth supporting (it began with a short film in 2007 using the same material) and presumably the extra support helped bring in experienced actors Jason Isaacs (something of a cult figure in British Cinema it seems) and Danish Dogme veteran Paprika Steen. I knew that I had seen Paprika Steen before, but I didn’t make the connection before looking her up. What a great casting choice – she gives the character just the faintest sense of ‘oddness’. The two leads are stand-up comedians, but Buckley also has a long list of UK television credits. I hope they both get more film roles on these performances.

Tuppence Middleton as Rebecca

The other main character is played by Tuppence Middleton who made a big impression in last year’s British ‘high school horror’ movie Tormented (which was also produced by Forward Films). She’s good again here in a rather different role and next up she is one of the teens in Nakata Hideo’s English language Chatroom. I predict big things for Ms Middleton if she gets the right parts in the next stage of her career.

Inevitably perhaps, Skeletons is being discussed as this year’s Moon, following success at Edinburgh in winning the Michael Powell Award and also encouraging festival appearances in the US. However, I’m not sure that distributor Soda Pictures has got the muscle to exploit the good audience responses that the film has garnered. When I checked the official box office figures, I found  a single print of the film had been released on July 2nd and then the film just disappeared from the charts (the UKFC chart is supposed to show all UK films, even when they make only a few pounds). What’s going on? There is a Facebook page for the film and it has clearly played at different specialist cinemas across the country and been enjoyed everywhere. We saw the film in Bradford where it has played just five times on a digital print. This is madness if the audience success is not being properly documented. If this is what happens to decent flicks while lumbering behemoths colonise the multiplexes there isn’t much hope for UK film culture. Grrr!

If Soda manage to get this onto DVD, please buy a copy. Better still, demand that your local cinema show the film on 35mm or 2K digital.

Official website

The UK trailer:

You’ll notice the music score – which I enjoyed, but others seem to have found a bit too much.

One last point, the film’s ‘concept’ has something in common with Inception – but it is much better handled!