THE HISTORY OF SOUND* - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 11

THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE failed as a film because director Mona Fastvold had no interest in the interiority of her characters. By contrast, THE HISTORY OF SOUND fails as a film because the characters are so deeply closeted that their interiority is deliberately withheld to a mere bat-squeak of emotion amidst a tediously attenuated 2hr plus running time.

Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor star as Lionel and David, two students at the Boston Conservatoire whose affair is interrupted by World War One.  Bespectacled Lionel returns home to his Kentucky farm to await David’s return from France, upon which they derp around New England recording folk music on wax cylinders. Soon after, the urbane David throws off Lionel and retreats to academia. A brokenhearted Lionel becomes a chorister in Rome and then Oxford, breaking the heart of a boyfriend and girlfriend in turn, before seeking out David once more. All of that is simple enough, but takes the better part of 100 minutes. 

Mescal and O’Connor are, of course, superb actors, and do the best they can with material that asks them to constrain their emotions.  Director Oliver Hermanus and screenwriter Ben Shattuck take the same attitude with the context in which the characters exist.  We think the film might interrogate racism in post-reconstruction America with what might have been a more menacing and significant scene recording some black singers, but no, the film retreats.  We think the film might interrogate class prejudice toward Lionel with his intellectual girlfriend’s minted English family, but once again the film retreats. 

The result is a film about two closeted men that itself feels closeted and afraid. I think it was aiming at profound emotion and catharsis in its epilogue, but instead I was just bored and alienated.  The folk music is rather lovely, as recompense. But if you find that sort of thing enchanting you would be better off watching Bernard MacMahon’s AMERICAN EPIC.

THE HISTORY OF SOUND is rated R and has a running time of 127 minutes. It played Cannes, Telluride and London. It opened in the USA on September 12th.

HAMNET***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 6

HAMNET is the story of a happy loving family, heartbroken by grief, and allowed to find some kind of catharsis through art.  It just so happens that the family are Will and Agnes Shakespeare, married for love in Stratford, parents to three wonderful children.  While Will is in London putting on his latest play at The Globe, the bubonic plague strikes, and takes away his young son Hamnet.  In her desperate grief, Agnes lashes out at Will, and he gives his son another life in the tragedy of what would have been seen as the same name in that era.  A grieving mother can see her son full-grown, and acting out his dream of being on the stage. It’s a moment of wonderful emotional release.

Writer-director Chloe Zao (NOMADLAND) has created an utterly beautiful, sensitive and heart-breaking adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s critically acclaimed and beloved novel Hamnet.  She has a sure visual sense and an eye for hauntingly beautiful staging. This is, however, a movie that showcases performances above all. AsJessie Buckley has been raw and vulnerable and brilliant for years, but with Agnes she has finally found a big mainstream movie that could see her get her flowers.  This is her movie and my god she is its very heart and soul.  But let’s not discount Paul Mescal as Will Shakespeare.  The scene where he breaks down backstage at The Globe is just heart-wrenchingly well done. And finally, a massive amount of praise is due to young Jacobi Jupe who plays Hamnet, and in a master-stroke of casting is the real-life younger brother of the actor who plays Hamlet.  

I cannot say any more than that I would not change a single frame of this film. I loved the book and love this adaptation.  It is a deceptively pure and simple tale, told with restraint when needed, and full-throated emotion for impact. It is a stunning piece of work.

HAMNET has a running time of 125 minutes. It played Telluride, Toronto and London. It opens in the USA on November 27th and in the UK on January 9th.

GLADIATOR II****

GLADIATOR II is glorious trash. I can't see it winning any Oscars, but the two hour plus running time flies by.  There's a ridiculous gladiatorial battle featuring a rhino an hour after it starts, and an even more ridiculous one featuring sharks an hour before it finishes.  There's a serviceable plot, lots of fan service from the original, and a juicy performance from Denzel Washington.  I don't think it will do for Paul Mescal what it did for Russell Crowe. He has precious little to say.  But I was, indeed, entertained.

The movie opens with an epic naval assault on a north African town led by Pedro Pascal's war weary Roman general Acacius.  It results in Paul Mescal's warrior Hanno being taken prisoner and his wife being killed. (Note in this version of Rome, women can be warriors too - but they still can't have meaningful impact on the plot.) Back in Rome, Hanno manages to impress Denzel Washington's political mover and shaker and Gladiatorial sponsor Macrinus. Hanno does this by fighting of a ludicrously CGI'd warrior monkey - the only duff note in the whole film. For me, the joy of these films is that they scrupulously bring dusty, vital, chaotic Rome to life.  I hate anything that brings me out of that.

And so the plot moves into gear.  Hanno wants revenge on Acacius, little realising that Acacius is as disenchanted with the corruption of Rome as he is.  Acacius has a loyal legion based in Ostia ready to launch a coup and install his wife, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) as Marcus Aurelius' literal and philosophical heir.   

The corruption of Rome is represented by the young, feckless twin Emperors Geta and Caracalla (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) and a largely supine Senate represented by the bankrupt Senator Thrax (Tim McInnerny).

Somewhere between the two factions lies Macrinus, a power broker who bankrupts Thrax and gains the ear of the Emperors.  Is he on the side of Aurelius or opposed? Will he help Hanno or betray him?  

The resulting film is full of amazing visual spectacle and kinetic fight scenes. I loved John Mathieson's cinematography and the CGI rendering of ancient Rome is I found it curiously chaste for an R-rated movie though. We barely see Acacius and Lucilla kiss. Macrinus hints as his bisexuality but apparently a male-on-male kissing scene was edited out.  The twin emperors wear heavy make-up and one is meant to be gay, but it's all rather milquetoast. Still, I suppose sex scenes aren't the point in a sword-and-sandal epic. 

GLADIATOR has a running time of 148 minutes and is rated R. It is on release in the UK and opens on November 22nd in the USA.

Spoilers follow:  it's hard not to watch this film in light of the US election and to see clear parallels with the corruption of Rome and the newly installed kakocracy in America.  One could argue that Caracalla's appointment of Dondas is equivalent to Trump's nomination of Gaetz. And that the pure power philosophy of Macrinus, so Nietzschean, is that of Trump. And there's something tragic and true in Macrinus calling bullshit on the Dream of Rome.  Aurelius may have wanted to restore power to the Senate and People of Rome, but he wasn't about to end slavery.  Macrinus' nihilism actually makes more sense than all the Hollywood schmalz, especially if you know anything about Roman history.

FOE** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 8

Another day, another festival film that is well-acted and directed but where the story isn’t really worth the candle.  Because make no mistake, whatever the advertised description, FOE isn’t really a sci-fi film about a dystopian climate-ravaged near-future:  it’s actually a relationship drama about a bad marriage.  Which is not to say that you can’t make a compelling film about a bad marriage - just look at Noah Baumbach’s 2019 festival favourite MARRIAGE STORY, or pretty much the entire oeuvre of Ingmar Bergman. But FOE, and PRISCILLA, and MAESTRO, and FINGERNAILS, are all basically bad marriage dramas and none of them are compelling.

So let’s start with the sci-fi conceit. Writer-director Garth Davis (LION) has no track record in writing sci-fi, and maybe no interest in writing sci-fi, and it shows. He is, however, adapting a book by Iain Reid which may get into this in more depth. What we get on screen is the story of a woman, Hen, who has fallen out of love with her husband Junior, then falls in love with his AI Cylon replacement instead.  This is a tale an old as time, or at least as old as Martin Guerre (better known to western audiences as that Richard Gere film SOMMERSBY).  If you want to get into the nuances of how this might play out with AI alternates, then I would once again urge you to watch Ronald D Moore’s Battlestar Galactica remake.  By contrast, FOE isn’t really interested in mining those nuances.

Okay, so grant the movie the grace of parking the sci-fi conceit to one side.  How does it play as straightforward relationship drama?  We are on stronger ground here thanks to strong lead performances from two very talented actors: Saoirse Ronan (LITTLE WOMEN) as Hen and Paul Mescal (ALL OF US STRANGERS) as Junior.  But when two people drift apart simply through over-familiarity and isolation - when there is no actual dramatic event that brings them into free-fall (not even in this sci-if conceit) then what are we left with? Two hours of mild bickering and mild make-up sex.  It just ain’t enough to fill a near two-hour running time.

This is all a tremendous shame as the crew is as impressive as the cast. I loved cinematographer Matyas Erdely’s sepia-toned interiors and drought-scape exteriors.   I really loved the score by Oliver Coates, Park Jiha and Agnes Obel. In fact, it’s the score more than anything in the writing that reminds us we are in a sinister, dystopian sci-fi film.  I also really loved some of Garth Davis’ visual flourishes, when they sporadically occur. There’s a great scene near the end which, without spoiling it, involves a vacuum and plastic, that was absolutely visually arresting. It just wasn’t enough to save me from boredom.

FOE has a running time of 110 minutes and is rated R. It opens in the USA on October 6th and in the UK on October 20th.

ALL OF US STRANGERS**** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 5

ALL OF US STRANGERS is the latest film from Andrew Haigh (WEEKEND) and yet another beautifully crafted, intimate, emotionally affecting film. It stars Andrew Scott (Sherlock) as Adam, a gay, forty something screenwriter struggling to deal with the death of his parents when he was a child. On successive visits to his childhood home he imagines he can tell them about his life now, come out to them, and tell them how the world has changed for him.  The scenes can only be described as truly heartbreaking. Adam flits between adulthood and childhood, delighting in being able to be cared for by his mum and dad, but then also bristling at their attitudes to his sexuality. They tell them they are proud of him and he is so riven with self-doubt and pain that he cannot accept the complement. Claire Foy and Jamie Bell are wonderful in these smaller but viscerally emotional roles.  

I found the present day relationship less successful. Adam strikes up a friendship with another man in his apartment block: they are seemingly the only two people home alone at Christmas.  Harry (Paul Mescal) seems more comfortable in his skin at first, or at least more able to articulate his need for connection and intimacy. But as the film progresses we realise that he is also deeply vulnerable.

Andrew Haigh's previous films showed a willingness to mine the emotional nuances of modern relationships. But I feel ALL OF US STRANGERS is a leap forward in its technical skill and visual and aural creativity. In particular, a bravura central scene in a nightclub shows a director increasingly confident in his work and willing to push himself stylistically.

ALL OF US STRANGERS has a running time of 105 minutes. It played London 2023. It goes on release in the USA on December 22nd and in the UK on January 26th.

AFTERSUN*****

Now contrast the hackneyed, obvious, hokey TO LESLIE with the delicate, slippery, intentional and unique AFTERSUN.  Both films are the works of debut feature directors, and both are based on childhood memories of the writers. But Charlotte Wells' film is one that contains a real directorial vision, precise and affecting visual style, and two lead performances that cut to the bone.  There is nothing predictable or easy or samey here.  When we leave the film we feel that we know two real human beings deeply and care immensely, even if we are still struggling to piece together what happens when the film ends.

The main narrative is concerned with a package holiday that father and daughter Callum and Sophie take to Turkey in the early 1990s. Callum is a young father, evidently broken up from Sophie's mum. They have a warm and open relationship, speaking about her first kiss and gentle discovery of adolescence. They clearly love each other deeply.  But Sophie cannot know what we see - that Callum is struggling with depression and taking risky decisions.  The framing device of the film sees an adult Sophie in her flat watching old camcorder footage of the holiday. We don't know what happened to the father between the holiday and now, but there's a melancholy nostalgic feeling, and an implication that he is no longer in her life.  

What I love about this film is Wells' resistance to cheap plot or big set pieces.  We just get an accumulation of detail and feeling until the sense of love and loss is overwhelming.  I also love the way the film is shot and styled: the way so much of it is mediated though screens - camcorders, TVs, karaoke machines - placing a  distorting lens between reality and memory.  Wells is a writer-director who reminds me of Joanna Hogg in these respects.  Paul Mescal gives his best performance to date and Frankie Corio is incredibly impressive as the daughter.   

Overall, this has to be one of the most deeply affecting and profound films I have seen in a while. I am so delighted that it has received an Oscar nomination. It deserves all the recognition it is getting.

AFTERSUN is rated R and has a running time of 102 minutes. It played Cannes and London 2022 and was released in the UK and USA last year.

THE LOST DAUGHTER**** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 8

Maggie Gyllenhaal's directorial debut is a taut, superbly rendered, character-led drama featuring a bravura performance from Olivia Colman. It is faithfully based on the brutal novella of the same name by Elena Ferrante - a book that dared to ask what happens to a smart woman who dares to throw off the shackles of motherhood.

The protagonist is Leda - a middle aged literary professor who treats herself to an extended seaside holiday. She enjoys her routine of calm reflection and seems self-assured. But this calm is disrupted when her seaside idyll is disrupted by a rowdy working class family with an imperious attitude to their surroundings. 

Motherhood looms large over the film. Leda becomes fascinated with a young pretty mother, Nina (Dakota Johnson), and her wilful child.  Nina seems to be stuck in a domineering marriage to her small time criminal husband. She is also steamrollered by his family, not least his sister Callie (Dagmara Domincyk) who resents Nina for getting pregnant so easily when she is only now pregnant in her early 40s. Even Nina's daughter is a mother to her cheap plastic doll. And when both child and doll go missing, Leda rescues both but somehow cannot seem to give the doll back, despite the child's ongoing distress at its lost.

It becomes clear that the doll triggers a painful and undigested memory for Leda, of abandoning her own two small daughters when they were the same age as Nina's daughter. Though happy in marriage and motherhood in theory, her inability to continue her academic work and the fact that her husband (Jack Farthing) puts his career first, becomes suffocating. A chance encounter with two travellers who have thrown off the shackles of bourgeois expectations inspires Leda. And more significantly, one of them (Alba Rorhwacher) takes a sample of Leda's writing and gives it to an influential academic, effectively launching Leda's career. It's joyous to see the young Leda (Jessie Buckley) simply enjoy the act of ordering room service and eat it in peace and quiet. 

What the novel and film ask is what this means for Leda as a mother. Yes she is oppressed by motherhood, but she also does love her daughters. What sacrifices is she willing to make for career versus family? And what is the emotional cost of freedom?  In seeing Nina she sees another life lived, and Nina sees that in Leda too. Both are flirting with each other as an alternative path.  At one point Leda describes herself as an "unnatural mother" but I suspect most mothers feel that same frustration and oppression at various points of their life. It seems to be that these feelings are natural but largely unspoken.

Maggie Gyllenhaal gets so much right in this adaptation, starting with casting. Olivia Colman manages to convey so much without a word being spoken. Childlike joy at a happy moment on the beach. Anger and frustration at loud intruders. And Jessie Buckley matches her in quality to a tee. I also love how Gyllenhaal interrogates what it means to be a single middle-aged woman, where everyone feels it's their right to ask your age, and to intrude into your life - to walk into your flat and start cooking for you - to make you move from your seat to accommodate a family (because families trump single women).... And then the endless indignity of being a strong woman forced to face your fragility in a misogynistic society, from Nina's brooding husband menacing Leda as she tries to drive away, to noisy kids in a cinema who only shut up when a man tells them to.

This is a film full of emotional and physical menace and shows clearly the costs and challenges of living a full independent life as a woman where you fulfil all your potential. I guess my  only criticism of the film is that is shows an ending which is somewhat cleaner than the ambivalent version in the novel. Maybe Gyllenhaal is asking if we believe it? I felt it was just a little too tidy relative to the Ferrante. 

THE LOST DAUGHTER is rated R and has a running time of 121 minutes. It won Best Screenplay at Venice, and also played Telluride and the BFI London Film Festival. It will open in cinemas on December 17th and on Netflix on December 31st.