BETTER MAN*****

Recency bias, but BETTER MAN may be one of the best films I saw in 2024. I cannot describe just how imaginative, kinetic, audacious and moving this film is.  Admittedly, Robbie Williams was a big part of the pop-cultural backdrop of my teenage years and early 20s. But I would like to think that even if you had never heard of one of Britain's biggest selling music stars, you would still get a lot from this deeply raw, deeply humane, film.

Williams has been open about his life story, not least in a multi-part Netflix doc.  He grew up in poverty in a former industrial town in England, with a father (Inside No. 9's Steve Pemberton - superb) who dreamt of stardom and abandoned Robbie and his mum when he was little.  At 15, he was plucked from obscurity to be part of one of the biggest Boy Band's of all time, but on the strict instructions that he was just the clown and the backing dancer, rather than having any musical or creative credibility.  By 19 he had left Take That and gone solo, with the self-imposed demons of trying to impress his absentee dad and trying to outcompete his old band and their newer rivals, Oasis. If Oasis sold out Knebworth, then Williams too had to sell out Knebworth.

The film is absolutely blunt about Williams' demons.  He is an alcoholic and drug addict and faces demons of self-doubt and self-hatred.  At many points we see Williams cutting cocaine with a razor and we later see suicidal ideation.  The genius of Williams and writer-director Michael Gracey (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN) is to depict Williams as a CGI-chimp, overlaid on real vocal and physical performance from Jonno Davies.  Through that avatar we see Williams as he sees himself - an outcast, a court jester, an animal.  But we also see an incredible range of emotion - from fear to joy to hurt and anxiety.  The eyes are so expressive and the child-hood version of the chimp is particularly winning.  And when Robbie is facing his demons, they are avatars of himself as a chimp - in various guises and from different parts of his life.  When he finally faces them down, and learns to forgive his dad in order to love himself, it's a moment of deep catharsis.

That Williams survives is down to his own hard work in rehab and his own honesty - but also the love of three women - his mum, his adoring grandma (Alison Steadman - superb as always) and for a period his fiancé his Nicole Appleton.  This part of the story is hard to watch.  Williams' addiction is in full-throttle and she is clearly in love with him.  We also get the revelation that she was forced into an abortion by her manager as she was on the cusp of her own chart success.

And what of the construction of the film?  Well, hear me out: this may well be the best movie musical of 2024, and yes that includes WICKED. The set-piece numbers are sensational.  There's a bravura montage set to Williams' hit Rock DJ, filmed on Piccadilly and Regent Street, that takes us through Take That's rise to success. For those of who remember those outfits and haircuts and dance moves, it's a kinetic, technically brilliant piece of musical theatre. Later in the film there's an equally brilliantly staged montage that shows Williams going from a meet-cute with Appleton to getting engaged and mourning the abortion.  The actress Raechelle Banno must be quite some dancer, as that dance scene set on a boat is phenomenal.  The final musical number I would like to call out is to Williams' hit Angels. Here we have him on the verge of Knebworth but mourning the death of his grandma. This is when I started crying.

I cannot speak more highly of Williams' honesty and creativity and his partnership with Gracey. BETTER MAN is one of the most unique, compelling and affecting films I have seen all year. It's also one of the most honest and moving depiction of addiction and mental health crisis that I have seen on film EVER.  I heartily recommend it to you.

BETTER MAN is rated R, has a running time of 134 minutes, and was released in the USA on Christmas Day and  UK on Boxing Day.

THE DOUBLE - LFF 2013 - Day Four

You can listen to a podcast review of this movie below or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

Richard Ayoade is a British comedian who has adopted a persona of being a somewhat geeky tongue-tied boy-child and the fact that he carries that over to his stage persona as a director, introducing his sophomore directorial effort is something that I find utterly bizarre as somewhat irritating. It's as though he feels pressured to play up for the crowd, which in fairness lapped up his comedy introduction.  But as some point, is he not going to be hamstrung by his fluttery, flapping persona?  Is it not going to undermine the seriousness with which we approach his work.

I guess if anything positive is to come from what I found to be an ingratiating introduction, it's that Richard Ayoade understands what it is to have a split persona, if not a split personality as the protagonist in his new movie does.  The movie is based on a technically complex Dostoyevsky novella (which is itself a pastiche of Gogol) that depicts the schizophrenic breakdown of a government bureaucrat when his imagined doppelgänger steals his prestige at work and the admiration of his social circle.  Ayoade transfers this story to a highly stylised dystopian steampunk world in which James Simon, or is it Simon James works for a disturbing fascistic sounding "Colonel" in some kind of inane bureaucratic work in a world of cord-phones, 8-bit computer games and Pastiche Soviet austerity.

Jesse Eisenberg (THE SOCIAL NETWORK) carries the movie as both the repressed, shy, bullied protagonist and his suave, ingratiating double.  But he is ably supported by Mia Wasikowska as his manic pixie dreamgirl, Wallace Shawn as the blasé boss, and most brilliantly, Paddy Considine as a spoof TV superhero to which the repressed protagonist aspires.  I loved the grungy, brown-green-sallow production and art design of David Crank (LINCOLN) and Dennis Schnegg (TRANCE) and the expressionist lighting from cinematographer Erik Wilson (NOW IS GOOD) is inspired.  The sound design from Adam Armitage - so often expressing the protagonist's schizophrenia is also a major part of the mood and success of the film.

But for all that I couldn't shake off the feeling that I'd seen the movie before - or at least that this movie was channelling, in a weaker diluted form, greater achievements.  It reminded me of Gilliam's BRAZIL and, in its production design, Jeunet's DELICATESSEN and in its final infliction of mutual injuries, FIGHT CLUB of all things.  Which brings me to my final problem with the work - the murkiness surrounding what is actually going on with Simon/James.  Is he really schizophrenic, in which case why do people around him respond to both characters simultaneously?  There isn't the scrupulous observation of formal separation that we see in FIGHT CLUB. For those two key reasons, for all its formal accomplishments and marvellous acting, I wasn't massively impressed with THE DOUBLE as a directorial effort. 

THE DOUBLE has a running time of 93 minutes.

THE DOUBLE played Toronto and London 2013. 

THE IMPOSTER

THE IMPOSTER is a superb documentary by a British TV documentarian, Bart Layton, with a good pedigree in true crime stories. It tells the true story of a young man in Spain who adopted the identity of an American missing person to stay one step ahead of Spanish social services and keep his place in a childrens' home.  However, this appropriation set of a chain of events that led him to the USA and the family he supposedly belonged to.  The first shock of the film is that the family fell for the imposter, despite the differing eye colour, the bleached blonde hair and the European accent.  The second shock is that this credulity might have stemmed not from the desperate desire to believe that a loved one is still alive, but in order to have an alibi to the alleged murder of the real missing boy years before.  The third shock, for me at least, is that despite the fact that Interpol had a long line of similar con tricks committed by the imposter, his crime was treated as a criminal matter rather than as a psychological disorder.

Bart Layton crafts a film that is blessed by full access to the imposter and to the real missing child's sister, brother-in-law and mother.  We therefore see and understand his motivations. He speaks with utter conviction and disarmingly credible even when we know he is lying. So when he accuses the family of murdering the real child - the only reason they could be willingly taken in by him - how far should be believe a man who has a scary grip on reality and others' feelings?  As for the family, they realise that to protest their innocence, even though there is zero evidence against them, is to fight a losing battle against prurient gossip.  

The documentary is scrupulously fair.  It allows the imposter, Frederic Bourdin, to display himself as intelligent, perceptive but also dangerously delusional at best. It allows the mother of the boy to show herself as distraught but also highlights the drug abuse and petty crime in the family. Who can we believe? This is left open. But the telling of the tale is suspenseful and the vehicle of the telling, polished.

THE IMPOSTER played Sundance 2012. It opened in New York in July and is currently on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens in Canada on October 12th, in Denmark on October 18th, in Sweden on October 22nd, in Russia on November 22nd, in New Zealand on January 10th 2013, in Australia and the Netherlands on February 28th, and in France on April 17th.

THE IMPOSTER was improbably rated R in the USA and has a running time of 99 minutes. 

TYRANNOSAUR

Comedic actors in dramatic roles have a new champion in Olivia Colman. In this feature-length debut from Paddy Considine, Colman plays Hannah, a charity shop worker, who befriends local thug Joseph (Peter Mullan) whilst living with the secret abusive violence of her husband James, played by Eddie Marsan. These regrettably familiar characters and the bonds they form anchor Considine’s film for the reliably impressive work of Mullan and Marsan, but it is Colman’s performance that rises beyond them, searing and breathtaking and nothing less than captivating in its course. In the spectrum of movies touching this subject matter, Iciar Bollain’s TE DOY MIS OJOS (TAKE MY EYES) may be a recent masterwork, yet TYRANNOSAUR remains a haunting achievement – the legacy of its landscape James and Hannah’s middle-class suburban house, neat and red-brick and home to the most deep and fearsome darkness.

TYRANNOSAUR played Sundance, where Paddy Considine won the Directing Award - World Cinema Dramatic, and Olivia Colman and Peter Mullan won the Special Jury Prize - Dramatic. It also played Toronto 2011. It is currently on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens on October 13th in Germany; on November 17th in Russia; on November 2th in Greece and on January 4th in Sweden.