THE HAPPY PRINCE

Oscar Wilde is one of our great playwrights, poets and wits, but his work has rightly been overshadowed by the significance of his life.  He has become a symbol of the hypocrisy of Victorian England - apparently happily married and a father, Wilde embarked on a series of homosexual affairs that were tolerated by polite society while they were with people lower down the social ladder and discreet.  But when Wilde dared to have a highly publicised affair with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, son of a boorish, violent, aristocrat, he ended up in prison.  This tragic fall, from feted and celebrated writer to spat upon criminal was harsh - from luxury to hard labour - from beloved father to exile.  When Wilde was released from prison he gave us two great works - The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis - but nothing of substance thereafter. He lived a rakish life on the Continent, cut off from his family, alienated his remaining friends with a temporary reconciliation with Bosie, and descended into poverty, ill health and death. 

Understandably the many film adaptations of Wilde's life have refrained from putting this often sordid tale on screen. They conveniently end when he enters or leaves prison, or reconciles with Bosie. We therefore remember Wilde as young, in love, and hopeful.  THE HAPPY PRINCE refuses to let us off the hook that easily.  The handsome Rupert Everett allows himself to transformed with a fat-suit, false teeth and make-up into an old, weathered, ashamed, drunk and hopeless man.  There are occasional flashes of Wildean wit, but really this is the story of a man broken by love, hypocrisy and simple lack of funds. He cannot write - whether because of the trauma he has experienced, or the stress he still endures, or because of the distraction of Bosie.  He knows his life is ending but cannot stop hurtling himself toward self-destruction, spending freely, loving freely, until the end.  Even a romantic death bed is interrupted by violent vomit. We cannot escape all the contradictions - seemly and unseemly - of Wilde.

Everett's performance is magnificent and unflinching in a way that feels eons beyond the more manicured performances of previous films. And he is ably supported by a cast including Emily Watson and Colin Firth as Wilde's wife and good friend Reggie.  We are also fortunate in the casting of Wilde's warring lovers - Edwin Thomas as his devoted and loyal literary executor Robbie Ross, and TV's Merlin, Colin Morgan, as the beautiful but selfish and fickle Bosie. The performances demand to be seen.

My regret is that Everett did not succeed in finding a more seasoned director to helm this wonderfully acted, daringly non-linear script.  He makes another daring choice to have an almost verite style to his filming, with a handheld camera and lots of POV shots. It's effective in some places - and many costume dramas can feel stuffy and old-fashioned when they match a static camera with restrictive costumes. But I found the camera too distracting, drawing my attention away from the superb performances. There are also certain cuts and juxtapositions that felt too on the nose, or too forced which I felt a more seasoned director might have avoided.  So this is a flawed film, but a deeply earnest, compassionate and well-acted one nonetheless.

THE HAPPY PRINCE has a running time of 105 minutes.  The film played Sundance, Berlin and BFI Flare 2018.  It opens in Germany on May 24th and in the UK on 15th.

CHURCHILL

With the forthcoming release of the THE DARKEST HOUR I thought I would go back and watch the other Churchill film released last year.  Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky (THE RAILWAY MAN) with a script by historian Alex von Tunzelmann (INDIAN SUMMER), this version stars Brian Cox in the eponymous role, Miranda Richardson as his wife, MAD MEN's John Slattery as Eisenhower, Julian Wadham as Monty, James Purefoy as the stuttering King, and Ella Parnell as the obligatory pretty young secretary who exists in the script merely to show Churchill his humanity.  

In contrast to many more blustering biopics, this one shows Churchill exhausted and troubled at the end of World War Two.  It opens with him imagining bloody waters washing up on the shore of a beach, and the film's conceit is that he is so traumatised by his failure at Gallipoli that he is irrationally against another amphibious landing  - Operation Overlord - that we, with the benefit of hindsight, will be a massive success.  The resulting film is thus one that shows us a Churchill who is vulnerable, admirably guilt-ridden by his mistakes and mindful of the human cost of war, and physically exhausted.  It also gives us a Churchill frustrated at being a mere politician rather than a commander, facing danger with his troops. Accordingly, he comes across as similar to the Queen, in The Crown season one, frustrated that his role is to NOT go to the frontline or put himself in danger, but to exist, to survive.

Brian Cox is convincing in the role, giving his Churchill a nuance we rarely see on screen.  Miranda Richardson has less to do in the trademark Clemmie hairdo and poor Ella Parnell in that sexist role of wide-eyed naive girl.  I very much liked the direction and the landscape photography of the beach in particular.  

But as much as I liked this newly shabby, troubled Churchill, the whole thing is guff.  And that cuts it off at the knees.  It's shocking that a female writer would create such a thankless role for the secretary, but even more shocking that an historian who takes other films to task for their historical inaccuracy should commit such gaffes in her own film. I have no doubt that Churchill, thinking of preserving the Empire rather than just winning the war, had different tactical preferences to Eisenhower. And I have no doubt that he was ashamed of Gallipoli.  But to argue that he was against Overlord and that the king and a pretty secretary had to screw his courage to the sticking place is bizarre.  And in her defense of this approach Tunzelmann seems to rely on an out of context quote that Churchill was hardening against the operation. He wasn't.  He wrote on 11 March, 1944, makes clear that he was hardening in favour of a decisive strike:

"I have presided at a series of meetings at which either Ike or Bedell has been present, and I am satisfied that everything is going on well. Ike and Bedell will probably tell you they are well pleased. I am hardening very much on this operation as the time approaches, in the sense of wishing to strike if humanly possible, even if the limiting conditions we laid down at Moscow are not exactly fulfilled. I hope a chance may come for us to have a talk before long. Every good wish."

So CHURCHILL is an interesting film about a vulnerable man. Whether or not you enjoy it depends on how far you care that it's not true.

CHURCHILL has a running time of 105 minutes. It was released last year and is now available to rent and own.

OUTPOST - Nazi zombies, yay!

OUTPOST is a horror movie in which a bunch of mercenaries stake out an old Nazi bunker in search of a sci-fi machine that transformed men into super-human ghostly soldiers. Unsurprisingly, aforementioned superhuman ghostly soldiers get a mite pissed off and take their revenge. All this makes for what should have been a transparently stupid movie, and let's be clear, the precise mechanics of the plot are sketchy at best.

The surprise is that debutant writer and director, Rae Brunton and Steve Barker, have fashioned a movie that is admittedly short on gore but satisfyingly high on creepiness. I think this comes down to three things. All the actors play the material completely straight - and are actually convincing in their thinly sketched characterisations. Ray Stevenson (of Titus Pullo fame) is always a charismatic presence but he is ably supported by a solid cast of British character actors. All this means that we allow the movie to take us along with it, even when things get silly.

Second, the movie is under-cut with a rich seam of dead-pan dry humour. Take for example the terse exchange between the mercenaries and the shady historian (Julian Wadham). When they rubbish his plan of escape he replies, "And what did you do last time you were fighting the undead?" Richard Brake is particularly funny as American soldier and professional cynic, Prior, and helps give the movie its profundity in his bickering with another soldier who professes faith.

Third, the production design and cinematography are spot on. Basically this movie is all shot in a field and bunker - but the whole thing feels moody and oppressive - helped by desaturated colours and some awesome creepy silhouettes in bunkers.

Overall, OUTPOST is another one of those decent low-budget British horror movies. It's obeys all the rules of the Nazi zombie genre but with better acting and production quality than most.....

OUTPOST was released in the US earlier this year and is currently on release in the UK. It is already available on DVD.