BLITZ** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Opening Night Gala

Steve McQueen made a series of powerful TV specials under the banner of Small Axe, showing the experience of black people living in London in the 1960s.   In doing so, he was showing stories that had been under- or mis-represented.  The mission of his new feature film, BLITZ, is exactly the same. He wants to show the viewer just how multicultural London already was two decades before Windrush, and how the same prejudice blighted the lives of its black residents.  

As with Small Axe, some of the best scenes in BLITZ are those centred around music.  There's a tremendous flashback scene set in a dance hall where you feel the music pulse. There's an even better scene set in a luxurious Cafe de Paris style nightclub with a Cab Calloway style performer and the real-life pop star Celeste. And music is woven into other scenes - whether cockneys playing a washboard or gathered around a piano in the pub.  

It's hard to fault the way the film is put together. The recreation of bombed out East End streets - the peril and terror of houses on fire - the smouldering vistas the next morning. It's all immaculately recreated.  And it's hard to fault McQueen's earnest message of brotherly love. The problem is that this isn't a series of music -centred short films (as it probably should've been) but a feature film - and a feature film needs narrative propulsion and characters we care about.

We don't care about these characters because they are thinly drawn avatars.  Good guys vs racists. Saoirse Ronan's single mum Rita is good. The Fagin-style thieves played by Kathy Burke, Stephen Graham and Roddy from Slow Horses are bad. The almost angelic air raid warden Ife is good. And really good because he let's Rita's mixed-race son George feel proud of his blackness.  The nasty racist cockneys who want to put a sheet up to isolate the Sikhs are bad.  It goes on and on.

To make it worse, thin characterisation is met with thin dialogue.  And the poor kid - Elliott Heffernan - is given very little to do as George. He only exists to allow McQueen to follow his steps through the various vignettes that McQueen is actually interested in showing us.  

I also feel that - fatally - this film is miscast in its lead role. Ronan cannot do a convincing East End accent and she also cannot sing.  Having her lip sync to someone else's voice brings us out of the film.  For a character whose life is expressed in music - whose love for her son and father is shown through music - this is a real problem.

BLITZ is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 113 minutes.  BLITZ will be released in cinemas on November 1st and on Netflix on November 22nd.

OCCUPIED CITY*** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 2

Steve McQueen (12 YEARS A SLAVE) returns to our screens with an epic and scrupulously well-made documentary that pairs contemporary Amsterdam locations with a narrator, Melanie Hyams, describing what happened there during the Nazi occupation and Holocaust.  We see everything from famous tourist sites like the Riksmuseum or Concertgebouw to domestic interiors and seemingly ordinary suburban homes.  And, shot as it was during the pandemic, we see deserted city streets during the curfew and vaccination centres. The documentary thus serves as a double documentary of the Holocaust but also Amsterdam during Covid.  Sometime the pairing of visual and narration is jarring.  Horrific anti-semitism and murder calmly narrated by Hyams over an everyday apartment. And sometimes the pairing is surprisingly resonant, such as an act of fascism narrated over footage of an antifa protest, or an anti-covid lockdown protest monitored by drones and riot police.

The film is based on McQueen's wife Bianca Stigter’s Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945r and I did find myself wondering if a book was the better format for this story. The running time of this superb film is well over four hours, including an interval. I understand that for some reviewers this has led to an overwhelming and moving cumulative impact of image after image and story after story. And I also understand that in some respects the endurance of an epic Holocaust documentary is itself a homage.  But for me, once I got to the second hour, I felt myself tire, and my mind start to wonder. I would far rather have watched this over sequential nights in parts, which is the way I typically watch and rewatch SHOAH.

OCCUPIED CITY has a running time of 246 minutes. It played Cannes, Telluride and London 2023. It opens in the Netherlands on November 24th.

LOVERS ROCK - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Day 12

LOVERS ROCK is another of the five-part series of films that Steve McQueen (TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE) has made to be shown on the BBC as part of its Small Axe series of films exploring British Black history.  It couldn't be more different from the courtroom drama, MANGROVE, that opened the festival.  Rather, this is a celebration of a certain time and a certain style of home-made West Indian entertainment - the house party! As the movie opens in early 80s Notting Hill, some young boys are clearing out the furniture from a house, and some women are cooking up a storm while singing together.  Hours later young West Indian men and women don their finery and pay their fifty pence to come into an absolutely banging house party, with the most amazing music. The atmosphere is hot and sultry with dancing in the queue for the loo and people eating home-made food and making out in the back garden.  As with all parties, there are unwelcome attentions from men, but also more happy couplings, and evidently a copious amount of weed being smoked.  The best way to approach this film - with little plot or dialogue - is just to be carried along on the positive vibe. To become so absorbed, as the revellers do, that when the song Silly Games stops, you feel the music continue, with perhaps the most tuneful dancers of all time singing a cappella. The sun comes up and so does reality.  This safe and warm private space that celebrates West Indian culture is exposed for what it is.  An attempted sexual assault is thwarted.  And as a new couple leaves to make out in the workplace of the boy, his boss finds them and scolds them.  The black man puts on his cockney geezer accent that makes him less Other and threatening to the White man. The compromises of living as an ethnic minority begin again. 

LOVERS ROCK has a running time of 68 minutes. It is the second episode in Steve McQueen's Small Axe TV series.  It will air on UK TV on November 22nd and be released on the internet in the USA on November 27th. 

MANGROVE - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Opening Night Gala

A rather different Opening Night experience at the London Film Festival this year. Rather than tripping up the red carpet to the Odeon Leicester Square in all our finery, we watched the opening film in our living room via the BFI's festival screening website.   Perhaps this is fitting as this year's opener is Steve McQueen's MANGROVE, part of a five part series of films to be shown on the BBC in November celebrating Black British History.  

The film's title is taken from a small West Indian cafe in Notting Hill in the 1960s that served as a kind of unofficial community hub for the immigrants who had come over as part of the Windrush generation.  It might be hard for kids now to realise that Notting Hill then was a poor part of North Kensington, full of immigrants trying to take their place in British society despite endemic racism.  They were brutalised by an institutionally racist Metropolitan police, and further brutalised and isolated by urban planning. The Mangrove was continually raided and broken up for no good - or at least lawful - reason.  And it's no accident that the Westway was built to carve up the community with a massive impregnable physical obstacle - leaving Notting Hill to be gentrified to the East, and Shepherd's Bush to rot in the West.  Even the constituency was reshaped in 1970 to break-up a potentially powerful voting block.

That year - 1970 - is no accident. It was also the year of the trial of the Mangrove Nine.   Naturally, as someone who received the finest education England has to over, I had no idea this trial had taken place!  And so this film serves as a powerful educational piece beyond its role as mere entertainment.  

The first half of the film shows anger building in the West Indian community at the continual harassment of the police.  Black men are beaten brutally, their mothers are spoken down to - coppers arrest black men on the whim of a card game.  And yet - and yet - there is joy and community and fun to be had at the Mangrove.  The roti is good!  The music is good!  And there might even be some under the table gambling and rum. The cafe owner, Frank Crichlow, certainly doesn't think of himself as a community leader, even though he has become one by default. He's just there to create a safe space for his people. 

The centre of the film is a peaceful protest organised by local activists such as the lawyer Darcus Howe, and the Black Panther Altheia Jones-Lecointe.  As the protestors meet intransigent police, they are beaten and selectively pulled out and arrested. Most absurdly, the nine are charged with Riot and Affray - a new charge so serious they are tried in the Old Bailey.

The second half of the film is thus the trial of the Mangrove Nine. We see them as differently motivated.  Frank's ambivalence is clear.  He even considers taking a plea deal. Others are angry and want to express that anger clearly and violently even at the cost of their own defense.  Howe and Jones-Lecointe are the most educated and articulate and so represent themselves.  They are the most clear-sighted about Frank and the Mangrove's role in the community, and the significance of the trial. They are invested in this as a pivotal moment in the civil rights struggle. 

One of the things that struck me most powerfully was the contrast between the sepia-toned warmth and informality of the Mangrove, where all are welcome, and Aunt Betty is always sitting on a stool with a song on her lips - and the austerity of the Old Bailey.  The topography of the courtroom is extreme - with the viewing gallery absurdly high and removed from the action, the judge once again boxed in and high, the mere lawyers low and supplicant. It's a building and a courtroom designed to impose, to give gravitas to those in power, and make sure those in the dock know their place. 

As a result, its British justice that's on trial - from the ability of Darcus and Altheia to enter the Bailey with the dignity of lawyers - to the ability to select a jury of ones peers - to the ability to leave the dock without being manhandled and confined. What I really liked was that - despite a superbly funny ally in one of the white barristers - this is not a film about white allies. It's Darcus' superb cross-examination of the prosecution's key witness - a Met police officer - that wins their case.  Although a genuinely decent closing direction from the Judge to ignore the colour of a uniform or of a witnesses skin, no doubt helped too.

There are several genuinely moving passages in this film. The first - moving me to tears - was am impassioned speech by Jones-Lecointe about how she is doing this for her unborn child.  But the second was the a long held close-up on Crichlow as he hears the verdict. In a sense, this has been his film and his journey - from businessman to activist. He has come to terms with what the Mangrove means to his community, and the responsibility that comes with that.

Of course, nothing changes really. The harassment continues and black people continue to face prejudice.  But there is some small comfort in the fact this history is finally being brought to our screens by our most talented of film-makers, and in a format where everyone will be able to see it.  But it does make me sad not to have experienced it on the big screen. I can only begin to imagine how powerful McQueen's extreme close-ups must have been in that format.

Special kudos to all involved in recreating 1960s Notting Hill - the street-scapes, clothes, music, cars, processed film that gave it a certain colour-scape and texture - all worked superbly well.  And kudos too, to the cast. Letitia Wright deserves special mention as Jones-Lecointe, as does Malachi Kirby as Howe. But it's Shaun Parkes as Frank who really takes us deep into the heart of this spectacular film.

MANGROVE played the New York and London Film Festivals 2020. It will be shown on TV in November. It has a running time of 126 minutes.

WIDOWS - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Opening Night Gala

In the early 1980s the soon to be celebrated thriller writer Lynda La Plante created a British TV miniseries called WIDOWS. It was about a group of women who decide to carry out the heist that their late husbands planned, rather than succumb to pressure from the police, and a rival gang, to turn over the late mastermind's book of secrets. All along their secret weapon is that everybody underestimates them. No-one conceives that a bunch of housewives could pull this off. Apparently this tale of under-estimation and prejudice spoke to a young London schoolboy called Steve McQueen and 35 years later the now acclaimed director (12 YEARS A SLAVE) has recreated the heist film but bringing his own brand of art-house style, deep emotional contemplation and political provocation to it.  I loved many elements of this reworking - particularly its visual style and its strong central performance from Viola Davis (THE HELP).  But I found the contemplative pace undermined the thriller, and the politics, while valid, was extremely heavy-handed. Overall, the film was a disappointment, and my least favourite of his films to date.

Let's talk about what's great first.  This is a film with a beautiful visual style and sensitivity - whether in its eye for detail and location, or in the way the camera is positioned and used. Speaking to the former, McQueen really immerses himself in the diversity of life in contemporary Chicago - whether the stunning laeshore apartment of Viola Davis' Veronica and her late husband Harry (Liam Neeson) - filled with beautiful objet d'art and stylish furniture - or the overcrowded warm-hued hair salon that the heist driver Belle (Cynthia Erivo) works at. Early on there's a tour-de-force scene inter-cutting the various gang members' funerals that beautifully shows the different churches and traditions of mourning. This is a film profoundly concerned with architecture.  One of the most impressive scenes that highlights this is one in which Colin Farrell's corrupt politician drives from the impoverished ward in which he's campaigning to his swanky town house. The camera stays outside the car rather than on the people conversing within it. We don't know why until it pulls up at the town house - and then we realise that we have been seeing a short journey from poverty to wealth, and that McQueen is wearing a particular point about the plebs and the elite.  Time and again we're treated to moments like this - when the camera angle or movement is just doing something subtle and above and beyond the standard direction. Or even a final scene in a cafe with mirrored pillars, where we see both Veronica and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) reflected in pillars looking away from each other. 

Now here's where the film doesn't quite work. It's being marketed as a heist but it's not really interested in that. It's really a contemplative piece about mourning and female self-empowerment and a political commentary on corruption, racial and gender prejudice. The first theme allows us to see some superb acting from Viola Davis but substantially weighs on the pace of the film. I didn't mind too much because I knew I was watching a McQueen film and expected something more slow-paced but I was wondering how mainstream audiences might react. I also think the film is rather unbalanced. Viola Davis just blows us away.  But Michelle Rodriguez is remarkably anonymous as her fellow widow - Elizabeth Debicki looks like wounded Bambi and has a rather heavy-handed and obvious journey to empowerment - in fact the only interesting woman other than Veronica is Belle. As for the men, I'll leave it to you to judge whether you believe Harry's motivation. The other gang members are anonymous.  The opposition gang is ludicrously drawn - Daniel Kaluuya's gangster jumps the shark repeatedly.  The only real interest for me came from Colin Farrell's politician and a hilariously angry cameo from Robert Duvall as his father. 

Finally, let's speak to politics. I get it. These are angry times.  But do we really need something as on the nose as a cop gunning down a black kid with no provocation as a major plot motivator, while Obama Hope posters flutter in the background?  Do we really need basically the entire Alice/Debicki arc?  I don't decry being political but let's have some more sophistication about how we do it. For instance, I could argue that just have Viola Davis on screen with her natural hair - just having the movie open with a passionate inter-racial kiss - just being able to show even-handed corruption between the black church and the white alderman - is politically provocative and far more interesting.

WIDOWS will be released in the UK on November 9th and in the USA on November 16th.

Oscars 2014 - Who Should Win; Who Will Win

The Oscars a grimy political business - studios shelling out PR campaigns that appeal the voting demographic that skews old, conservative and ex-actors.  You start seeing nasty little negative stories planted in The Hollywood Reporter and the more obvious than usual pimping out of the 'talent' at minor award ceremonies who's only real value is as a predictor for the big event.  The Oscars are not a judge of merit - just look at the iconic pictures that have been unrecognised. But they DO add to the bottom line.  And so, we Greedy Capitalist Bastards simply have to take them seriously.

This year there seem to be three main contenders: AMERICAN HUSTLE, GRAVITY and 12 YEARS A SLAVE. I loved the raucous slippery energy of HUSTLE but was left wondering if it's gonzo kitsch was intentional or not.  GRAVITY was a technical tour de force and pure in intention but, of course, has to fight charges that it contains little else.  12 YEARS - ah 12 YEARS - I loved the courage, the artistry, but was left cold by the inclusion of Pitt and the epilogue.  So it's pretty much even stevens.I guess my overall feeling is that liberal Hollywood will go for 12 YEARS for behind the lens but that HUSTLE will win out in front of the lens, with GRAVITY pulling the Technical awards.   Also, BEST ACTOR is a sentimental tie between Bruce Dern and a form-busting Matthew McConaughey.  The only egregious inclusions are PHILOMENA, which was schlocky at best. The pleasant surprise was Sally Hawkins for BLUE JASMINE.

So here we go: who was nominated, who shoulda been nominated, who will win, who should win.  "Will" is marked with an asterisk, "Should" with a cross. Also, I should point out that I haven't seen DALLAS BUYER'S CLUB or HER yet. 

BEST PICTURE: 12 Years a Slave*; American Hustle; Captain Phillips; Dallas Buyers Club; Gravity; Her; Nebraska+; Philomena; The Wolf of Wall Street.

BEST DIRECTOR: David O Russell, American Hustle; Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity; Alexander Payne, Nebraska+; Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave*; Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST ACTOR: Christian Bale, American Hustle; Bruce Dern, Nebraska+; Leonardo DiCaprio, The; Wolf of Wall Street*; Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave; Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club.

BEST ACTRESS: Amy Adams, American Hustle*; Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine+; Sandra Bullock, Gravity; Judi Dench, Philomena; Meryl Streep, August: Osage County.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips; Bradley Cooper, American Hustle*; Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave+; Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street; Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine; Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle*+; Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave; Julia Roberts, August: Osage County; June Squibb, Nebraska.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: American Hustle*; Blue Jasmine; Dallas Buyers Club; Her; Nebraska+.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Before Midnight; Captain Phillips; Philomena; 12 Years a Slave+; The Wolf of Wall Street*.

BEST FOREIGN FILM: Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium); The Great Beauty (Italy); The Hunt (Denmark); The Missing Picture (Cambodia); Omar (Palestine).

BEST DOCUMENTARY: The Act of Killing; Cutie and the Boxer*; Dirty Wars; The Square; 20 Feet from Stardom.+

BEST ANIMATION: The Croods; Despicable Me 2; Ernest and Celestine; Frozen*+;The Wind Rises.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG: Alone Yet Not Alone, Alone Yet Not Alone; Happy, Despicable Me 2; Let It Go, Frozen*+; The Moon Song, Her; Ordinary Love, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Grandmaster; Gravity; Inside Llewyn Davis; Nebraska+; Prisoners.

BEST EDITING: American Hustle; Captain Phillips; Dallas Buyers Club; Gravity*+; 12 Years a Slave.

BEST SOUND EDITING: All Is Lost+; Captain Phillips; Gravity*; The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug; Lone Survivor.

BEST SOUND MIXING: Captain Phillips; Gravity*+; The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug; Inside Llewyn Davis; Lone Survivor.

BEST MAKE-UP AND HAIR: Dallas Buyers Club*+; Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa; The Lone Ranger.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: The Book Thief;  Gravity*+; Her; Philomena; Saving Mr Banks.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: American Hustle+; Gravity*; The Great Gatsby; Her; 12 Years a Slave.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Gravity*+; The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug; Iron Man 3; The Lone Ranger; Star Trek Into Darkness.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: American Hustle*+; The Grandmaster; The Great Gatsby; The Invisible Woman; 12 Years a Slave.

12 YEARS A SLAVE - LFF 2013 - Day Ten

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

Steve McQueen is a young British artist turned director whose previous two movies - HUNGER & SHAME - both gave us an unflinching portrait of dark and complex issues - the IRA hunger strikes and sex addiction. Both combined strong central performances from Michael Fassbender with stunning visuals and painfully held tableaux.  Both were the stand out movies of their year at the London Film Festival.

Accordingly, 12 YEARS A SLAVE came to the London Film Festival on a sea of hype - so much so that twitter had been filled with unblemished praise from critics who had seen the film that morning.  And even Festival Director Clare Stewart seemed speechless in her introduction to the film.  After the screening, the BFI tweeted pictures of standing ovations at the cinema. Everyone agrees the movie is moving, important and destined for Oscar glory.

I'm sad to say that I don't agree.  Yes, the film in important and unflinching. It's beautifully shot - all the more horrible to contrast the beauty of the Southern landscape with the cruelty of slavery. And yes, the movie hinges on a powerful central performance from Fassbender.  But too much of the rest of it seemed to me to be redundant, and a worse crime, to descend into emotional manipulation.

But let's start at the beginning. The film is based on the true life story of Solomon Northup, a successful free black man in Saratoga, married with children.  He was tricked into a business trip, captured and sold into slavery, first to a relatively benign slaveowner called Ford and then to a more complex sadistic coupled called the Epps.  Finally, he is freed when he manages to get a message out through a liberal white Canadian, although that reunion is tinged with bitterness at leaving his fellow slaves behind. 

Chiwetel Ejiofor is said to have given the performance of his career as Solomon, and to be sure he has grace and power, but I personally prefer him in DIRTY PRETTY THINGS.  I do, however, hope that he wins awards for this because let's be honest, as a black actor, how many other starring roles of this gravitas is he likely to get?  In minor roles, I really liked American Horror Story's Sarah Paulson as the sadistic, jealous Mistress Epps, erging on her deeply troubled husband to whipping the slave, Patsey, that he seems to be sexually obsessed with.  I also rather liked Paul Dano as the classic nigger-hating plantation overseer Tibeats whose jealousy at the favour Ford shows Solomon leads to Solomon being chased off the estate. He brings real insecurity and violence to that role.  It's truly sinister.  But perhaps surprisingly, the one mis-step is perhaps the usually note perfect Benedict Cumberbatch as the nice plantation owner Ford. Admittedly, Cumberbatch has little to do in this rather thinly drawn part, but his Southern accent doesn't seem convincing.

For me, this film belongs to two actors - Michael Fassbender as the tortured Epps and Lupita Nyong'o's slave Patsey.  Fassbender brings layers of menace, vulnerability and borderline madness to his portrayal of the almost superstitiously religious man who has a bizarrely close tortuous relationship with his slaves that culminates in one of the most horrendous scenes of the film. Goaded by his wife, he cannot bring himself to whip Patsey so he forces Solomon to do it instead. This is psychosexual terror at its most devastating. As Patsey, Lupita Nyong'o is more than a match for Fassbender, bringing layers of pride and then terrorised desperation to her character.  It's a fine performance.

Behind the camera, Steve McQueen's usual austere framing is somewhat diluted here, in what is undoubtedly his most mainstream movie. The exception are two pivotal scenes of great power. The first is one when Tibeats has Solomon strung up, and the overseer leaves him there.  The camera stays on him in his suffering then pulls back showing us slaves, so fearful, that they have to continue their work around him. Then we pan round to show how close this hanging is to the main house, and to see the mistress of the house looking on almost lackadaisically.  It's a beautifully pointed scene.  The second is the forced whipping of Patsey that I referred to before, and then Epps taking the whip himself.  The detail is rightfully brutal.

So what stops this from being a great film?  Too long spent in the banality of Ford's plantation.  Too long spent away from Fassbender in general.  The rather absurdly drawn character of Bass, the liberal Canadian played almost like a salvation Jesus by Brad Pitt.  And the ending.  McQueen could have ended this film on the scene where Solomon leaves the Epps plantation - a close-up on his half-unbelieving, relieved and yet guilt-ridden face, as Patsey faints in the background. That would have perfectly summed up the conflict at the heart of this story of personal liberation.  Instead, he tacks on the standard schmaltzy scene of catharsis, where Solomon is reunited with his family - martyred apologies and group hugs all round. Conventional, unnecessary, sugary and ruinous. 

12 YEARS A SLAVE has a running time of 133 minutes and is rated R in the USA.

12 YEARS A SLAVE played Telluride, London and Toronto where Steve McQueen won the People's Choice Award.  The movie will be released in the USA on October 18th, in Germany and Spain on October 31st, in Greece on December 12th, in Singapore and Sweden on December 20th, in New Zealand on December 26th, in France, Finland and the UK on January 24th, in Norway on January 31st, in the Netherlands on February 20th and in Denmark on February 27th. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 4 - SHAME - One of the best films of the year

Michael Fassbender (Brandon) and Steve McQueen (Director) at the
photocall for SHAME at the BFI London Film Festival 2011.

SHAME is a movie that is so brutally honest and achingly sympathetic about sex and love addiction that I can't help but believe that someone in the production is or knows someone with the disease, as I do.  It leaves you profoundly thankful that someone had the balls to go where few mainstream film-makers would dare to go, and had the wit, style and empathy to depict highly sexually explicit material without one iota of leeriness or mockery.  

The movie centres on a brother and sister called Brandon and Sissy (Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan).  They have clearly suffered some kind of childhood trauma that has resulted in deeply disturbed attitudes toward sex and love, as well as behaviours of literal self-harm and suicide on the part of Sissy.  Brandon has created a successful, almost pathologically clean life in New York, but secretly feeds his compulsion for sex with whores, cyber-sex, one-night stands and compulsive masturbation. He takes no joy in these activities but is maintaining his dual existence comfortably until Sissy arrives.  She is less a sex than love addict, craving the attention of her brother - a relationship that hints at a dangerously unboundaried sexual tension - then his boss - she uses sex to get what she really wants, which is an approximation of a genuine emotional closeness - and self-harms when she can't get it.

Sissy's arrival and exposure of Brandon's double life leads to a moment of deep shame and purging, and an attempt to have a normal sexual relationship with an office worker. It's a relationship we know is doomed given Brandon's condition - and which precipitates a backlash that culminates in a scene of profoundly explicit sex that is also perhaps the most moving and despairing piece of acting I've seen in quite some time.  Particular credit to DP Sean Bobbitt and director Steve McQueen for capturing Michael Fassbender simulating orgasm in a manner that looks completely desperate, horrific, horrified and pained. One could almost have ended the movie on that scene and perfectly captured the tragedy at its heart.  

It should be clear by now that I am full of admiration for this bold, brave, painful movie.  Fassbender once again displays his complete courage and Steve McQueen his ability to use visuals and silence to create scenes of quiet power. But perhaps the biggest revelation was Carey Mulligan, who takes on an extremely challenging role - exposing herself physically and emotionally - and is utterly convincing.  Admittedly, SHAME is in some respects less pure than HUNGER, given that it plays with a wider cast of characters and a less austere colour palette.  But what it looses in purity and visceral power it makes up in its deep humanity.

SHAME played Toronto, Venice and London 2011. It goes on release in the US on December 2nd; in the  UK on January 13th; in Germany on March 1st and in the Netherlands on March 15th 2012.


For those wishing to seek more information about recovery from sex addiction please use the following link: http://saa-recovery.org.uk/materials/79-leaflets.html. It gives useful information and advice to anyone wanting to learn more, as well as for health professionals.

London Film Festival Day 6 - HUNGER

Debutant writer-director Steve McQueen has made one of the most austere, brutal films of the festival so far - an unshrinking depiction of the conditions inside the infamous Maze prison at the height of the Dirty Protests, and Bobby Sands' fatal hunger strike.

As the movie opens, we see a middle-aged man eat breakfast and then leave the house. He checks underneath his car, and we realise that he's a prison guard in fear of his life. It's 1981, and he works at the Maze prison just outside Belfast during the Troubles. The next forty minutes give us an unflinching depiction of dirty protests with little dialogue but a brilliant sound-track that captures every scrunch of a sweater and every thud of cudgel on riot shields. The Republican prisoners look like savages - long hair, unwashed, wearing a blanket or a towel at most, living on mattresses crawling in maggots, walls smeared in excrement, mouldering food heaped in the corners of their cells. Every now and then, the riot police are called in and the prisoners are taken out kicking and screaming for a forced bath while their cells are hosed down. You feel the desperation of men who believe that their only option is to dehumanise themselves, and pity for the prison guards who in brutalising the prisoners to keep order are also brutalising themselves.

What the prisoners are protesting is their right to Special Category Status. It's the old beef. They think they are freedom-fighters and political prisoners. Mrs Thatcher's government says that they are simply criminals and should be treated accordingly. There is a stand-off. Accordingly, at the mid-point of the film, Bobby Sands has a meeting with a priest and discusses his intention to start a second hunger strike. This scene is the heart of the film and is absolutely gripping. It's basically a single-take fixed camera shot with Sands and the priest facing each other across a table, sideways on to the audience. The two men establish a rapport and engage in a debate about what the strike could achieve and what the price of failure would be. Liam Cunningham's priest is quick-witted and brooks no nonsense. Michael Fassbinder's Sands is articulate and steadfast. The priest asks Sands straight out if he's in it for the fame or if he's simply committing suicide. Sands argues that he'll be a masthead for recruitment if he dies, which turned out to be the case.

The final half of the film shows us, once again with minimal dialogue, how a man starves himself to death. Fassbinder really does lose the weight, and the bleeding sores look pitifullu authentic. With no melodrama, no fuss, just simple bureaucratic note-taking, Sands simply wastes away, the white sheet is pulled over his body, and the movie ends.

Steve McQueen's film strikes a fine balance between explaining the stance on each side - showing the consequences of violence both for the prison guards and for the prisoners. It never sensationalises or glorifies but merely shows us, unblinkingly, what's involved in such extreme choices. It's a strength of the movie that while I came out of the film essentially unchanged in my political stance on the Maze and Sands' actions, I felt that I could finally understand and empathise with his choice, and almost, but not quite, respect the resolution it must have taken.

As Mrs Thatcher said, "Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organisation did not allow to many of its victims". This film shows us the thought behind that choice - both his choice to be an active Republican and his choice to starve himself - in an insightful, intelligent, honest manner. Michael Fassbinder and Steve McQueen deserve all the plaudits they are receiving.

HUNGER played Cannes where Steve McQueen won the Camera d'Or, Sydney where it won the Sydney Prize, Toronto where it won the Discovery Award, New York and London 2008. It is currently on release in Grece and the Netherlands and opens in the UK on October 31st. It opens in Belgium on November 12th and in France on November 19th.