BREATHE - BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Opening Night Gala

As predicted, and in keeping with a long line of banal, pretty heritage products opening the BFI London Film Festival, Andy Serkis' directorial debut BREATHE is a deeply dull and forgettable drama about a very nice couple.  There isn't any dramatic tension or any surprises. The story proceeds as expected and then comes to a neat end.  It's all done in a perfectly competent manner, but the big emotional set pieces failed to move me (although Meester Phil was successfully emotionally manipulated despite himself.) 

The plot is based on the true story of Robin and Diane Cavendish. In the late 50s, the blissfully married couple were living in Kenya in sun kissed perfect imperial gorgeousness.  And then, just after Diane fell pregnant, Robin contracted polio, rendering him paralysed from the neck down and unable to breathe without an artificial respirator.  Such was the state of medical science at the time that Robin was condemned to a short and depressing life chained to a respirator in a hospital ward. (Although as we see later, in the one genuinely moving scene in the film, the poor bastards in a German sanitarium have it far worse.)  

But this being upper class British heritage drama, nothing is going to stop our heroes from triumphing over this adversity.  Bottom lips quiver, tears are suppressed, and they just keep calm and carry on.  Luckily, although pleading poverty, Diane can still afford a nanny and a stately pile in which Robin can convalesce and their best mate happens to be an Oxford professor who designs the first ever artificial respirator cum wheelchair. And so it all continues.  Even when they need money for chairs for some other patients they find a helpful rich aristo to dole it out.  

There are never any emotional outbursts or arguments, because they love each other perfectly. Even their teenage son (who in real life went on to produce this film) never has an angry frustrated teenage strop.  And so we merely perambulate earnestly toward a conclusion that comes half an hour later than it really needed to.  The problem about making movies about paragons is that they are dull. Maybe the couple were really this unflappable and lovely.  But ye gods, you can't power 120 minutes of cinema out of that. 

BREATHE opens in the USA on October 13th, in the UK on Oct 27th and in Australia on Dec 27th. The film is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 114 minutes.

MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM

MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM is a film in that long tradition of sepia toned Hollywood hagiography that fully subscribes to the Great Man theory of history.  It is a simple film that tells a powerful story and contains a truly exceptional central performance.  But it is mortally wounded by  bad make-up and intellectual timidity.

So, I guess we all know the story.  Nelson Mandela is a lawyer in apartheid South Africa - an advocate for the repressed in white courts.  At first reluctant, he becomes a leader in the African National Congress - a banned political party campaigning for equal rights.  When the struggle goes nowhere, they turn to violence and Mandela goes underground.  When a sabotage mission goes wrong he's caught, tries to become a martyr, but is instead imprisoned for life on Robben Island. There he stayed for decades as international pressure increased, the ANC's violence increased, and F W DeKlerk realised he would have to negotiate.  All this led us to that iconic image of Mandela walking free, hand-in-hand with his long-supportive wife Winnie. The crucial final act, is seeing the man who could so easily seek vengeance, pleading for what would become "truth and reconciliation".

The problem with this film is that while it tries to make us see the nasty side of Mandela - his serial womanising - it doesn't want to go too far in damaging the legend. Similarly, it treats Winnie Mandela - a fascinating figure - with respect and sympathy - which is right - but arguably goes too far.  We see her brutalised and radicalised - but we don't see enough of the ANC campaign of violence that so alienated her from Nelson. Indeed, I wanted much more of Winnie, not least because while Idris Elba's acting was just fine as Nelson, Naomie Harris absolutely mastered the accent and growing hardness of Winnie.  It is absurd to me that Elba is getting award nominations while Harris is unrecognised. Of course, at a much more superficial level, the real problem of this film is that Elba looks nothing like Mandela.  That doesn't matter of itself. I saw Mark Rylance play Cleopatra and his acting was mesmerising.  And maybe if they'd been less heavyhanded with the make-up and just let Elba act Nelson rather than trying to make him look like Nelson, it would've been less distracting. As it is, the make-up is utterly unsuccessful and utterly distracting.

So, overall, a rather disappointing film, worth watching only for Naomie Harris, and to see just how far Mandela's conditions eased in the final years of his captivity. There is no real depiction of the horror of living in a small cell for decades.  No searing indictment of that captivity in the manner of Steve McQueen's HUNGER. And no real desire to stir up the pot of controversy surrounding the ANC's tactics, as embodied in Winnie.  It's a picture book movie of fortuitous timing and poor make-up.  Mandela deserves better. 

MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM played Toronto 2013 and opened last year in South Africa, the USA, Iceland, Portugal, Belgium, France, Israel, the Netherlands, Canada and Kuwait. It opened earlier this year in the UK and Ireland. It opens in Spain on January 17th; in Denmark on January 23rd; in India on January 24th; in Germany and New Zealand on January 30th; in Australia on February 6th; in Sweden on February 7th; in Finland on February 14th; and Singapore on February 27th. 

LES MISERABLES

Helena Bonham Cartier as the devious Madame Thenardier

For the improbable few who don't know, Les Miserable is a remarkable novel by Victor Hugo, set in mid nineteenth century, post-Napoleonic France.  The main character is a good but traduced man called Jean Valjean who lives under an alias to escape his convict past.  He is hunted by Javert, a cop whose strict adherence to the rule of law will not admit mercy or humanity.  In the first half, Valjean is redeemed by the mercy of a priest, witnesses the death of a seamstress turned hooker called Fantine and promises to care for her daughter Cosette. Together they escape Javert in the anonymity of Paris.  In the second half, Cosette falls in love with a revolutionary young aristo called Marius, who is also beloved by the sad little innkeepers' daughter, Eponine. Valjean realises that rather than escape Javert by fleeing to London, he must save Marius from certain death on the barricade. In doing so, he challenges Javert to let him pass with the dying boy, thus fundamentally destroying Javert's worldview and self worth.  Javert commits suicide, and Valjean dies, his family knowing his true worth. 

In the 1980s, the novel was reworked as a musical by Claude-Michel Schoenberg and Alan Boublil. They stripped the Victor Hugo classic of its baggy social exposition leaving the bare bones of a story of young love crossed with a tragedy of redemption versus the rule of law. They also added a handful of truly superb songs and the comic relief of the con-artist inn-keepers, the Thenardiers. The result was a product of memorable songs, and overt sentimentality.  The only character of any real psychological interest was the conflicted Javert.  Even poor Eponine, suffering unrequited love, is so good that she leads her beloved Marius to Cosette.  It is, then, almost uniquely, a movie in which all the major characters are wholly good, and their songs speak to worthy but unfulfilled longing.  There are no song and dance numbers here. It's just torch song after torch song interspersed with the one truly comic number at the inn.

I am conflicted about Tom Hooper's translation of the musical to the big screen.  There is much to be commended.  He forces the actors to sing live during the take, rather than miming to a prerecorded track, giving the movie an emotional authenticity that is entirely novel.  Surely movie musicals can never go back from this new high bar?  Hooper is also unabashedly faithful to the original - capturing its grandeur and melodrama, ringing every last tear from his audience. I doubt any fan of the original will be disappointed with this on-screen translation. Hooper is fortunate in his cast. Hugh Jackman's background in musical theatre is well known and it shines through here with his heartbreaking Valjean. We have seen Amanda Seyfried sing in MAMA MIA! and are unsurprised by her pretty but slightly too trilly soprano.  Anne Hathaway and Eddie Redmayne as Fantine and Marius prove to be highly capable singers too.   The only weak link is Russell Crowe as Javert, but I didn't mind this at all as it is far more important that we believe his psychological deterioration in the final act - an d Crowe sells this well.  Of course, it was predictable that Eponone, played by Sarah Barkman, would be a scene-stealer given her theatrical background, and as usual we get the Papageno/Poor Joe effect with little Daniel Huttlestone as Gavroche.  As comic turns, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen are predictably superb as the Thenardiers. 

Behind the camera, I love the ambition of Tom Hooper's vision.  The first scene that rises through murky waters to high above a dangerously listing great ship.  The choice of a beautifully ornate Catholic Church on an isolated hilltop for Valjean's conversion.  The use of colour in the scenes with barricades - the red of Enjolras' coat.  The metaphor of having Javert always walk on the edge of the precipice.  I particularly liked the idea of Fantine singing "I dreamed a dream" almost immediately after selling herself for the first time, utterly destroyed and vulnerable.

But there is one directorial choice that I found utterly grating, and for which I think the Academy was right to deny Hooper a Best Director nomination because it is so very fundamental to the success of the film. As I said before, Les Mis is different because the songs are rather uniform. There are no song and dance numbers, and only one out and out comic turn. Rather we have a mix of earnest, heartbreaking torch songs and earnest heartbreaking doomed political chants. Unfortunately, Hooper has chosen not to  vary his style of filming. In general he cuts between camera angles but keeps his camera still and focused, often in extreme close-up, on the singer.  I get this with Valjean's conversion. And I get it for Fantine's big turn.  But for every other song? By the time I got to Marius' "Empty chairs at empty tables" I was desperate for some kind of variation, and this detracted from Redmayne emoting his heart out. This lack of directorial imagination, or perhaps the fixation with a novel idea that was taken too far, is this movie's Achilles Heel.  So that while it works emotionally, and the performances and design impress, as a work of pure cinema, it fails. 

LES MISERABLES is on release in Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore, Spain, the USA, Hungary, Malaysia, the Czech Republic, Kuwait, Lebanon, Portugal, Bulgaria, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland, Mexico, the UK and Vietnam.  It opens on January 18th in Estonia, Iceland, Norway and Sweden; on January 25th in Poland and Romania; on January 31st in Italy, Slovenia, Thailand and Brazil; on February 8th in Russia and Taiwan; on February 14th in Cyprus, France, Argentina and Greece; on February 21st in Belgium, Germany and Finland; on March 1st in Turkey and on March 21st in Denmark.

LES MISERABLES is rated PG 13 in the USA and the running time is 157 minutes.