THE FINAL YEAR - Day 5 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

THE FINAL YEAR is a bittersweet documentary about three figures working on diplomacy in 2016. Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to negotiate a deal on nuclear proliferation with Iran; UN Ambassador Samantha Power is trying to get the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram back; Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor is spearheading the attempts to reconcile with Cuba and keep Climate Change at the top of the agenda. In doing so, all three espouse the doctrine that America is most successful at defending her interests when she uses her soft power and diplomacy rather than her hard military power.  This, they argue, is Barack Obama's legacy.  It is an unashamedly idealistic one, and one that seeks to upend decades of assumptions about how the US does business. And it is depicted by director Greg Barker, who clearly also believes in this humanitarian mission.  The result is a very intimate and humanising picture of hard-working politicians and civil servants who really are working in service of their nation.  

But the documentary is not without its problems.  For a start, although I've characterised it as a portrait of three people, the director actually sells it as a portrait of four - and that fourth is Susan Rice, director of the NSA.  The problem is that she's in roughly three scenes, provides just a soundbite, shows nothing of her personal life, and is basically a pretty anonymous figure.  I wonder Barker just didn't get enough material of Rice because of the nature of her job, or whether she was just less comfortable on camera. Either way, he should've downgraded her from a starring role in the opening credits because it raised expectations the film didn't match. Moreover, I wonder if Rice might have been more of a foreign policy Realist, and as such a fascinating counter-weight to the Internationalists.  But then that wouldn't have fitted in with Barker's narrative.

The other gaping hole in this documentary is both the protagonists reactions to Trump's gathering success in the primaries and then the response to his election. All three seem very complacent about his victory as does Barker. He actually stood up at the London Film Festival and said to the audience "no-one expected Trump to win". Well I did. And I prepared for it.  And if I did why weren't these guys less arrogant about the result.  Maybe if the liberal elite had been less sanguine they might've been better able to prevent it.  

I think what Barker and I know what Power want us to take away from the film is to have renewed hope in the power of diplomacy and the value of service and not to be disheartened by Trump's victory. But frankly I took the opposite message from the film. I took the message that these three people had wasted their time on measures that Trump had immediately overturned - the Paris agreement, the Iran deal, the very idea that diplomacy can be used vs aggression (viz North Korea.)  For me, they have left no legacy, and the film shows how brittle diplomacy is, and indeed how Power is, in particular, to think otherwise. 

THE FINAL YEAR has a running time of 89 minutes.  It is rated 12A for infrequent strong language.  It played London and Toronto 2017. It wis out in the USA, UK and Ireland on January 2018.

BATTLE OF THE SEXES - Day 4 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

Co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE) and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) have created an immensely likeable and uplifting movie in BATTLE OF THE SEXES. It's the story of an infamous exhibition tennis match played in the mid-70s between one of the all time greats of women's tennis - Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and an ageing former Grand Slam winner Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell).  Both are absolutely fascinating characters.  Riggs is a paunchy fifty year old on a second marriage to a rich woman (Elisabeth Shue).  He has a gambling habit and a love of the limelight, and while earning a pittance on the seniors tour become irked that the women are demanding more money.  Those women are led by Billie Jean King - who in a no-nonsense straightforward way asks why, if the women sell as many tickets as the men, they don't get paid as much? What's more, King is willing to back herself - setting up a rival women's tour with tennis promoter Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman). In doing so, she goes head to head with the misogynistic head of the USLTA Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman). The set up of the film is thus an exhibition match between Riggs and King where she has to win to rescue the reputation of women's tennis and indeed make a point about equality to the millions of people watching on TV.  But as she rightly points out, the real point to be made is against Kramer and his ilk rather than the buffoon-like Riggs. 

Behind the scenes we also have intense emotional battles. As the world now knows, King, though married to the deeply supportive and remarkably accommodating Larry, is equally gay. In the course of the film she begins a passionate affair with the tour hairdresser Marilyn (Andrea Riseborough), something that Larry tacitly condones, but that is hidden from the press and King's parents.  The more fascinating reaction is that of King's rival Margaret Court, who is a wife, mother and apparent homophobe. Having done a quick bit of internet research about her, I can't help but think that it let Court off very lightly.  Arguably the more fascinating relationship, because it's less well-known, is that of Riggs and his wife.  She is evidently a strong woman, and analyses their relationship very clearly.  She loves his humour and large personality, but hates his gambling and general unreliability.  Although one of the smaller roles in the film, Elisabeth Shue imbues it with such humanity and compassion that it really was the stand out part of the film.  

As for the rest, well it's all very well done. And Stone absolutely gets some of the physical mannerisms of King and Carell is almost spookily similar to the real-life Riggs. Is the direction pioneering or meaningfully interesting? No not really. But that's what this film is.  To quote Meester Phil, this is the two hour and one minute version of the one minute forty second trailer. This is a movie that really just tells a good story well - it doesn't over-complicate it, and it's a good time. 

BATTLE OF THE SEXES has a running time of 121 minutes and is rated PG-13.  BATTLE OF THE SEXES played London and Toronto 2017 and is already on release in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It opens in Brazil on October 19th, in Hong Kong on November 2nd, in Spain on November 10th, in Germany on November 16th, in France, the Netherlands, Singapore and the UK on November 24th, in Argentina on November 30th, in Colombia on December 7th and in Poland on December 8th.

120 BPM - Day 4 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

120 BPM is an absolutely harrowing and beautifully constructed and acted 90 minute love story surrounded by a less compelling slightly Basil Expositiony story about AIDS activists in late 80s and early 90s Paris. 

To deal with the latter part first, we open up the movie at a weekly ACT UP Paris meeting where an old hand explains the concept of ACT UP and how the meetings work to four new joiners.  This is evidently just for the audience's benefit and is very heavy-handed. We get this intermittently all the way - this or that drug remedy explained.  And I have to admit that while it was fascinating to see the first ACT UP action, I didn't really need to see them debate again and again with the apparently evil drug companies.  After all, it felt to me that it was the regressive social forces in France that were more to blame for Mitterand's failure to act. And even more frustrating and depressing, it wasn't clear from this film at least that ACT UP achieved anything other than provide each other with a sense of community and support. 

All of this is irrelevant though because the love story at the movie's heart is so beautifully acted, and genuinely affecting rather than cheaply emotionally manipulative.  It's the story of a young boy called Sean who catches HIV the first time he has sex. When we meet him he's courageous, and proud and active and vital but as we see him move through the film he becomes increasingly sick with AIDS.  We watch him fall in love with Nathan and Nathan become his full time carer. And as their story moves to its inevitable conclusion the power and weight of its conclusion becomes almost unbearable. I didn't cry as much as I did in STRONGER, but the weight of emotion is still with me and will take some time to process.  Kudos to all involved but especially the actor playing Sean - Nahuel Pérez Biscayart - he deserves all the awards. 

120 BPM has a running time of 140 minutes. It is rated 18 for strong sex, nudity, sex references, language. The movie played Cannes 2017 and won the Fipresci Prize, the Queer Palm, the Grand Jury Prize and the Francois Chalais award. It also played Melbourne, San Sebastian, Toronto, New York and London. It was released earlier this year in France and Italy. It opens in the USA on Oct 20th, in Sweden on Dec 1st, in Bulgaria on Jan 26th and in the UK on April 6th.

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED) - Day 4 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

In a London Film Festival where the prevailing tone has been one of a wake, in the words of Meester Phil, "Thank god for some wit and arseholery." The arsehole in question is paterfamilias Harold Meyerowitz (Dustin Hoffman with a raffish beard), a retired sculptor full of passive aggressive nastiness and jealousy. On the last of many marriages, Harold lives an indulgent life bitter that his supposedly less talented peers have achieved more commercial success, and demanding that his three children dance to his needs. The eldest is his son Danny (Adam Sandler) - an utterly charming but insecure man who has been constantly overlooked in favour of Harold's younger son Matthew (Ben Stiller), who is far more successfully financially and seems to have discovered a better way of dealing with his father. And then poor Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) is so overlooked that her grievances with her dad taking a back seat and comically inserted in parenthesis. 

The film is, then, a very darkly comic one.  There are properly laugh out loud moments to be sure - but the tone is bitter and tragic. And this is where the casting is absolutely spot on. I love it when Stiller and Sandler play straight roles because there's a certain manic comic energy underlying it. And when they ARE called upon for their slapstick chops, the payoff is all the better for the surrounding dark context. If I have any criticism to make, it's that the film felt over-long and occasionally lost momentum.  I felt that this was particularly the case in the scenes involving Harold's fourth wife Maureen (Emma Thompson).  Nothing wrong with her performance at all, it just felt a bit redundant. Otherwise this was a truly superb film as one would expect from a Noah Baumbach picture. 

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES has a running time of 110 minutes and will be released on Netflix on October 13th. 

JOURNEY'S END - Day 3 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

Saul Dibb (SUITE FRANCAISE, THE DUCHESS) has directed what is the stand out film of this year's festival to date, an adaptation of R C Sherriff's stage play JOURNEY'S END.  This powerfully tragic tale of men on the front line in World War One has been brought from stage to screen still depicting the claustrophobia and tension of trench warfare without ever feeling "stagey" or merely a west end show with a camera put in front of it. Rather, Dibb uses his Welsh location to good effect - his film beautifully depicts the mists rising above the trench, and one can almost feel the damp, stale air.  And his use of candlelight inside the dug-out is atmospheric and sometimes even beautiful. 

The movie begins with a naive new officer requesting to join C Company in St Quentin, France, just as the troops are rotated onto the front line. Raleigh (Asa Butterfield) is full of that Dulce Et Decorum Est spirit, but is shocked to find that his schoolboy mentor Stanhope (Sam Claflin) has become a superb commander but also a cynical and volatile alcoholic - something that Stanhope is painfully aware of and scared Raleigh will tell his sister, Stanhope's beloved.  Thus it falls to Stanhope's two junior officers to take Raleigh under their wing - there's the affable, modest, epitome of the stiff-upper-lip, "Uncle" (Paul Bettany) and the working class jovial Trotter (Stephen Graham).  The officers are rounded out by Hibbert (Tom Sturridge) - a ladies man who may or may not be faking neuralgia to get away from the front - something that Stanhope is not having anything of.

Much of the action takes place in and around the officer's dugout as they unwillingly accede to an order for a near-suicide mission to fetch intelligence from enemy lines; and then as the men face a heavy bombardment for the start of the German's Spring Offensive. I found myself physically tensing throughout, I was so involved in the fate of the characters. In such an intense environment, one sees Uncle adopt an air of calm indifference and studied bonhomie to offset Stanhope's nasty aggression.  And it's the play between the two that's really at the heart of this film.  If Bettany's performance is the most instantly likeable it's Claflin who steals the movie. There's a deep and desperate vulnerability to Stanhope that reasserts itself in the film's final scenes. It's a bravura and committed performance that deserves award season recognition. 

JOURNEY'S END has a running time of 107 minutes and played Toronto and London 2017. It will be released in the UK on Feb 2nd. 

STRONGER - Day 3 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

David Gordon Green's STRONGER attempts to tell the story of Jeff Bauman - a young man who had his legs blown off in the Boston Marathon bombing; apparently struggled with peoples attempts to turn him into a symbol of triumph in adversity; but eventually reconciled himself to his fame.  In order to do this, his character arc of frustration and depression is framed by the story of his ex-girlfriend Erin, who gave up her job to nurse Jeff back to health, and fell pregnant by him in the process.  Jeff's reluctance to accept his public role as hero is thus echoed in his reluctance to take on the role of dependable boyfriend and father. 

The film is well enough done. Jake Gyllenhaal looks appropriately overwhelmed and frustrated; poor talented Tatiana Maslany has little to do as Erin but be on the bring of tears. I found the rest of the cast - how shall I say this - insufficiently Boston.  Miranda Richardson was a bizarre choice as Jeff's alcoholic mum. I felt that David Gordon Green was probably trying to portray a loud, obnoxious family of the type we got in THE FIGHTER or that we see pastiched in WAHLBURGERS, but it just fell flat here.   On the positive side, I really liked the way they held back from showing Jeff's experience of the bombing until well into the film, although I wonder if some might find it too explicit or even exploitative. The highlight of the film was, for me, the sleeper story that gets Jeff back on track - I won't say more for fear of spoiling it - but once the true emotional heart of the story was revealed it absolutely broke me and I sobbed my way through the rest of the film.  So, STRONGER is by no means a perfect film, but where it works it really works, and the emotional payoff more than compensates for some of the more eccentric directorial choices. 

STRONGER has a running time of 116 minutes. The movie played Toronto and London 2017. It has already opened in Singapore, the USA, Canada, Estonia and the Netherlands. It opens in Portugal on Oct 12th, in Australia and New Zealand on Oct 19th, and in the UK on Dec 8th.