MANIFESTO

MANIFESTO started off as an art installation of simultaneously broadcast short films that have now been turned into a feature by director Julian Rosefeldt.  They all star Cate Blanchett as different philosophers, articulating their key beliefs in a variety of costumes and guises.  The film starts with her as a tramp rambling through a rotten concrete landscape before transitioning to Cate as an equities trader with a thick Long Island accent. But what we realise is that each segment isn't quoting a particular philosopher but  a miso-mash - apparently all pulling together to make a certain point. So in the homeless scene, we're meant to be talking about Situationism and it quotes Fontana, John Reed, Nieuwenhuys, Rodchenko and Debord. In the trader scene, which is meant to refer to Futurism, we get a mash up of Marinetti, Severine, Appollinaire and Vertov. 

As we move from Cate as Punk (Creationism) to Cate as puppeteer (Surrealism) to Cate as Newsreader (Minimalism) I was struggling to understand what I was meant to get out of this film other than a deep respect for her talents at turning accents. The excerpts are sometimes iconic, sometimes resonate with contemporary politics, but a lot of the time are just superficial and abstract. This just isn't a film that coalesced to me, in any meaningful way, and I wonder if it had better have been experienced as art installation. 

MANIFESTO has a running time of 95 minutes. The film has played as art gallery installations and in many festivals. It was released in UK cinemas last week and is rated 15 for strong language. 

LOST IN PARIS

The writing/directing partners Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon (THE FAIRY) return to our screens with another zany comedy with a social conscience - LOST IN PARIS. It stars Fiona as a Canadian librarian of geeky appearance and MR BEAN-like hapless physicality who goes to Paris to rescue her aunt, the majestic Emmanuelle Riva (AMOUR) who is being forced into an old-age home. The problem is that when she gets there, her aunt has gone missing.  At this point the fictional Fiona meets the equally nerdy, quirky Dom, a homeless Parisian who somehow finds enough money to dance the tango with her in an expensive riverboat restaurent and falls in love - only to find that he has a rival for Fiona's affections - a Canadian mountie!  

What I love about this film is that is does something relatively unique in modern cinema, but arguably the oldest of the cinematic arts - proper technically brilliant slapstick comedy in the best tradition of Keaton, Chaplin and Tati.  And just like those great films, it makes us laugh out loud at its silliness while also pulling at our emotions and genuinely moving us. Gordon and Abel are truly talented, and make movies of such unabashed joy they deserve to be better known. And if you thought that hackneyed park bench foot tapping dance scene in LA LA LAND was cute, check out Emmanuelle Riva and her fellow nursing home paramour in the most adorable dance scene I've scene in a long time. And that speaks to this film's social conscience - asking us about how we consign old people to a parking lot waiting for death, rather than acknowledge their same yearning for love, dance, magic!  This is a film not to be missed.

LOST IN PARIS has a running time of 83 minutes and is rated 12A for infrequent strong language and moderate sex references.  The film played Telluride and the BFI London Film Festival 2016. It was released earlier this year in France, Estonia, Belgium, Lithuania, Switzerland, Hungary, Argentina, South Korea, Sweden, the USA, Brazil, Japan, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria, Uruguay and Mexico. It's currently on release in the UK and Ireland in cinemas and on streaming services. 

TROPHY

TROPHY is a meticulously edited, beautifully shot, and most of all provocative documentary about the ethics of big game hunting and its interaction with rare species conservation.  Its directors - Christina Clusiau and Shaul Shwarz (AIDA'S SECRETS) - are on the record as saying that they began making the doc to pretty much indict the commercial hunting industry, and there's certainly plenty of explicit, unpalatable and indeed disgusting footage of rich white men paying large sums of money to shoot (NOT track and hunt) game at point blank range and then take crass selfies.  One of them even cites the Bible as sanctioning such savage activity, which will be like a red rag to a bull to any liberals watching.  But the film is careful to balance this with the equally dogmatic and arguably naive opposing views of anti-hunting activists who quite earnestly and rightly want to save lions like Cecil, but have no concept of the complexity of policy making and unintended consequences in Africa.  There is no possibility of a utopian solution - compromises and second best options are the only viable way forward.  

This film poses just such a compromise, which is to allow limited commercial hunting as well as the sale of rhino horns, and to use those funds to subsidise anti-poaching and breeding measures. The people used to defend such a policy are of varying credibility. The most prominent in the film is a commercial rhino breeder who does seem to care about saving them from extinction and his sunk his personal wealth into doing so but stands to make a fortune from trading in their horns.  But the one who really impressed me was an anti-poaching activist who also leads commercial hunts.  He seemed to be the most articulate about the irony of killing some animals to save others - the most aware of the complexity of the situation - and the most deeply committed to their long-term survival.  His views really impressed me, and made me deeply reconsider my views on this issue, which is the most one could ask of any documentary.  In addition, I delighted in the beautiful cinematography of South Africa and Zimbabwe, while simultaneously being horrified by, and rightly not being allowed to avoid, the sight of animals being killed for sport.

TROPHY has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated 15 for strong language. The film played Sundance and SXSW 2017.  It opened earlier this year in the USA and Canada. It opened in the UK and Ireland a week ago and is still showing in cinemas and on demand. 

BEACH RATS

BEACH RATS is a beautifully observed brave film about a teenage boy struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality.  It's written and directed by award-winning sophomore director Eliza Hittman and benefits from delicately beautiful, 16mm, nostalgia-tinted photography from celebrated French cinematographer Helene Louvert (PINA!) The film stars British actor Harris Dickinson as a 19 year old high school graduate called Frankie, without job, car or aim in life.  His father is dying, his mum (Kate Hodge) is an exhausted caregiver, merely observing his comings and goings, and the only real emotional reaction we get from all that is Frankie looking bemused and distant and filching his dad's meds.  What he does have is a bunch of jock friends with whom he hangs out at the beach in Brooklyn, getting high, and up to no good. Against this typically "bro" hetero backdrop, boasting about conquests, Frankie attempts a tentative relationship with Simone (Madeline Weinstein), but she soon realises that he's not into her, and maybe gets the reason why. It's testament to the nuanced and subtle performances from both actors that we never truly know how far she gets it.  Simultaneously, Frankie is exploring the world of gay chatrooms, and moves from online flirting to midnight hook ups at the beach. I love the way that the director handles these without awkwardness or squeamishness, and never objectifies Frankie.  It's rare to see such an honest depiction of casual sex in any film, let alone showing homosexuality. Kudos to all involved but especially Harris Dickinson who gives a truly astounding break-out performance.

BEACH RATS played Sundance 2017 where won Best Director. It also played the BFI London Film Festival. It was released earlier this year in the USA. It was released in the UK and Ireland last Friday in cinemas and on streaming services. It will be released in Germany on January 25th 2018. The film has a running time of 96 minutes and is rated 15 for strong sex, nudity, drug misuse and language. 

THE MERCY

THE MERCY is the latest in a long line of treatments of the infamous 1968/69 round the world yacht race called The Golden Globe. It captures the imagination because it's a pure challenge between man and the elements - to sail a boat with rudimentary equipment around the world single-handed over many months - a test both of the boat and man's ability to deal with extreme isolation and peril. I have long been fascinated by the type of people who are driven to face such challenges - whether climbing mountains above the "death zone" - or sailing into peril. And the Golden Globe, more than other races, epitomises the strange pull on a certain type of man to prove himself. It attracted both professional sailors and rank amateurs - and that too is one of its attractions. The idea that anyone could simply get into a boat and sail around the world appeals to a sense of old-fashioned adventure.

THE MERCY focuses on just one of the nine entrants to the Golden Globe race - the most notorious - Donald Crowhurst. It may well be best to watch it knowing absolutely nothing about him, but as the story is going to 50 years old next year, I'm going to go ahead and discuss its broad outlines in order to review the film. Crowhurst was a talented electronic engineer and weekend sailor in coastal waters. But he was struggling with his business, and was reliant on an investment from local entrepreneur Stanley Best to stay afloat. Crowhurst saw entering the race as a chance to gain the kind of fame and fortune that Sir Francis Chichester had earned when he went round the world with just one stop the year before. If he could prove the value of his pioneering electronic gadgets on board a famous voyage, regardless of winning, Crowhurst would be set up for life. But, because he was reliant on yet more sponsorship from Best to build his boat, if he failed to sail, or dropped out early, he would lose his house, boat and business. The stakes could not, therefore, have been higher.

The film shows Crowhurst in a sympathetic light - a charismatic family man with real smarts - but out of his depth in preparing for such a voyage against a very tight deadline. The boatbuilders can't always get first choice materials, his design is untested, and he hasn't got the time to build the electronics that should make a trimaran able to right itself when capsized (it's chief safety problem). Sponsors are hard to come by, but he does get recording equipment from the BBC and instructions to send back updates to his rapacious press agent. Money is tight. The stress builds, and he spends much of his final night before sailing in tears. The omens are bad - the champagne bottle won't crack against the hull, the test voyage takes two weeks rather than three days, and even when he sets sail on the race, he has to tow back to sort out his sails.

It's very clear from early on that he neither the open water sailing experience nor a suitable boat for the voyage. The early parts of the film show him to be very honest and logical in laying out the problems he has to solve. As he slips down the coast of Portugal and onto Africa his speeds are underwhelming and he spends his time manually bailing out the hulls. At some point he decides to make a simple deception - and fakes a speed record. But that does't yet mean that he's decide to fake the entire voyage. The film shows beautifully the slow slipping into fakery. But there's a moment when he takes the plunge - when he starts genuinely faking his progress, using enigmatic radio messages and refusing to give his precise bearings. At this point, though, it's a logical reaction to desperation. He wants to give us, but is in an invidious financial position. Another problem for Crowhurst, as the film so clearly shows, is that slight fakery is exacerbated by his press agent Ronald Hallworth - a man with shady ethics who takes Crowhurst's deliberately vague reports and exaggerates and firms them up with fake accuracy. This puts Crowhurst in as much of a bind as his financial problems, because he can’t very well drop out of the race in a position on the map where he’s not meant to be anywhere near! And so the film shows a man under insupportable pressure decide to fake his voyage, and because this means complete radio silence, slip into madness. I’ll say no more here, although I have written my thoughts on how this is handled below the episode notes for those who are interested.

THE MERCY succeeds because of the central performance of Colin Firth (THE KINGSMEN)- showing a range and nuance that makes this perhaps his finest performance since A SINGLE MAN. It’s a sympathetic but harrowing portrait of a good, intelligent and earnest man who desperately needs to speak to his wife in private and seek solace and advice but cannot. Yes he told a lie, but to save his family from ruin, and in the absence of any emotional support. And who then sails for months, in isolation, and becomes unmoored from reality. It’s also, despite it’s specific context, a deeply relatable story about what loneliness and stress can do to one. The film also benefits from being shot on the open sea, and on celluloid - an authenticity that’s hard to replicate in a tank - and than creates one or two really quite beautiful images. By contrast, when it comes to the land-based scenes, director James Marsh (THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING) seems to get through them in a rather workmanlike manner.

Because this is Firth’s film - rightly so - those cast in smaller roles are little more than quickly essayed character traits. Rachel Weisz (THE LOBSTER) is merely there to be deeply sympathetic as Crowhurst’s supportive wife Clare, unwilling to tell him not to proceed because she wants to support his dreams, even if it means ending up on the dole and alone. Clare is also given a rather bombastic final scene which, in its (bizarre, to my mind), condemnation of the press, felt anachronistic, and certainly didn’t happen. David Thewlis is mono-dimensionally creepy as the press agent Hallworth. And we get a cameo from Simon McBurney as Sir Francis Chichester, but he’s bizarrely unused as the film develops even though his reaction to Crowhurst’s voyage was one of the more interesting.

The film suffers from a lack of context. Crowhurst’s struggles are easier to understand and sympathise with when you realise how far the other sailors suffered from stress and isolation - the story of Moitessier in particular shows how easy it is to become unmoored. And although unprepared, he was by far not the most amateur of the sailors - that honour goes to Chay Blyth who literally had to learn to sail as he went. But perhaps that would’ve taken too much time to explore? What the screenwriter, Scott Z Burns (THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM), could’ve done quickly and easily was introduce a scene where we learn that both the pumping hose and the box of spare parts was left onshore by mistake, making Crowhurst’s voyage harder to sustain. I also feel that more time could’ve been spent on establishing Crowhurst’s philosophy of life as a kind of game before the race, to help give content to the 25,000 words of Philosophy written in his logbooks at sea. Because even as he became unmoored, there was a through line from earlier beliefs, and again that speaks to his intelligence.

Overall, I did enjoy the film, mostly for Firth’s performance, and because even when done narrowly, it’s a fascinating tale. I suspect that for people who truly want to understand the psychology of not just Crowhurst, but all the men who took part in the race, and its dramatic emotional consequences, the 2006 documentary, DEEP WATER,  reviewed here, will remain the first port of call. I can also heartily recommend reading The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by the Sunday Times journalists Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall. This was published immediately after the race, in 1970, and benefited from the authors being able to comb over the log books and other documents that came off Crowhurst's boat, as well as interviewing those involved in the race. I found it to be an incredibly well researched and fair-minded book, deeply sympathetic to Crowhurst and quoting liberally from his writings. The makers of this film seem to disagree, which I find odd. Another valuable book is Chris Eakin's A Race Too Far. This covers the race in its entirety, looking at all the participants. It therefore goes into less depth on any one of them, and quotes liberally from the Tomalin and Hall book. It was published just last year and therefore can interview participants and their families.

THE MERCY has a running time of 101 minutes and is rated 12A in the UK for infrequent strong language. It will be released in Portugal on November 23rd, in the Netherlands on December 14th, in Australia on February 8th, in the UK on February 9th, in Poland on March 2nd, in France on March 7th, in New Zealand on March 8th and in Germany on March 29th. 

JUSTICE LEAGUE

After a dismally dull experience of BATMAN VS SUPERMAN and walking out of SUICIDE SQUAD after 30 minutes, it was only my recent enjoyment of WONDER WOMAN that made me vaguely interested in seeing the new DC multi-character action film, JUSTICE LEAGUE. I'm pleased to report that, given incredibly low expectations, I actually had a good time watching the film, thanks to the fact that Superman remains dead for much of it, and the charisma vacuum that is Henry Cavill, and sheer flabby uninterested of Ben Affleck are diluted by both Wonder Woman's earnest awesomeness and a trio of great new additions to the franchise. I was genuinely amused by Ezra Miller's nerdy, funny Flash, and suspect that his character benefited most from Joss Whedon taking over the reins as director once the portentous heavy-handed Zack Snyder left for personal reasons. That Miller went from playing a genuinely unnerving psycho in WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN to a disarmingly hapless teen here shows great range.  I also really liked the teasing of a more earnest backstory involving his incarcerated father played by Billy Crudup - who manages to communicate pained selflessness in a few brief scenes. Perhaps most surprisingly, I loved Jason Mamoa's rock-star ragged Aquaman. This was a great shock after he failed to impress in the CONAN remake and GAME OF THRONES - but that suggests scripts and directors that cast him for his body and not his evident charisma and ability to turn a genuinely comic line.  His AQUAMAN is an ancient hero, pissed off with the world, performing small acts of kindness while blind drunk. Insofar as he has an arc, it's realising that he has to take responsibility for saving the world and be a true heir of Atlantis. Similarly, in this film, Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman also has to assume the mantel of leadership and become an icon of  hope, just as Superman had been.  The final new addition is newcomer Ray Fisher's Cyborg, Victor Stone.  He has the most serious role to play, as he struggles to come to terms with his powers and the role his father played in mutilating him.  In the context of a rather silly film, it's his character that is the most moving.  Against this cast of genuinely funny and moving characters, it was easy to quickly move past Ben Affleck's continuing banality as Bruce Wayne and Henry Cavill's po-faced, charisma-less Superman.