FILM REVIEW: I, Daniel Blake

I, Daniel Blake has it’s final screenings at Plymouth Arts Centre on Tuesday December 6th and Thursday December 8th at 8:30pm

Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake is an unmagical mystery tour through the wilfully-labyrinthine world of benefits.
It’s an unsettling game of snakes and ladders where, even if you actually did fall off a ladder or were bitten by a snake, the DWP “decision-maker” would likely deem you fit for work anyway and have you at a CV writing workshop quicker than you can say Employment and Support Allowance.

The film’s central performances are stunning, lives of quiet desperation writ large. Comedian Dave Johns is the eponymous Dan – played as an intriguing mix of naïve and world-weary – a carpenter whose heart attack has rendered him temporarily unable to work. He is tossed, like a pinball, into the vagaries of a box-ticking system which can seemingly override a consultant’s advice that he is not yet recovered enough to get a job. A chance meeting in a benefits office leads him to meet a young mother Katie (Hayley Squires) with whom he forms a touching, avuncular relationship as they both attempt to navigate the system.

A special mention is merited too (especially given my interest in child acting http://www.jemimalaing.tumblr.com) for the touching performances of youngest members of the cast, Dylan McKiernan and Briana Shann, as Katie’s children, utterly blameless flotsam in the eddies of the welfare state. Dan and Katie’s stories show how easy it is to stray unwittingly from the path, courtesy of a wrong bus or a harsh word to a benefits advisor, with a sanction the penalty and the resulting challenge of surviving with no money.

This modern-day Catch 22 leads to the film’s central and most affecting scene in a food bank – exquisitely rendered by Hayley Squires’ Katie – where I finally gave in to the angry tears which were already brimming. It’s unflinching polemic, doubtless, but it is an important film which begs the question how a prosperous country like ours can tolerate queues at foodbanks. It’s hard to think of anyone better able than Loach – at his Palme d’Or winning-best – to ask it.

Jemima Laing

Film Review: The Daughter

The Daughter is a remake of the Henrik Ibsen play Wild Duck. First performed in 1884, Ibsen’s play tells the story of a secret that threatens to blow apart the lives of two families.

Director and screenwriter Simon Stone (here making his directorial debut, but a fixture of the Sydney theatre scene) transports the action from Norway to a fictional logging town in Australia.

The town’s economy is built on the foundation of a logging mill, owned by Henry (played by Geoffrey Rush). The mill is in decline, and Henry has no choice but to close it down, meaning redundancy for its workers.

We met one of its workers, Oliver (played by Ewen Leslie) who is married to schoolteacher Charlotte (Miranda Otto). They have one daughter, Hedvig (played by Odessa Young). With them, lives Walter, Oliver’s father. A small town weaves close relationships, and we learn that Walter has been released from prison after serving time for white collar fraud, having worked with Henry at the logging mill.

Henry is due to get married for the second time to Anna (Anna Torv),his former housekeeper. Henry invites his son, Christian, from his first marriage to come home for the wedding. Christian (played by Paul Schneider) is a functioning alcoholic, his own marriage already in pieces. He returns for his father’s wedding, and it is revealed that his alcoholism stems from his mother’s suicide. Christian meets up with Oliver (they were childhood friends). The reunion starts off well, but Christian soon realises that Charlotte has not told Oliver a crucial detail about her past. The secret, when it is finally revealed, sets off a catastrophic string of events, and Oliver’s world implodes.

What is immediately clear about The Daughter is that this is not quite word-for-word homage to Ibsen, or kitchen-sink domestic drama. It pitches between the two, with Stone making some very bold and unconventional choices.

The Daughter is an Australian film through and through, but it removes the familiar iconography we think of as representing Australia – the sun, the beach, a virtually genetic predisposition for optimism. Stone uses the landscape (large parts of the film were shot in New South Wales) to break out from the Ibsen interior, and shoot the action against a green, lush backdrop. From the very start, it gives The Daughter a sense of otherness.

Stone’s decision to go outside is surprising, but what the open spaces allow is for the claustrophobia in Ibsen’s work to become internalised. Secrets build unspoken, threatening to combust at any minute. Family ties and tensions become tangled as the film unfolds. Certainties slip and founder, as the truth (despite Christian’s protestations) really is something to be afraid of.

The film builds to its conclusion delicately, slowly, with every note is played in a minor key – from the cast to the lighting. It is a film that thrives on the unconventional, and it takes a brave man to depart from the script, but Stone’s confidence, honed from years working in theatre, allows him to digress from Ibsen’s use of symbolism and instead concentrate on the close-knit drama between the two families.

The simplicity, with which their story is told, is testament to Stone’s abilities as a screenwriter. The actors are given room to really dig deep, and the film excels because of it. Geoffrey Rush seems tailor-made for Ibsen, portraying a complex inner life with ease, and Paul Schneider (a regular on TV sitcom Parks and Recreation) fleshes out Christian’s despair and alcoholism with real skill. Schneider treads the line between trauma and self-pity remarkably well, leaving us no choice but to interpret Christian’s motives with ambiguity at best.

While this is undoubtedly an ensemble film, it would be remiss of me not to mention the excellent Odessa Young who plays Hedvig, the eponymous daughter. Ibsen has a reputation for crafting memorable female characters, and Young paints Hedvig in bright, exuberant primary colours. It’s an extraordinary performance right up to the closing credits – expect to hear much more from her in the near future.

Anyone who’s familiar with A Doll’s House or Ghosts will know that Ibsen’s go-to move is to cast silence and complicity as the villain of the piece. Whether it comes from self-interest or self-preservation, Ibsen’s views on morality are difficult to unpick – he recognised that life isn’t drawn in a straight line, and wrote accordingly.

The film ends as it begins; with few definitive markers. Stone makes another bold decision in not adhering to the original ending of Wild Duck (not to give too much away), but what we’re left with is more ambiguity. What is the future for these characters? Can their fractured relationships be healed, or is it simply too late?

A good film should always leave you with a sense of satisfaction; but a great film always leaves you with more questions than answers, and The Daughter does exactly this. It’s a work with the courage of its convictions, and a great example of how filmmakers shouldn’t feel tied to source material. The Daughter takes a lot of chances, but the care with which the drama is handled, leaves us in no doubt that taking a risk can yield something as beautiful as it is unexpected.

Helen Tope

Twitter: @Scholar1977

Film Review: Johnny Guitar

A Review of restored classic Johnny Guitar, from Ieuan Jones. 

Johnny Guitar is screening at Plymouth Arts Centre 27th – 30th July.

 

The recent, rancid abuse heaped on this year’s Ghostbusters reboot, due to the unpardonable crime of having four women instead of four men in the central roles, has shown how feebleminded and reductive any discussion regarding women and film has become. The fact that, in 2016, one must seriously argue, with considerable blowback, even the possibility that a film containing a cast of mainly women can carry its own both artistically and financially, is a very sorry state of affairs indeed. Moreover, this debate is continually pulled into a context featuring very many unsavoury assumptions – that women in film are peripheral, they are entryists, Johnny (Janey?)-come-latelys; supportive at best and spoilsports at worst.

These arguments are made in ignorance of the fact that, say, Alice Guy Blanché’s La Fée aux Choux (1896) is one of the earliest films ever made, predating even the narrative features of Georges Méliès. Since then the works of Weber, Arzner, Pickford, Lupino, Wertmüller, Akerman, Varda, Campion, Holland, Makmalbaf, Ramsay, Ephron, Schoonmaker, May, Marshall, Denis, Bigelow, Heckerling, Barnard, Amirpour, Bier, to name but a minuscule fraction, have not only contributed significantly to cinema, but are part of its very marrow.

Sitting more or less between La Fée aux Choux and Ghostbusters is Johnny Guitar (1954). Like Ghostbusters, it was in fact directed by a man – Nicholas Ray, a full year before he finally hit pay-dirt with Rebel Without a Cause; it was also written by a man (Ben Maddow). But the reason it continues to be celebrated over half a century after its release is due to its female characterisation, including an extraordinary performance from Joan Crawford, as well as acres of discussion on its gender roles and sexual politics. (Ridiculed by critics on its immediate release, no less than Francois Truffaut declared it a masterpiece and derided its detractors by saying they were unfit to visit the picture-house again.)

Crawford plays Vienna, owner of a saloon in the Arizona dustbowl at the turn of the last century. The only others keeping her company are the barkeep and a croupier, told to keep the roulette wheel spinning in spite of their lack of custom. Vienna has made many enemies among the townsfolk, led by Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge, the perfect lipstick-clad fascist). This is apparently due to Vienna’s support for the local railroad, which she believes will finally civilise the area. It also is due to her giving hospitality to the “Dancin’ Kid” (Scott Brady) and his gang of local menaces, though there is more than a little sexual jealousy fuelling the aggression against Vienna as well. Into this ferment strolls “Johnny Guitar” (Sterling Hayden), a hired song-and-dance man who can handle himself in a fight and has a history with Vienna.

Filmed in dazzling “Trucolor”, Johnny Guitar is a real sandstorm of politics, passions and desires. Vienna is given a sexual history all her own – shown as having a past, not just with the Dancin’ Kid but Johnny Guitar as well. It is also noteworthy that the title character is really no match for Vienna either (just as well considering Hayden really doesn’t have a tenth of the presence that Crawford has). Everything from the radiant costumes to the sparky dialogue are designed to have maximum impact and for this Ray must be given due praise. One scene in particular, where Vienna and Johnny’s secrets are exposed in an eye-popping exchange, is real cinema with fire in its belly, the like of which is rarely seen today. Not to be missed.

 

Ieuan Jones