cinema review HE ER Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are (2009) struck me as being more down than upbeat. Based on Maurice Sendak’s children’s book about a little boy living in a fantasy world, it might be argued that Jonze’s latest film features that same kid, only now grown up. The time is the very near future, and it is distinguishable from today most singularly by the geeky high-waisted serge trousers that men wear. Everybody is wired 24/7, including Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), who earns a living
by composing handwritten letters for clients who, despite the triumph of cyberspace, crave more personalised connection. It is a less-thansubtle irony, but it serves a purpose as we see Theodore fall headlong into the bubbleworld of hyper communication. Seeking love and affection and understanding, he finds it in Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), an OS (operating system). Jonze’s task is to make believable a relationship that, as recently as ten years ago, may have seemed both absurd
and undesirable, but which has, like a coma, come to virtually swamp us and radically alter our perceptions of reality. (When the movie finished, before the credits started to roll, the lights of mobiles flashed on as their willing slaves checked in for updates of whatever.) Theodore is troubled by his condition, but not enough to abandon it as Samantha, like Dr Frankenstein’s monster, evolves a life of her own. Stripped of its social comment – and that comment, admittedly, is in urgent need of being
acted upon – the story itself comprises not much more than ‘boy meets girl’. When the girl part of the equation is just a voice without a body, all the directorial skills of Jonze and the considerable acting ability of Phoenix cannot dodge the fact that you are watching rather too much of a bloke talking to himself. Important, for sure, and done with a lyrical dreaminess, but in the end Jonze has one thing to say and he repeats it ad nauseam. It’s too slow and way too long. ~ John Campbell
outrageous fortune adrift in a sea of crassness. Joel and Ethan can’t help looking down on people and, as filmmakers of the highest order, their guile lies in inviting the audience up to their lofty vantage point from which to snigger at humanity – it is a smarmy conceit that works a treat at prizegiving galas. Llewyn’s journey is book-ended by the bashing he receives in a laneway at the hands of a mysterious stranger. After first witnessing this, we follow Llewyn as he inadvertently lets a ginger moggy out of some friends’ apartment. His cross-city trip with the cat is brilliantly conceived and captured, as are
similarly contrived episodes. But it begins to feel repetitive, in the way that O Brother, Where Art Thou? did, without that pseudo-epic’s wit and warmth – indeed, it is as cold as the icy streets through which Llewyn trudges. Not that it’s without its highlights… Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography is mesmerising, Isaac is a fine singer, the Coens have always been good at creating a Twilight Zone creepiness and the sight of a bloodstained bumper after Llewyn’s car has hit an animal is intensely moving. But a walk-out by a nearby couple is re-united with the cat, whose gave me unexpected solace. name, we learn, is Ulysses – if Having come full circle, Llewyn oracular is your pose, you might
IN NSID DE LLE EWYN N DAVIS If you want an insight into the disproportionately high opinion artists have of themselves you need look no further than the Coen brothers’ latest indulgence. After coming out of themselves for the sublime True Grit, the boys have reverted to their essentially contemptuous world view to tell the story of
a week in the life of Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a down-atheel folk-singer who has not quite made it in the bearded Greenwich Village scene of 1961. Llewyn is a fellow of no redeeming qualities, but, as per their standard MO, the Coens’ lens is focused through his eyes, and they make him a victim of
TUESDAY
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29 JAN
as well go in ham-fisted. ~ John Campbell
PHILOMENA
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12 YEARS A SLAVE (MA15 PREVIEWS Fri 24-Mon 27: 6:45 THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (R18+) Thu 23-Wed 29: 11:30, 2:50, 6:15 HER (MA15) Tue 21, Wed 22: 11:25, 4:25, 9:20 Thu 23-Wed 29: 11:45, 4:15, 9:35 INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (M) Tue 21, Wed 22: 12:15, 5:00, 7:10, 9:30pm Thu 23, Tue 28, Wed 29: 2:10, 4:45, 9:15pm Fri 24-Mon 27: 2:10, 4:45, 9:20pm SAVING MR BANKS (PG) Tue 21, Wed 22: 1:55, 4:20, 6:55 Thu 23, Tue 28, Wed 29: 9:15, 6:45 Fri 24-Mon 27: 9:15am, 9.30pm THE BOOK THIEF (PG) Tue 21, Wed 22: 11:10, 1:45, 6:50 Thu 23-Wed 29: 11:40, 2:15, 7:00 Enjoy our licensed bar
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28 January 21, 2014 The Byron Shire Echo
‘I don’t believe in God, and I think he can tell.’ Having just walked out of a church choir recital, it’s Steve Coogan as Martin Sixsmith, a disgraced journalist/spin doctor, who gets the best lines in Stephen Frears’s scathing observance of how loveless religion – in this case Catholicism – can devastate lives. That Sixsmith is the more conflicted, complex character in a two-hander with Judi Dench’s Philomena should not surprise, given that the movie is based on his book and the script co-written by Coogan himself. What delights is the chemistry – the warmth and concord – that exists between two performers who ordinarily approach a role from opposite ends of the emotional colour spectrum. Philomena, in her old age, wants to know what happened to the illegitimate son who was taken from her by the ‘sisters of little mercy’ and adopted out to an American couple fifty years ago. Sixsmith, needing a newspaper gig, agrees to help
her find out, with the intention / Will be to arrive where we the first time’. Too true. of publishing it as a ‘human started / And know the place for ~ John Campbell interest’ story. The flashback sequences at the Irish convent where Philomena and her child lived are harrowing, but what might so easily have tilted disastrously into self-defeating mawkishness is kept on an even keel by gentle, episodic road-trip humour as Sixsmith’s investigations result in the pair traveling together to the US. There is as well a mystery that is being solved, step-by-step, meaning that there is no time to wallow in bathos. But by far the most compelling element is the way in which Philomena’s tested but unwavering commitment to her faith works on Sixsmith as he grows evermore judgmental of those who wronged her. An outstanding film that hammers both the church and the Fourth Estate with an iron fist in a velvet glove, ends with Sixsmith, back in Ireland with Philomena, quoting TS Eliot: ‘We shall not cease from exploration / And N O W S H O W I N G A T P A L A C E B < 5 O N the end of all our exploring
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