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Arts & Culture
Arts & Culture REVIEWS
The End Of Longing
Playhouse Theatre Ticket prices: From £15.00 to £125.00
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Image © ATG
s one of the most successful sit-coms in history, Friends inspired the kind of obsessive brand loyalty more commonly seen in devotees of suicidal cults or Countryfile viewers. To a certain kind of person, the bubbly sit-com about five young New Yorkers struggling to get by whilst living in improbably spacious centrally located apartments could do no wrong and those kinds of people are ones to be avoided in social situations wherever possible. Whilst this love is primarily reserved for the show itself rather than the actors (see Jennifer Aniston's post-Friends career, or rather don’t) occasionally the right wires will cross and a crushing wave of nostalgia will drive them on mass to see whatever project an ex-Friend is currently working on. Banking on this lemming-like urge seems to be the only possible reasoning behind the existence of The End Of Longing, a dark romantic comedy (all of those words are very debatable) written, directed, and starring Matthew Perry, who played the acerbic Chandler in Friends currently showing at the Playhouse. The Friends connection cannot be ignored considering that Perry has written Jack, his alcoholic lead, as a limp combination of Chandler and elements of Perry’s own well known struggles with addiction. The other line
of connection comes from the play’s sitcom ready premise: Jack, who uses alcohol and deadpan sarcasm to deflect attention from his inner turmoil, and his only friend, the self-described ‘stupid’ yet caring Joseph (whose name and character description come so perilously close to ‘Joey’ it’s actually kind of breathtaking in its audacity), meet two women: one a happy go lucky prostitute, the other a shrill neurotic. Mis-matched and problematic relationships ensue. Hilarity does not. Part of the problem comes from the fact that Perry has given himself the best lines, yet barks them in a strange and almost non-naturalistic monotone, which manages to almost totally blunt the desired effect. It doesn’t help that the other three characters are about as stock as you can get; The Wise Fool, The Whore With A Heart Of Gold, The Neurotic with the ticking biological clock: these are closer to Tarot cards than people. The thespians involved do their best to overcome the limits of their characterisation, with Lloyd Owen’s Joseph having the most success imbuing his Hollywood idiocy with a kind of zen integrity but there’s only so much the cast can legitimately accomplish. The End of Longing’s depiction of the battle of the sexes seems strangely regressive and its portrayal of romance conquering all can feel naive and not in a particular endearing way. The strongest moment of the piece where Perry delivers a striking monologue at an AA meeting where suddenly the limitations of the play fall away and the drive and reason behind The End of Longing’s existence become (all too fleetingly) apparent. It’s clear that Perry has something to say about his experiences with substance abuse (apparently there are entire seasons of Friends he has no memory of ) it’s just a shame that he chose to say it through this play. All but the most dedicated Chandler obsessives should stay as far away as possible; at this point this isn’t a review, it’s a warning. MF
Unexpected Eisenstein
GRAD: Gallery for Russian Arts and Design 3-4A Little Portland St, London W1W 7JB Until April 30th
Whilst today filmmaking notoriety might be restrained to the brain trust who created the Human Centipede franchise (or to individuals like Roman Polanski or Woody Allen for those who prefer their scandal more...personal), in the early 20th century the western world had painted the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein as one of the most legitimately dangerous filmmakers in the world and all he’d done was make a film about a boat. In 1925 Eisenstein directed the silent film Battleship Potemkin, a film that was both Soviet propaganda and one of the first masterpieces of cinema (so much so that even Goebbels couldn’t help raving about it) depicting a shipbound mutiny that inspires a greater revolution against the forces of Imperial Russia. The film was banned in Britain until 1954 (and remained X-rated until 1978) out of the fear it would foment revolution. As a result of his status as a filmmaker often more heard about then viewed, it’s easy for the uninitiated to have a misguided image of Eisenstein as a fiery-eyed humourless genius whose revolutionary fervour was echoed in his life as much as his art. Unexpected Eisenstein, an exhibition which looks beyond Eisenstein’s cinematic achievements, thoroughly overturns these expectations, revealing the once notorious director to be an endearingly enthusiastic artist/tourist/ correspondent and a significantly more than amateur draughtsman. Entertainingly, considering the terror he was held in by the British Establishment, he is also revealed as a genuine anglophile with an obsession with Sherlock Holmes that stretches beyond mere appreciation into territory that can only be described as positively
during his whirlwind six week tour of England to his berserk sketches for the never completed Ivan The Terrible Part 3, which feature a giraffe necked Elizabeth 1st with a serpentine grin who wouldn’t have looked out of place in a graphic novel adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. Taking us even further behind the curtain of the man’s life is a series of sketches of a naked and languorous Arthur Rimbaud, modesty (barely) covered with a bedsheet. Whilst homosexuality was decriminalised under Lenin and openly gay individuals were allowed to serve in government, by 1933, however, Stalin had recriminalised it with a punishment of five years hard labour. Eisenstein took advantage of this temporary window of sexual freedom during his English travels in 1926 by making a pilgrimage to Rimbaud and (fellow poet and lover) Paul Verlaine’s shared house on Camden’s Royal College Street, which presumably inspired the sketches. Ideal for either neophytes or devotees GRAD’s immersive exhibition gets right to the heart of a man who has in recent times seemed overshadowed by his own work. Eisenstein might have helped to define cinema, but Unexpected Eisenstein succeeds in redefining the man. MF
Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today
Director: S. Craig Zahler Running Time: 142 minutes
Trumbo
Director: Jay Roach Running Time: 124 minutes
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f there’s one thing that Hollywood loves celebrating, it’s Hollywood. The allure of ‘classic Hollywood’ has been cinematic catnip going back as far as the classic Hollywood era itself; but the exact setting of Trumbo skews the usual self-congratulatory atmosphere to what initially seems to be a less masturbatory angle. Said angle is that Trumbo deals with the Hollywood blacklist enacted by the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), who hunted down any actor or director with any communist sympathies and had them either publically inform on their friends and co-workers or face what amounted to a lifetime in the cinematic wilderness with no hope for employment that side of the twentyfirst century. It was McCarthyism at its most rabid and unforgiving and was fully supported by the Hollywood establishment and as such is not exactly the kind of story that makes the land of dreams look particularly good. The eponymous Dalton Trumbo was one of the highest paid screenwriters of his day until his membership of the American Communist Party and unwillingness to give up fellow travellers in the industry led him to be blacklisted. Refusing to let a little thing like being barred for life from his chosen profession get in the way of his passion, the ‘swimming pool socialist’ continued writing , gifting his finished scripts to screenwriter friends who had managed to avoid the HUAC purges and published them in their names (whilst providing Trumbo with a healthy kickback). Famed films ranging from It Happened One Night to
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Bone Tomahawk
nerdy. The exhibition covers huge swathes of the man’s life from his middle-class upbringing in Riga, where he first harboured dreams of becoming an artist (the selection of his youthful line drawings are a particular highlight of the exhibition, with the centrepiece of a winding queue so detailed that a magnifying glass is required to pick out each of tiny figures charming individual actions); through to brilliantly creative sketches for various unrealised projects; from an almost cubist approach to costumes for Macbeth or joyfully strange sketches for a film where his beloved Sherlock Holmes would meet contemporary dime-novel detective favourite Nick Carter (unintentionally predicting Freddy Vs. Jason by over fifty years). The drawings (all of which are rarely seen and many of which have never been exhibited, even in Eisenstein’s native Russia) show an artist with an exuberant flair and a sense of humour and fun that can be obscured by more famous (and certainly more dialectical) cinematic work. Whilst there is plenty of crossover with his film work, with excited letters from communist film buffs requesting his presence at their society meetings Images © Russian State Archives of Literature and Art
Feldman MAX
March 2016
Spartacus sprung from his disguised pen, until finally Hollywood was forced to acknowledge the open secret and lift the blacklist. Whilst this story should read as the triumph of an individual over an oppressive system, instead something unpalatably self-congratulatory creeps into Trumbo. Hollywood manages to pat itself on the back over the triumph of one of its own over the system, wringing their hands about how unpleasant McCarthyism was without truly accepting the zealousness with which the Hollywood machine willingly purged its own ranks. This would be significantly more of an issue if Trumbo hadn’t found its perfect leading man in Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, who inhabits the screenwriter so completely it’s almost slightly unnerving. Hunched over, as if perpetually behind a typewriter and never without his cigarette holder, the man oozes debonair verve as he effectively takes Capitalism on at its own game. The film does acknowledge that the cinematic version of Trumbo has more snappy dialogue than the real one. One of his friends, exhausted by his unwavering focus, wearily asks him to “stop talking as if everything you say is going to be chiselled into stone”. The supporting cast are mainly overwhelmeds by the lead, but Helen Mirren’s acid gossip columnist cum gleeful informer Hedda Hopper holds her own and gives some back as a spiky wit who could tear out your life from underneath you with a soft snarl in the right ear. Whilst Trumbo is never as fun as it feels that it should be, it’s a sturdy and amusing tribute to a man who wasn’t afraid to take chances and who would never be silent in regards to his beliefs. Considering the homogenised mess that mainstream blockbusters have been condemned to by modern Hollywood’s desperate search for the lowest common denominator, it’s a lesson they could well learn from. MF
Kurt Russell seems to be enjoying something of a well-deserved renaissance in 2016, with the caveat that said renaissance seems to be happening entirely within the context of brutal westerns where he has an obscenely luxurious moustache. Bone Tomahawk, a film with a name that sounds like a Slayer deep-cut, is no exception, with the brutality and the moustache being delivered with equal aplomb. Considering that the first two months of 2016 has also seen cinemas play host to The Revenant and The Hateful Eight (which also featured the vaunted Russell plus walrus moustache combo), two of the darkest and blackly unforgiving westerns of recent memory it seems that the Western itself is going through something of a process of savage redefinition this year. Bone Tomahawk is the first film from novelist-turned-director S. Craig Zahler, though its bizarre, almost existentialist atmosphere makes it feel more like a late career oddity than a bold new voice. The plot is theoretically predictable but in practice just so weird that the viewer’s expectations are confounded at every turn. A degenerate tribe of cave dwelling Native Americans (literally referred to as ‘The Troglodytes’) is terrorizing the unfortunately named frontier town Bright Hope. Most of the women and children have fled, leaving the men to prop up the bar at a local saloon called the Learned Goat, where they wax philosophical over whiskey whilst attempting to ignore the menace brooding in the hills. This fragile peace is shattered when the Troglodytes seize some of the local settlers, including Samantha O’Dwyer, woman doctor, (Lili Simmons); and Sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell in sheriff regalia is a deeply
pleasing sight) organizes a small posse and rides off in hot pursuit with the yawning maw of the Troglodytes cave awaiting them. So far so horror film, but curiously Bone Tomahawk is far harder to pin down than a plot synopsis might suggest. Admittedly once it gets to its Grand Guignol-esque third act all bets are off, but for most of the film the sniping between its struggling characters instead offers a decidedly comic spin. Indeed the first two-thirds seems far more heavily indebted to John Ford’s The Searchers than Cannibal Holocaust. There is a (laudable) trend in recent Westerns which feature antagonistic tribal Native Americans to avoid the blatant demonization which was their lot in classic-era cinema; however Tomahawk inverts that trend by almost literally demonising the Troglodytes, who seem to intentionally have far more in common with the mutants from The Hills Have Eyes than Dances With Wolves’ ‘noble savages’. Clearly aware that criticism was going to be levelled, Tomahawk somewhat overcompensates by not only playing its white characters as the most unrealistically enlightened settlers this side of the Rio Grande but also by having the aforementioned cannibal tribe be disowned by a (nonsubterranean) Native American character who disgustedly decries them as “a spoiled bloodline of inbred animals who’d rape and eat their own mothers” just to make sure there’s absolutely no ambiguity there. Whilst gorehounds will find plenty to enjoy in the last fevered twenty minutes, the real joy of the film comes from the rambling dialogue and unexpected characterisation (Veteran Richard Jenkins is particularly good as the gnomic deputy sheriff ). Whilst certainly a bit overlong at two hours and twelve minutes Bone Tomahawk has its own strange pleasures and has the fortune to be an unusual Western at a time when the parameters of the genre are in flux. Get in on the ground floor. MF
Image © Bleecker Street
March 20162011 April/May
Image © RLJ Entertainment
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