Little White Lies 27 - The Road Issue

“ If he is not the Word of God, then God never spoke.”

DIRECTED BY John Hillcoat STARRING Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron

RELEASED January 8

John hillcoat has taken the decade’s most celebrated book and transformed i t i n to a d i s t i n c t ly c i n e m at i c s p e c ta c l e .

005

In 2006, Cormac McCarthy scratched at the skin of civilisation and found it easily broken. Written in the spare tones of secular prophecy, The Road bore witness to the death rattle of human extinction. But within this lyrical epic of horror was a consecration of hope. If The Road was our funeral lament, it was also a testament to the embers of humanity that survived.

006 THE ROAD ISSUE

An unnamed catastrophe has devastated the planet. The collapse of the ecosystem has left a world bleached of life and colour. A few remain, reduced. Surviving by any means necessary they have shrugged off the layers of their humanity by increments; or else they have succumbed to fear, exhaustion and despair. Cannibalism is the great fear and the greater temptation.

Javier Aguirresarobe paints the film in winter shades of pale grey, as if putting his lips to the celluloid and sucking out the life.

It’s against this backdrop that a Man (Viggo Mortensen) and his Wife (Charlize Theron) give birth to a Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and raise him, reluctantly, in a world stripped of every certainty except death.

“Sooner or later they will catch up with us and they will kill us,” promises the Wife. “They will rape us and kill us and eat us, and you won’t face it.” There are no fresh beginnings in this new world – though the Boy remembers nothing of Before, his innocence is a tragedy, another reminder that even though so much has already been lost, there is still more to be taken away.

Ten years after the apocalypse, the Man and Boy are on the road – the sprawling network of cracked concrete highways that leads inexorably

south and west. Through a landscape peppered with ash and snow, decay and destruction, they are heading to the coast and the unkept promise of survival.

Nobody ever said that McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winner was unfilmable, but its adaptation poses risks. With its blood cults, cannibal gangs and benighted landscapes, The Road flirts with familiar imagery. From Mad Max to The Postman, from 12 Monkeys to I Am Legend, cinema has made a playground of the apocalypse. The formula established in these films is to approach our destruction with a sense of possibility rather than finality – to treat the end of the earth as a blank canvas from which we’ll improbably begin again.

007

That is the heart of The Road: the emotional connection between the Man and the Boy as they confront the spectres of fear, loss and loneliness.

008 THE ROAD ISSUE

But The Road is different. McCarthy is too ruthless to allow us the luxury of flattering lies. If civilisation is to survive it will be as an idea carried in the hearts of the ‘good guys’, not in the rebuilding of governments or religions. The issue at hand for director John Hillcoat is to match him; to explore the emotional as well as the physical devastation of humanity. In The Road, the familiar exterior elements – the muted photography, the abandoned cars, the broken bridges – must themselves offer a route through to the film’s interior, into the heart and soul of its characters. Beyond the CG stardust, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

Even more problematic is the task of responding to the book’s tone.

What makes the novel unique isn’t just the visceral power of McCarthy’s honesty, but the sepulchral poetry with which he expresses himself.

The challenge is to reflect that in the very different language of cinema without resorting to clichés.

Have Hillcoat and writer Joe Penhall succeeded? To a degree, yes, they have. The Road isn’t flawless, it isn’t quite the emotional masterpiece you want it to be, but it is both a worthy companion piece to the source material and a dramatic slice of cinema in its own right.

If it disappoints, it’s only because the visual literalism of film can’t compete with the evocative power of McCarthy’s prose. Although Hillcoat has made the right creative choices – forsaking comfort for authenticity by shooting in the ruined mining towns of northeast America, augmented by a sparing and effective use of CGI – he has no great innovation to match the novel’s haunting lyricism. The best he can do is direct quotation, and although he uses it judiciously, every moment of voiceover is a reminder that the book casts a shadow over the film.

What he does have is Spanish DP Javier Aguirresarobe, who paints the film in winter shades of pale grey, as if putting his lips to the celluloid and sucking out the life. By contrast, the Man’s dreams of happier days are lit with the rich warmth of copper light, a light that is lost to the black shadows of his waking life.

Hillcoat and Aguirresarobe construct some beautiful scenes in the thin sunlight that pokes through the ashen haze. By the banks of a stream the Man washes blood out of the Boy’s hair in silent close-up. The Boy drinks a dust-coated can of Coke in extravagant wonder. A house bleeds with decay. Waterfalls presage a world bursting at the seams, clamouring with the celebratory violence of reclamation. Beauty invested with horror.

009

Even the camera is pinched at the edges, the image growing indistinct in the corners of the frame as if gradually collapsing in on itself, recoiling from this insensate destruction. It gives the film the air of fading memory – the last evidence of our passing on the brink of being extinguished.

Other choices work less well. Perhaps they thought that this particular road lacked sufficient signposting, but Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ score is far too present. It dominates the quieter scenes with a series of emotional cues that come close to ruining the film’s ascetic atmosphere.

That atmosphere is better sustained by the ambient creaks and groans that mark the film’s more successful passages. In the cannibal house, The Road takes on the character of a horror movie, stoked by a soundtrack of inhuman screams. It’s in scenes such as this that Hillcoat proves he isn’t constrained by the book, converting it into something more claustrophobic and cinematic than McCarthy had in mind. Though the movie is, in the main, a series of vignettes, it is expertly paced with a number of dramatic crescendos. And for all that it may lack the book’s evocative power, in the cannibal house the film comes into its own: offering us a glimpse into the eyes of a father holding a gun against the head of his son.

That, of course, is the heart of The Road: the emotional connection between the Man and the Boy as they confront the spectres of fear, loss and loneliness. The film stands or falls on the strengths of its performances, and in this respect it is a success.

Viggo Mortensen attacks the role of the Man with trademark intensity.

He’s an extension of the landscape, crusted with dirt, sunken and skinny, hollowed out as if horror has taken a physical piece of him. He inhabits the role with a quiet completeness that nevertheless offers glimpses of a taught inner tension and steel-eyed instinct for survival.

010 THE ROAD ISSUE

As the Boy, newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee has the more emotionally volatile role. The bond between the two actors is palpable, and several of their scenes were semi-improvised – a remarkable achievement for a young actor. McPhee convinces, oscillating between angry energy and withered fear, but his performance doesn’t have the knowing self-possession of somebody like Max Records in Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are. Mortensen, too, seems more alert when sharing a campfire with Robert Duvall’s Old Man, an electrifying scene that offers one of the film’s highlights.

Stooped beneath a burden of profound sadness, The Road is a requiem for the death of civilisation. It is a post-apocalyptic road trip through a world of taunting memories. It demands that we face the question of what we would do if it was us, and answer it with brutal honesty. But this is not a film of moral dilemmas – morality is a luxury in this landscape that has been purified by catastrophe. It is about how we shaped the world, and were reshaped in turn by damnation. And if it falls short of the genius that inspired it, The Road nevertheless reaches vertiginous heights indeed. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. One of the most profound, moving and lyrical books of the decade adapted by a gifted director and star.

Enjoyment. Enthralling and original, if not without the occasional misstep in conception and execution.

In Retrospect. See it twice. The first will remind you of the genius of the book. The second will remind you of the achievements of the film.

Follow the road to page 28 for an interview with Viggo Mortensen, and page 58 for an interview with John Hillcoat.

if the road’s tale of eXtinction era bonding has you yearning to carry the fire for the post-apocalypse genre, here are some alternative cataclysmic classics to enJoy before the bomb drops…

WEEK END (1967) DIRECTED BY Jean-Luc Godard

Hell is a traffic jam in Jean-Luc Godard’s satirical bile bomb, Week End, which showed ‘enlightened’ middle class yuppies swiftly reduced to war mongering cannibals in their attempt to secure an inheritance from a dying relative. Unlike some of his compatriots in the apocalypse genre, Godard’s representation of the world’s eventual dissolution takes a deliciously figurative bent, as anarchic behaviour leads to the staples of society – transport, language, capitalism, sex – taking on new and bizarre forms. Once you’ve witnessed the cadre of forest-dwelling, gun-toting hippy drummer flesh eaters at the end of Week End, you’ll be pining for that ash-covered wasteland with all your heart.

THE OMEGA MAN (1971) DIRECTED BY Boris Sagal

Those who prefer to view The Road as part of the God’s Lonely Man genre are spoilt for choice when it comes to forebears. There’s Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend, which sees Will Smith cast as the sole human survivor in New York’s newly minted vampire metropolis. Or A Boy and His Dog, LQ Jones’ whimsical, post-blast road movie in which Don Johnson communicates with his mutt as they traverse America’s now-barren plains in search of civilisation. Towering above both of these, however, is Boris Sagal’s The Omega Man, arguably the gold standard of world-gonewrong action adventures, which stared Mr Dystopia himself, Charlton Heston (this film was sandwiched between his Planet of the Apes duties and 1973’s Soylent Green), as the survivor of a large scale chemical warfare snafu.

STALKER (1979) DIRECTED BY Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s spiritualist sci-fi thinkpiece sees a Writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) and a Scientist (Nikolai Grinko) plan to visit The Room, a mysterious enclave nestled within a government-sanctioned area known as The Zone. It is said to grant its entrants their deepest, darkest wishes. They hire a Stalker (Aleksandr Kaidanovsky) to guide them there. He is a man who has never entered The Room himself but knows of the great danger – both physical and psychological – involved in getting there.

Though an apocalypse is never directly alluded to, the film’s alienating settings suggest a world that has experienced some cataclysmic changes; while its driving, search-for-paradise storyline suggests a population striving to move on from a time of intellectual decrepitude.

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS (1986) DIRECTED BY Jimmy T Murakami

Raymond Briggs, the author and illustrator of Father Christmas and The Snowman, was no stranger to the small screen, but 1986 saw him embark on a very different kind of adaptation. In 1982 Briggs had penned a story about an elderly couple – archetypal northerners – who survive a Soviet nuclear attack on Yorkshire by following the advice of government pamphlets. Their stolid, stiff-upper-lipped approach to the apocalypse is heartbreakingly offset by the inexorable advance of radiation sickness and death. Directed by Jimmy T Murakami, this version contains some stylistic similarities to The Snowman, and some of that film’s haunted abstraction. But it is the painfully literal disintegration of humanity that proves so devastating. Channelled through Briggs’ imagination, the collapse of society is rendered with sublime and subtle artistry, equating nuclear destruction with blasphemous atrocity.

THE TIME OF THE WOLF (2003) DIRECTED BY Michael Haneke

Austria’s Mr Freeze posited the appalling fallout of a miscellaneous apocalypse in this terse and unfairly neglected 2003 thriller, which sees a stranded family cling on for survival in the bleak French countryside. Unusually for Haneke, the visual metaphor the film repeatedly returns to is one of glowing light on a backdrop of pitch darkness, suggesting that even though we’re presented with a now-lawless civilisation where sex and violence have been adopted as the main units of currency, hope still remains in tiny but significant enclaves. As with The Road, fear, paranoia and stubborn individualism rule in this neo-Neolithic society, but family bonds remain steadfast, as seen in Isabelle Huppert’s relationship with her frightened young daughter, Anaïs Demoustier. David Jenkins

011

If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.

GK Chesterton

017

Publisher Danny Miller danny@thechurchoflondon.com

Associate Editor Jonathan Crocker jonathan@thechurchoflondon.com

Website Editor Adam Woodward adam@thechurchoflondon.com

Editor Matt Bochenski matt@thechurchoflondon.com

Website Director Alex Capes alex@thechurchoflondon.com

Creative Directors Rob Longworth & Paul Willoughby art@thechurchoflondon.com

Designer Victoria Talbot victoria@thechurchoflondon.com

Contributing Editors James Bramble, Mike Brett, Ellen E Jones, Neon Kelly, Andrea Kurland, Kevin Maher, Dan Stewart, Jonathan Williams

DVD Editor Limara Salt limara@thechurchoflondon.com

Design Assistant Anna Dunn annadunn@thechurchoflondon.com

Words, pictures, thanks...

Ed Andrews, William Alderwick, Henry Barnes, James Benefield, Anton Bitel, Kayt Bochenski, Dan Brightmore, Laura Bushell, Sam Christmas, Adam Lee Davies, Priscilla Eyles, Paul Fairclough, Lee Griffiths, Nicholas Guyatt, Andrea Hubert, Jamie Isbell, Sophie Ivan, Prudence Ivey, David Jenkins, James King, Alice Levick, Alan Mack, James Mansfield, James Martin, Viggo Mortensen, Christopher Neilan, Emma Paterson, Lawrence Pearce, Karolin Schnoor, Emma Tildsley, Ian Viggars, Josh Winning, Jason Wood, Olly Zanetti

Associate Publisher Vince Medeiros vince@thechurchoflondon.com

Published by The Church Of London Top Floor 8-9 Rivington Place London EC2A 3BA +44 (0) 207 7293675

018 THE ROAD ISSUE

Assistant Publisher Anna Hopson anna@thechurchoflondon.com

Distributed by COMAG Specialist Tavistock Works Tavistock Road, West Drayton Middlesex UB7 7QX andy.hounslow@comag.co.uk

Advertising Director Steph Pomphrey steph@thechurchoflondon.com

Made with the support of the UK Film Council through the Publications fund.

For all subscription enquiries, please e-mail shop@thechurchoflondon.com Cover illustration by Paul Willoughby

Advertising Manager Dean Faulkner dean@thechurchoflondon.com

The articles appearing within this publication reflect the opinions and attitudes of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the publishers or editorial team.

Made with paper from sustainable sources.

LWLies is published six times a year.

ISSN 1745-9168 Š TCOLondon 2009/2010

SUBSCRIBE TO THE TRUTH and be ReboRn LWLies is published six times a year, and distributed around the country by environmentally friendly carrier marmots. Subscribe and you’ll get a year’s worth of copies delivered to your door for only £18.

This issue, every new UK subscriber to LWLies will win a copy of The lazarus project from Bosnian prodigy Aleksandar Hemon. Following the murder of a young Jewish immigrant in turn-of-the-century Chicago, Hemon skips ahead to the story of Vladimir Brik, the writer who travels to Eastern Europe a hundred years later to solve the crime, unravelling a century’s worth of disillusion and displacement. We’ve read it and it’s awesome. Please allow 21 days from the time you subscribe for your copy to arrive.

Subscribe at www.littlewhitelies.co.uk between december 19 and february 26 to be eligible for this offer.

COMING JANUARY 2010 EXCLUSIVELY FOR SUBSCRIBERS A NEW SECTION AT WWW.LITTLEWHITELIES.CO.UK access tO the digital editiOn Of lwlies One week befOre it hits shelves exclusive free film screenings

10% OFF

discOunts and Offers frOm Our many film partners

behind the scenes actiOn

ALL THIS AND A YEAR’S WORTH OF MAGAZINES DELIVERED FREE TO YOUR DOOR FOR ONLY £18 020 THE ROAD ISSUE

‘Ozu has always been one of my favourite filmmakers’ Jim Jarmusch

1 January – 28 February

Image: Tokyo Story

Pure cinematic poetry from one of film’s greatest masters; including the BFI re-release of Tokyo Story and Late Autumn.

BFI Southbank Tickets 020 7928 3232

bfi.org.uk/ozu

Season Supported by

Promotional Partner

LWLies teamed up with Icon and Picador to present a unique screening of The Road, introduced by screenwriter Joe Penhall. Each audience member received a copy of the novel to read beforehand, and were asked to deliver a review that focussed on the success of the film as an adaptation. The best of the bunch are excerpted below.

The film holds true to the pure simplicity of the novel’s narrative and this allows the message to remain clear and strong.

The lack of structure in the film is apt for the story, but attempting to throw too much into this framework spoils the effect.

Joseph Harrington

Will Hadley

The words on the page are oblique, mute, dangerous. The pictures on the screen are chosen, the actions definite, the story fixed: the score tricks you into believing that somewhere there is a greater force at work, although it would be hard to call it humanity.

David Daglish

The book has a minimalist, contemplative quality, but while the film plays on your emotions, it does so with the volume turned up high.

The Road is good, in places wonderfully so, but it doesn’t quite do what the book did – something transcendentally moving and utterly gut-wrenching – and perhaps it was unfair to expect that it might.

Sarah Rutterford

Mireia O’Prey

The dark places of McCarthy’s mind moved seamlessly onto the screen as pitilessly as they loomed out of the pages of the novel.

[McCarthy’s] economy of prose is replicated in the film by an economy of shots resulting in a style of cutting that brings to mind preNouvelle Vague filmmaking.

What we lose in the beauty of McCarthy’s words we gain in the amazing art direction, cinematography and Nick Cave’s harrowingly beautiful soundtrack.

Dan M-M

Gaz Evans

Flora Reddaway

022 THE ROAD ISSUE

One frame is enough to convey the same sense of horror and panic expressed by hundreds of words.

Roberto Landi

JOIN US! we sTarTed This magaZine because we wanTed To creaTe

ApassionaTe, COMMUNITY engaged OF LIKE-MINDED FILM LOVERS: and opinionaTed. BRING

YOUR

VOICE

ONLINE

AND

JOIN

THE

DISCUSSION

AT

WWW.LITTLEWHITELIES.CO.UK wiTh

blogs, debaTes, news,

OR SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY

This is The place To geT your daily fiX of lwlies

AND WE’LL DELIVER ALL THAT AND MORE

reviews and inTerviews

NEWSLETTER

DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX

Read The

MISSED AN ISSUE? READ OUR ENTIRE ARCHIVE ONLINE FOR FREE!

SHOP { visiT our

online

limiTed-ediTion screenprints EXCLUSIVE T-SHIRTS

subscripTions

& BACK ISSUES..............

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

HTTP://TWITTER.COM/LWLIES 024 THE ROAD ISSUE

FIND US ON FACEBOOK HTTP://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LITTLEWHITELIESMAGAZINE

www.landrover.com

DEFENDER OFFICIAL FUEL CONSUMPTION FIGURES FOR THE DEFENDER RANGE MPG (L/100KM): URBAN 20.8 (13.6) - 22.6 (12.5), EXTRA URBAN 29.2 (9.7) - 32.9 (8.6), COMBINED 25.5 (11.1) - 28.8 (10.0), CO2 EMISSIONS 266-295G/KM. DRIVE RESPONSIBLY ON AND OFF ROAD.

From a king of men dethroned, to a director lost in benighted landscapes; from the tick-tock of the doomsday clock, to apocalyptic ecstasy... This may be the way the year ends, but we’re going out with a bang not a whimper.

027

it’s the end oF the world as we know it, but viggo mortensen Feels Just Fine.

028 the road ISSUE

029

030 the road ISSUE

he setting is a basement room in a London pub.

Upstairs, the day’s first drinkers are determinedly taking their seats in the sunlight. Down here in a cell-sized space, fat wax candles are spitting flickering light and draping half-shadows across whitewashed walls. The aim is apocalypse wow, but it could be the scene of a ritual sacrifice.

A couple of crosses on the wall and we’d scare the shit out of Viggo Mortensen.

But all we’ve got is some video equipment and a camera set up – nothing more lethal than a couple of barbed questions.

Mortensen is in town for the London Film Festival; an annual feeding frenzy in which the great and good of the movie business are exposed to the sharp teeth of the entertainment press corp. At least, that’s the theory. This is the ashen wasteland of mass publicity – the press junket in all its terrible glory.

It works like this: key cast and crew are flown in first class and whisked off to posh digs in the city where an army of international journalists awaits with tape recorder in one hand, gossip rag in the other. What follows is a battle of wits in which the job of the journalist is to tease out some piece of personal information for rumour-hungry readers, while the talent clings grimly to the will to live.

It’s like battery farming: widely unloved, probably unethical but ruthlessly efficient. It

churns out maximum coverage for minimum outlay, but the true cost is measured in souls.

Actors and directors hate junkets. Get them out of that environment and it’s like surfacing for air. So here we are, recreating a little piece of The Road in central London, a survival bunker and temporary hideaway for Aragorn, King of Men; for iron-hard Russian gangster Nikolai; for good Nazi John Halder; for the dashing Frank Hopkins; for The Man.

John Motson would call it a career of two halves. After bouncing between the US and Denmark (via Venezuela and Argentina), Viggo Mortensen knuckled down to acting in the early 1980s. A stint in theatre led to television roles, which in turn led to his breakthrough as an Amish farmer in Peter Weir’s Witness.

But although that cemented his big screen credentials, Mortensen spent the next 15 years as the supporting man in a series of goodbut-not-great movies including Carlito’s Way, Crimson Tide and The Portrait of a Lady.

Then came the adaptation of a popular 1950s fantasy novel by an obscure New Zealand director famed for low-budget splatter flicks. Cast at the last minute after Peter Jackson realised he’d made a mistake with Stuart Townsend, Mortensen stepped into the shoes of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, and the rest is three billion dollars’ worth of history.

031

But Mortensen was always a reluctant movie star. He was 43-years-old when The Fellowship of the Ring was released, too wise to fall for the usual ruses of stardom. His career choices since – the dark drama of A History of Violence, naked wrestling in Eastern Promises, the cerebral ambivalence of Good – have shown a distinct preference for the leftfield. At the same time, Mortensen acquired a reputation as a serious and idiosyncratic on-set operator.

So the man who emerges into the basement gloom is something of an enigma. The initial impression he exudes is one of reassuring stillness.

The job of the actor, he says, is to be relaxed.

But it’s his physical features that surprise. Though his love of the outdoors is the stuff of legend, there

032 the road ISSUE

are no calluses, no wind-weathered cheeks.

His appearance is feminine flawless, all smooth skin and silken silver hair. The man glows.

It’s only when he speaks that the commanding, charismatic Mortensen of the screen emerges. Measured and thoughtful, you find yourself physically leaning into his voice. With the candlelight casting the rest of the room into receding darkness, he makes a spellbinding speaker.

Later on, away from the grip of those eyes, away from the steady, seductive rise and fall of that voice, you can’t help but question how much of it is real. How studied is the battered copy of The Road with its well-thumbed pages?

How carefully chosen is the Argentinean mate

gourd? How many other people were treated to the considered quotation of Cormac McCarthy?

Is this the real Viggo or just an actor’s illusion?

Are the trappings of the cosmopolitan artist mere window dressing? Or is Viggo Mortensen a real Renaissance Man?

He’s talking about the fear that motivates him to take on these projects, to risk everything in impossible adaptations of much-loved books.

“That’s what I look for – if I’m afraid of it, afraid of failing at something that’s worth attempting,” he says.

“Shooting The Road was as difficult as it should have been, as we hoped it would be. It inspired us because our story had to be as realistic as the landscape.�

033

“I can have bad days and get depressed and be mistrustful and resentful. But it’s about appreciating what you’ve got, no matter how bad it looks.”

From an actor’s perspective, The Road presented an even bigger risk of failure than The Lord of the Rings. The Rings trilogy is a triumph of technology, of willpower and innovation exerted against a sprawling story – it’s a director’s film. But The Road stands or falls on the strength of its performances. “My first worry was, ‘How am I going to be up to it on an emotional level, to contribute to the storytelling rather than get in its way?’” reveals Mortensen. “And how are we going to find a boy who can do that? Who’s capable of doing the things that he has to do in order to move us and break our hearts?”

The answer to the second question was Kodi Smit-McPhee, who came through a tough casting process which moved Mortensen and director John Hillcoat to tears. The final four contenders “were all very mature in some way, but none of them were as mature, as wise, none of the boys understood the book the way Kodi did, and could do it take after take and find some place each time that was different, that was incredibly real and moving,” explains Mortensen.

“That was the key ingredient.”

But that was just pre-production – there was still a shoot to come. “Shooting The Road was as difficult as it should have been, as we hoped it would be,” says Mortensen. One of the first decisions that Hillcoat made was to do it for real – to shoot on location in the coldest, grimmest, greyest places he could find, rather than recreate the spirit of desolation in a studio.

“It makes a great deal of difference to be doing that for real rather than shooting on a sound stage,” confirms the actor.

“We were lucky that we had terrible weather almost all the time, even though physically sometimes it was difficult, particularly for Kodi.

He’s from Melbourne – he’s never seen snow – and all of a sudden he’s not only in snow, he’s in rain, he’s always cold, he’s always wet. But that’s what the story had to be. And it inspired us because it went without saying that our story,

034 the road ISSUE

our relationship – the emotional weight of it – had to be as realistic as the landscape, which was always very real, very gritty.”

It was that emotional journey that attracted Mortensen to the book in the first place, and convinced him that a filmed adaptation could be more – much more – than just another piece of post-apocalyptic pornography. “There’s one line of McCarthy’s: ‘The frailty of everything revealed at last.’ To me that’s really what it’s about,” he says. “When everything’s gone, what is beautiful? What is that one little flower that grows in the desert? It’s simple really: it’s kindness. That’s what carrying the fire means, that’s what being a good guy means.

“When everything leads you to be afraid and hopeless, to be cruel, to be mistrusting, to be contemptuous of others, to be unkind; if you nevertheless choose to be compassionate and loving in spite of everything that goes against that, everything that doesn’t encourage you to do so, then that’s quite beautiful. And that’s the journey.

That’s where you get to at the end and it’s well earned. That’s what I was really moved by.”

Looking back at it from a distance, and having approached it with a sense of fear, Mortensen is confident that they did everything they could to get it right. “I have to say it’s one of the most successful, not only adaptations of the book, but translations of what we went through in shooting it. It feels like what we did,” he says.

“Often that’s not the case. Often you see the final product and you go, ‘It should have been a lot better. What we shot was more moving, more beautiful, was more uplifting in the end.’ In this case I feel as satisfied as I probably could be.”

Beyond the day job, Mortensen fancies himself as something of a one-man artistic revival.

He has had exhibitions of both painting and photography, and performed live recitals of his

poetry. The success of The Lord of the Rings gave Mortensen the opportunity to take the step up to editor and publisher, using a chunk of his earnings to establish Perceval Press.

Named for one of the Knights of the Holy Grail who, in the myths, was famous for both literally and metaphorically carving his own path through the forest, the imprint is Mortensen’s way of supporting the kinds of artists who might otherwise get overlooked in the traditional art press, be it a Bukowskiesque poet like Scott Wannberg or Michael Blake’s equine photography. “As a publisher, you can help someone find their path, which is very satisfying,” explains Mortensen.

And yet the temptation is to see Mortensen himself as a dilettante – an actor cashing in with the sort of vanity projects that wouldn’t see the light of day without a famous name attached. Is he aware of that kind of prejudice?

“I’m sure it’s there but I don’t worry about it too much,” he says warily. “Because of the movie acting notoriety in recent years, suddenly more people have been coming and seeing these things which I’ve always done. They might have picked up a book of ours by a New Zealand writer or an Argentine poetry collective, which they never would have been interested in.

What’s wrong with that?

“I’m like anyone; I can have bad days and get depressed and be mistrustful and resentful and regret things,” he continues, “but it really comes back to what I think this book is about: it’s appreciating what you’ve got, you know?

No matter how bad it looks, no matter how hopeless it is. I mean, all these things that I miss – family members that have died and friends and places that I liked to be, the energy that I might have had at a certain time in my life that I don’t have now, those lines that I was lying in bed and I forgot to write down thinking I’d remember it the next day and I don’t remember it – that’s done, it’s over. You can learn from it but we’re here now. It’s okay.”

www.landrover.com

DEFENDER OFFICIAL FUEL CONSUMPTION FIGURES FOR THE DEFENDER RANGE MPG (L/100KM): URBAN 20.8 (13.6) - 22.6 (12.5), EXTRA URBAN 29.2 (9.7) - 32.9 (8.6), COMBINED 25.5 (11.1) - 28.8 (10.0), CO2 EMISSIONS 266-295G/KM. DRIVE RESPONSIBLY ON AND OFF ROAD.

Film industry figures peer into their crystal ball to predict the apocalypse‌

036 the road ISSUE

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Cristian Mungiu

Director: Micmacs In 20 or 30 years human beings are going to disappear, and this is the only way to save the planet. We will have only insects, and that’s the reason you have to stay friends with the insects if you want to survive. I have made an insect costume myself; I rehearse to fly and this is the only way.

Director: Tales From The Golden Age I was in a market in Romania and I saw a girl who was 14-years-old look through chocolate bars until she found one and said, ‘Daddy, this doesn’t have Es. Can I have it?’ This is the end of the world: when you can’t eat anything because you are poisoned with the idea that it contains something that might harm you inside.

Viggo Mortensen Actor: The Road I don’t think it’s going to end. I’m an optimist.

Jacques Audiard Director: A Prophet How is the world going to end? But it’s already ended.

It ended a long time ago.

Stephen Graham Actor: Public Enemies We’re the threat, always have been: raping other fucking countries for oil. How many football pitches of rainforest get cut down every day? If we don’t start to regenerate we’re gonna run out of oxygen, but hopefully it’ll just happen when everyone’s asleep, at different times across the world so we don’t really have to know about it. Just a final blanket over the world and that’s it: sleep.

Jon Harris Director: The Descent: Part 2 I think everybody’s going to start downloading movies illegally, which is basically going to cause the infrastructure of everything to collapse inwards.

There’ll be no more movies, no more entertainment, and so people will just turn on each other and destroy each other.

Duncan Jones Director: Moon I like the idea that was in WALL-E; that we’ll probably all just leave. That’s more likely than any massive disaster. The earth will come to its natural cosmological conclusion, but we won’t be here to see it because we’ll have gone somewhere else in the universe. Like locusts.

John Hillcoat Director: The Road It will be environmental due to man’s inability to stop consuming. But there’ll be other forms of life. It will re-evolve, like what happened with the dinosaurs.

Where are they?

Lee Daniels Director: Precious Who are you again? What’s the name of this magazine? I think it will end as peacefully as it began.

Andy Serkis Actor: Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll I think water shortage, probably. I think it’ll probably start off with that, and come out of food and wars related to food. It’ll come out of people who can afford generational space travel.

Serge Bromberg Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno How will the world end? It can’t end. My feeling is that as long as there is love between human people, the world will go on. As soon as love disappears this will be the end of civilisation.

What happens after that, I don’t care because there will be no humanity anymore.

Chris Atkins Director: Starsuckers It has ended. This is hell, and Simon Cowell is the devil

037

038 the road ISSUE

the twentY-first centurY will be one of fundamental chanGe. the Question we must face is whether it will be for better or for worse. oVer the neXt 10 PaGes, lwlies eXPlores the Questions, issues and challenGes that face us on our JourneY towards an uncertain future, and assesses four of the direst eXtinction-leVel threats standinG in the waY of our surViVal. the future is now – what are we GoinG to do with it?

039

James Martin makes the case for the Transition Generation whose task it will be to bring our world back from the brink of destruction.

040 the road ISSUE

t the start of the twenty-first century, humankind finds itself on a non-sustainable course – a course that, unless it is changed, could lead to grand-scale catastrophes. At the same time, we are unlocking formidable new capabilities that could lead to more exciting lives and glorious civilisations. This could either be humanity’s last century or the age that sets the world on a course towards a spectacular future.

We live on a small, beautiful and totally isolated planet, but its population is becoming too large; enormous new consumer societies are growing, of which China is the largest; and technology is becoming powerful enough to wreck the planet. We are travelling at breakneck speed into an age of extremes – extremes in wealth and poverty, extremes in technology and the experiments that scientists want us to perform, extreme forces of globalism, weapons of mass destruction and terrorists acting in the name of religion. If we are to survive, we need to learn how to manage this situation.

Formidable problems confront us, but there are solutions. With these solutions we will bring about a change in course, a great twenty-firstcentury transition. If we get it right, we have an extraordinary future. If we get it wrong, we face an irreversible disruption that could set humanity back centuries. A drastic change is needed in the first half of the twenty-first century to set the stage for extraordinary events in the rest of it.

Today’s young people will be the generation that brings about this great transition. Let’s refer to it as the 21C Transition – a transition unlike any before in history. They are the Transition Generation. It is vital that they – all of them – understand the 21C Transition so that they can understand the critical role they will play. For many, understanding the meaning of the twentyfirst century will give meaning to their own lives.

Think of the twenty-first century as a deep river canyon with a narrow bottleneck at its centre. Think of humanity as river rafters heading downstream.

As we head into the canyon, we’ll have to cope with a rate of change that becomes much more intense – a white-water raft trip with the currents becoming much faster and rougher, at a time when technology will accelerate at a phenomenal rate.

The job of the Transition Generation is to get humanity through the canyon with as little mayhem as possible into what we hope will be smoother waters beyond. Solutions exist, or can exist, to most of the serious problems of the twenty-first century. The bad news is that the most powerful people today have little understanding of the solutions, and little incentive to apply them. Politicians are anxious to find votes – the next election dominates their thinking. Powerful business executives are eager to achieve profits – it is their job to increase shareholder value, and shareholders will judge them by this quarter’s results. So for the powerful people who control events, the desire for shortterm benefits overwhelms the desire to solve long-term problems. We are heading towards the canyon, but our leaders are not preparing to make the passage smoother for us. There are major institutional roadblocks.

We may see a post-canyon world with smoother sailing, but a different set of events will take us into a different type of turbulence.

Twenty-first century technologies will give us the ability to change life and transform humans, computer intelligence will race far beyond human intelligence, and new science will take us onto a slippery slope that will change very fast. We’ll want, somehow, to stay in control.

The prospects of humankind in the canyon years would seem grim except for one fact: there’s a large and diverse set of actions that can be taken to stop the harm being done and put humankind on a different course. When there is a clear and present danger, today’s executives and engineers can be highly innovative and pragmatic in finding solutions.

The traumas of the canyon years will make it clear that our world has to be made less fragile. As humanity emerges from this period, it will have different rules of behaviour and very different technology. We will realise that because we live on a small planet, we must make its institutions and codes of behaviour robust, geared to the finite resources of the planet. We must make our science and nature’s complexities enhance each other. We must no longer fight nature. We must learn how to protect ourselves from terrorists and maniacs, and from scientists with good intent who play with fire.

The longer the solution is delayed, the more severe the problem becomes. Today there is apathy and lack of awareness of the problems. The public doesn’t associate use of air-conditioning with the idea that it might add to global warming. The full consequences of a highly infectious global pandemic are not understood. The public is not aware of how tragic life is in the shantytowns. Extreme poverty on the other side of the planet has been somebody else’s problem. While there is great inventiveness in technology, there is also great ignorance about what is needed. Old leaders use old methods; old politicians are committed to old ideologies.

Part of the 21C Transition is a change in civilisations – different types of changes in different cultures. What’s the point of ever more extraordinary technology if it doesn’t build better civilisations? Human survivability and creating new concepts of civilisation are inextricably linked.

We need to ask fundamental questions about civilisation. What sort of a world would you like your children to live in? What should be the principles of a civilisation in which biotechnology can change human nature? In Thomas Jefferson’s world, constructive debates raged about future civilisation. We need something similar. What principles are right for the twenty-first century, when so much will change?

Society needs visions of a better future.

We need a broader vision of the future’s diverse possibilities, because civilisation is certain to become more multifaceted and complex than it is now. As in the grand epic legends like The Lord of the Rings, progression towards that vision may be blocked by catastrophes, bureaucrats, battles and distractions so seductive that we can’t resist them.

The 21C Transition, if we get it right, will not only steer the planet away from a course leading to mayhem but will also set the stage for an extraordinary evolution of civilisations very different from what we know today Edited extracts from James Martin’s The Meaning Of The 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint For Ensuring Our Future, published by Eden Project Books. James Martin is the author of The Wired Society, and founder of the James Martin 21st-Century School at Oxford University. www.jamesmartin.com www.21school.ox.ac.uk

041

042 the road ISSUE

uclear weapons have presented a clear and present danger to our future since the US military initiated the Manhattan Project in 1942. Many of the scientists involved in the development of the Hiroshima bomb harboured grave concerns, and in 1945 a group of physicists founded the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to advocate for the international control of atomic energy. Today, the Bulletin’s Executive Director is Kennette Benedict, a former Director of International Peace and Security at the MacArthur Foundation.

“Many of the scientists who were involved in the Project had fled Germany and were very aware of how terrible it would be if Hitler was the one to get the bomb,” she says, sitting in a London coffee shop on a flying visit from her post at Chicago University. “But after the war a lot of the atomic scientists said, ‘This is too awful to be contemplated as a weapon.’ Eisenhower said, ‘This is not a weapon of war; this is a weapon of genocide.’ This was a bomb not just of destruction but really a weapon of total terror.”

So why today, given our own ‘War on Terror’, do we tolerate the existence of these weapons? “First of all, I don’t think many of us really understand the effects of these weapons,” replies Benedict. “After the war it was swept under the rug. The Japanese were ashamed

and the US didn’t want anybody to know about it. So in the ’50s and ’60s when people still might have had this on their minds, it really wasn’t talked about. We have amnesia but I think in part it’s an amnesia that’s been instilled in us. We don’t know how bad it is, and for that reason we don’t really understand how devastating these things are, and how terrible they would be if they were unleashed.”

The threat has evolved since the dark days of Cold War proliferation, but according to Benedict the danger of atomic annihilation may be more acute than ever. “There are new concerns that have to do with terrorism or threats from states that are outside the compact about nuclear weapons,” she explains. “But I think that what we forget is that the weapons of the US and Russia are still on a high state of alert. That is the thing that actually worries me the most.

Iran? I’m not worried about Iran. North Korea?

I’m not worried about North Korea either.

“It’s the possibility of accidental launch – someone hacking into the computer system and causing our own weapons to go,” she continues.

“In the 1980s, someone hacked into the system and caused the entire Atlantic fleet to come back to port in the United States because they weren’t sure what was going on. A year and a half ago, bombers flew from North Dakota to Alabama with nuclear weapons on them and nobody knew where they were for a good day or so. It may almost be more dangerous at a time when we’re

not quite as focussed on these nuclear weapons and the military is a little bit more relaxed about it.”

This is a significant departure from the Bush-era doctrine, which declared that nuclear terrorism was the great danger facing twentyfirst-century societies. Benedict concedes that there is a possibility that terrorists could acquire nuclear weapons, most probably through the estimated 40 per cent of Russian missile sites that are guarded by little more than a padlock and vodka fumes. Or if not a weapon itself, they may be able to obtain nuclear material from any of the 140 research labs that have highly enriched uranium, including places like MIT. Even if they got hold of just enough for a radiological, rather than an atomic, explosion, “the response to that would be the end of civil liberties,” says Benedict. “And some people would say that that would be the end of civilisation as we know it.”

Is another atomic explosion unlikely? Maybe.

But impossible? Definitely not. General Curtis LeMay agitated for the use of nuclear weapons in Korea in the 1950s, and Kennedy had his finger on the button during the Cuban missile crisis a decade later. We’ve come close before, and unless we act to do something about it, we’ll come close again. “I don’t think you need to be an expert to say that you want the human species to survive, and you want the planet to survive,” argues Benedict. “We need to demand that that happens.” Matt Bochenski

043

044 the road ISSUE

rom War of the Worlds to Armageddon, the threat of annihilation from space has always appealed to the cinematic imagination. But in the last few years we have come to understand that the dangers brewing in deep space encompass more than falling asteroids and marauding aliens.

In the 1960s, the US launched a series of satellites to monitor the Nuclear Test Ban treaty.

The military had caught wind of very bright flashes in the atmosphere that they thought might be evidence of Soviet weapons testing. Interpreting the data coming back from the satellites, it quickly became clear that the flashes weren’t caused by nuclear detonations. The Americans had stumbled upon a new kind of stellar explosion.

It took until the 1990s for anybody to figure out what was going on. An Italian/Dutch satellite, BeppoSAX, detected an X-ray afterglow, which allowed the phenomenon to be studied through giant telescopes. “That really reinvigorated the field,” says NASA scientist Neil Gehrels. “Up until that time, because the bursts were so bright, people thought that they were coming from some kind of stellar flare near our own solar system. But what was found in those positions from the X-ray and optical telescopes was that the bursts were coming from distant galaxies.”

On November 20, 2004, Gehrels was appointed lead scientist on the Swift mission:

a decades-long programme designed to gather information on this stunning new stellar discovery, now known as the gamma-ray burst.

Gamma rays are the shortest waves in the electromagnetic spectrum, irradiated light in a frequency that our eyes can’t see. They can penetrate through skin and bone, causing cancer and mutation after prolonged exposure. During the Swift mission, NASA detected a gamma-ray burst from a galaxy 13 billion light years away.

The implication was staggering: for a flash of light from that distance to be bright enough for us to see, the energy output would have to be an order of magnitude beyond anything previously imagined. “When they occur, they outshine the galaxy that they’re in,” explains Gehrels.

“For those tens of seconds that they exist, they’re the brightest objects in the universe.”

At first, scientists assumed they must be related to supernovae, but that thesis has since been upgraded. “These are not a normal supernova explosion but a very violent exploding star called a hypernova,” says Gehrels. “What’s actually going on in the star that makes these gamma rays is that the core collapses into a black hole, and as it disappears, jets of gas come shooting out at almost the speed of light, producing a beam of gamma rays. I like to say that gamma-ray bursts are the birth cry of black holes.”

Though this is only a working hypothesis, what is for sure is that gamma-ray bursts occur continuously in seemingly random parts of the

universe, and if one goes off in the cosmic vicinity of earth, the results won’t be pretty.

“One of the most important things that happens when a gamma-ray burst hits an earth-like planet is that it effects the chemistry in the upper atmosphere and can destroy the ozone layer,” reveals Gehrels.

“That can have a very dire consequence because the UV radiation that comes in would kill off life forms on earth, both plants and animals. Those planets that are really close, their atmosphere is completely destroyed.

So it can have an annihilating characteristic.”

How worried should we be? “To our best calculations, it happens very rarely that there would be one of these hypernova stellar explosions and a gamma-ray burst near enough to the earth to wipe out its ozone. That would happen probably about once every billion years in a galaxy like the Milky Way,” says Gehrels.

“That’s a long time but there has been life on earth for hundreds of millions of years, perhaps a billion, and it’s quite possible that a gammaray burst produced one of the extinctions or had some effect on life on our own planet.

“It’s a question of consequence versus frequency,” he continues. “They can have much more dire consequences than any other thing we know – they can destroy the earth.

The thing that’s good for us is that having a nearby burst that could hurt us is a very rare phenomenon.” Matt Bochenski

045

046 the road ISSUE

magine a world where machines have risen, overtaking humankind as the dominant species and ushering in a new dawn of cyber-civilisation. While it may sound like science-fiction, the robot revolution is coming; and sooner than you might think. That’s the view of Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at Reading University and, if his projections prove prophetic, the would-be saviour of humanity.

“The emergence of machine technology is inevitable,” Warwick asserts. “Robots will rise and surpass mankind. The arguments aren’t whether it’s going to happen, but when it will happen, be it 30 years or 50 years.” He continues, “In 2020, for example, there won’t be humans in fighter planes – wars will be fought not by people but by autonomous fighting machines, and it is likely that the world will be plunged into a global arms race.

It’s like walking towards the edge of a cliff,” he muses, “you feel confident in each step you take until you take one too many and you’re gone.”

Having overseen some of the most significant advances in robot technology over the past 30 years, Warwick has experienced first-hand the potential of Artificial Intelligence. Indeed, the professor is more than one of the world’s foremost researchers in the field of transhuman cybernetics; he is also its guinea pig. In 2002, Warwick earned himself the nickname ‘Captain Cyborg’ after successfully implanting a computer chip in his arm. In achieving nervous system-tonervous system communication via the internet, he effectively took the first steps in successfully

becoming the world’s first human cyborg.

Today he offers a radical, albeit divisive, solution. “Going the way we’re going leaves us little in the way of options,” he explains.

“If humanity is going to survive we are going to have to modify ourselves. We will have to upgrade in order to stop machines from taking control.”

Surely, however, this is a fate that we can still shape? “The common sense thing would be to do something to prevent this scenario, not to develop the machines or to program them with limitations, as in I, Robot,” replies Warwick. “But if we’re talking realistically, there is not a single machine in existence that has been designed to function with such restrictions. Why would that change?”

While Warwick’s ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ mentality seems drastic, he simply believes that humans have realised their limitations. “Technology has moved on, the world is very different now and people can’t deal with the information that’s going on around us,” says Warwick. “Within our five senses the frequency range is very, very small, whereas machines operate on a level of the frequency spectrum we have no perception of, taking in more information about the world. As ordinary humans we communicate in a pretty pathetic way: through basic, serial forms of coded message.

Comparatively, technology can communicate millions of messages every second in parallel.”

The notion of competing to survive is essential to all species, but transhumanism is not looked at solely as a means of prolonging human supremacy; it’s a way of beneficially enhancing

future generations. “Transhumanism opens up an entirely new world to us,” explains Warwick. “We will be able to see the world in five or six dimensions, feel things on levels we never dreamed possible. The possibilities of what we could do, where we could travel, are endless. It will give us a whole new perspective on our existence.”

If Warwick’s post-human proselytising is successful, what will it mean to be human when the definition of humanity has been redefined to take into account Artificial Intelligence? “At first the technology will not be widely available, so we could see two separate strands of humanity develop, with un-upgraded humans becoming second-class citizens,” Warwick suggests. “Of course, there are lots of issues and problems, especially from a social point of view,” he continues, “but the possibilities of upgrading are there – we just have to overcome some ethical worries before we can fully progress.”

So transhumanism points not to the end of the world, but to new beginnings; a new stage in human evolution. As is often the case, however, the problem isn’t the technology itself – the problem is us. “Right now we are not ready to work together on this, so at the moment a worst case Terminator scenario is very likely,” says Warwick. “Humans as we know them could become cattle, and there would be no going back. Our race would face extinction.” Is the prospect of extermination the ultimate cause for concern then? “Only if you want to stay as a human.” Adam Woodward

047

048 the road ISSUE

n September 18, 2001, a series of letters were mailed to news media and US government offices.

The letters contained spores of weaponised anthrax that killed five people and infected 17 others. But as the US lurched towards war in Afghanistan, the incident was quickly – and confoundingly – forgotten.

By most people, anyway. For journalists Bob Coen and Eric Nadler, it was a key event in their attempt to investigate the powerful and shadowy bio-defence industry. “I spoke to Bob after the anthrax attacks and he said, ‘Let’s really start thinking about anthrax worldwide: what this means; what germ warfare means; who’s involved in germ warfare; who’s making money off germ warfare; what are the international connections?’” says Nadler.

In their resulting film, Anthrax Wars, the duo point to a ‘confluence of interests’ between the US government, the military and the private sector in an industry that operates beneath a veil of secrecy. This industry, they say, is stockpiling an array of biological weapons in the name of ‘defence’, which, if unleashed, have the capacity to devastate life on earth.

“It boils down to this,” explains Nadler. “In order to make the vaccines of the future, what they are doing in these laboratories with US government money – and London government money too – is saying, ‘What if the terrorists took some anthrax and genetically mutated it and added a little piece of bubonic plague?’ In privatised laboratories they begin making a pox to make the vaccine. But the making of this pox is in violation of international treaties so they’ll

never tell you what’s happening. And now it’s privatised these are secrets for the shareholders.

You don’t know what they’re doing in the labs and I personally don’t trust them all that much.”

The film follows Coen and Nadler down the rabbit hole of bio-defence, where (so they allege) whistleblowers or agitators are liable to end up dead. So why don’t we hear about it?

Whereas the movement for nuclear disarmament is well funded and publicised, Nadler claims that there is only one NGO in the world dedicated to fighting the bio-warfare industry – The Sunshine Project based out of Texas and the University of California, Berkeley. According to its founder, Ed Hammond, the Project has been turned down for funding by the likes of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, who, in the words of Nadler, told him, “Nuclear deterrence we can almost kind of win. But bio-war? We’ll never win. The forces are too big.”

Coen’s interest in the effects of biological warfare were sparked by his early years growing up in Zimbabwe during the civil war. “I discovered the use of biological agents during that war,” he recalls, “and not only in Zimbabwe, but in the whole of southern Africa where germ weapons were part of the arsenal of dirty tricks that were used by the white regimes in the region. It became a sort of fascination for me.”

Tapping contacts in Zimbabwe’s Special Forces outfit, the Selous Scouts (who were accused of carrying out biological operations), he began to build a picture of what had happened in the region – although the truth remains disputed to this day. “It’s never been conclusively proved that the Rhodesians used anthrax,” he admits. “Dr Meryl Nass, an anthrax expert here in the United States, studied the

outbreak and actually travelled to Zimbabwe to collect soil samples. She sent them to some labs for analysis but unfortunately the samples mysteriously disappeared.”

A breakthrough came with the trial of South Africa’s Wouter Basson, dubbed ‘Dr Death’. Though cleared of criminal charges in 2002, Coen got Basson on the record about his involvement in a programme to develop biological agents that would only be harmful to the country’s black population. Basson spins a global narrative that takes in everything from drug smuggling to the death of Dr David Kelly.

“It is a shady business, and these deaths of key participants – these shadowy, mysterious deaths or even the cover story ‘suicide’ – reveal that this is a very, very dangerous business for people to begin to look into and even to organise around,” says Nadler.

“It’s a perversion of the life sciences,” he continues. “It’s taking the life sciences and subverting them into the death sciences – and I think a lot of us just don’t want to deal with this. It’s too scary. And not only scary, I think it calls into question the moral principles of our so-called free and democratic society.

We have to start looking at ourselves, and I think a lot of people just want to turn off.”

But could an outbreak – or worse, a deliberate war – really happen? “Could man use biological weapons?” considers Nadler. “They used them already when we came to the so-called ‘New World’ full of smallpox. Biological weapons have been used on a wide scale before to conquer continents.

With genetic engineering and mutating viruses the absolute technological ability of a bad actor here is mind boggling.” Matt Bochenski

049

SHOOTING IN THE ICY AUSTERITY OF NORTH-EASTERN AMERICA, VIGGO MORTENSEN WAS INSPIRED TO CAPTURE THE SPIRIT OF THE ROAD IN A SERIES OF PHOTOGRAPHS AND POEMS, WHICH HE HAS SHARED EXCLUSIVELY WITH LWLIES.

048 THE ROAD ISSUE

049

051

052 THE ROAD ISSUE

www.landrover.com

DEFENDER OFFICIAL FUEL CONSUMPTION FIGURES FOR THE DEFENDER RANGE MPG (L/100KM): URBAN 20.8 (13.6) - 22.6 (12.5), EXTRA URBAN 29.2 (9.7) - 32.9 (8.6), COMBINED 25.5 (11.1) - 28.8 (10.0), CO2 EMISSIONS 266-295G/KM. DRIVE RESPONSIBLY ON AND OFF ROAD.

The savage landscapes of Cormac McCarthy are populated by men journeying across borders and towards salvation. But the real protagonist of his novels is the recurring character of the road itself.

056 the road ISSUE

’ll talk to you every day, he whispered. And I wont forget.

No matter what. Then he rose and turned and walked back out to the road.’

What’s striking about Cormac McCarthy is that globally relevant and hellishly brutal honesty that permeates the fabric of his storytelling and lingers with an immediate yet timeless self-reflection.

That beautifully ruthless and barbarically truthful mind of McCarthy’s has loomed large over the last 40 years of American literature. His savage landscapes, which seem so pertinent in a world rife with climate change anxiety and economic depletion, can be dated back to 1968. McCarthy’s second novel, Outer Dark, was published in his thirty-fifth year. Today, the 76-year-old is revered as an artisan of gothic fiction.

Outer Dark is the story of a young woman, Rinthy, who gives birth to her brother’s baby. After the birth, the brother, Culla, takes the newborn to a nearby wood and leaves it to die. He falsely confesses to Rinthy that the baby died naturally, hoping to eradicate the memory and pain of the incestuous birth. Unknown to Culla and Rinthy, a local Tinker finds the baby and leaves the area with it. When Rinthy goes to the wood she finds nothing, and the two depart separately on the Tinker’s trail.

Balancing the delicacy of McCarthy’s writing with the emotional chaos he uncovers, Outer Dark set the pattern for his career. It was a pattern that would see his characters delivered on uncertain journeys, both physical and spiritual. And although in The Road that pattern may have taken on a new form, in its signification of something far deeper than a Tarmac lifeline for the last inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic earth, the novel returns once more to McCarthy’s recurring and signature protagonist: his road.

In a 45-year career McCarthy has written just 10 novels. His 1992 National Book Award-winner, All The Pretty Horses, was arguably his landmark, and the first story in his triumphant Border Trilogy. He describes the plight of John Grady-Cole, an aspiring landworker whose life is disbanded after his grandfather’s ranch is posthumously sold. He heads south across the Tex-Mex border with his friend, Lacey Rawlins, in search of work.

The experiences of Grady-Cole and Rawlins, and the intermittent moments shared with a stranger, Jimmy Blevins, demonstrate McCarthy’s evolution from the stark contrasts he projected in his earliest work. Although both Culla and Grady-Cole are on the move in search of something elusive, their footprints depict a larger journey in McCarthy’s road. Travelling on horseback across dry and coarse land, Grady-Cole’s relationship with the road – the backbone of his migratory experience – often amounts to blinking timidly under the hazy dust kicked up by his youthful mistakes and careless love for a landowner’s daughter.

The journey of Rinthy and Culla is dichotomised in its early stages.

As both embark on their search at different times, the road mitigates and harshens their experiences. At times Rinthy is embraced by the road, whereas Culla’s progression is denied by it. Rinthy’s innocence is welcomed with care, but Culla’s cowardice cripples his every step.

The partition that the road plays in Outer Dark, to divide the actions of guilt and innocence lost, is more ambivalent than in his later work.

When, in a rare interview, McCarthy talked about his profile as a writer his take was simple: “You work your side of the street, and I’ll work mine.” This reclusive and reserved nature is seeded in his writing.

The Road, which is dedicated to his son, depicts a Man sacrificing his own contracted hope to protect a Boy. Where the momentum of Culla and Grady-Cole was akin to a rolling stone on a grassy hill, and the world turned a blind eye to their foolishness or progress, in the post-apocalyptic landscape of The Road, McCarthy highlights its significance in the dead and obliterated surroundings that could have once outlived it.

The path to the unknown recurs in much of McCarthy’s work. Whether it is Llewelyn Moss in No Country For Old Men; Billy Parham in The Crossing; or Culla in Outer Dark, there is an inner struggle that beats tirelessly in his stories. The prophetic and enigmatic passages interweaved through No Country For Old Men – an eloquent illustration of fatherhood and repentance – stand in contrast to the tense battle between Moss and Chigurh, drawn together on a narrow street by the insistent chirp of a tracking device.

Here, McCarthy’s road meets a junction where numerous journeys interact and catalyse. They merge toward gunfights and separate across borders. No Country For Old Men added a new complex to McCarthy’s storytelling, one that suggested new avenues of choice and alleyways of consequence.

Prior to The Road, McCarthy had always left his characters in a living world, and despite intimations of that world becoming increasingly fickle, he retained the leverage of ambiguity that the road offers.

Chigurh’s coin flipping projected a change in McCarthy’s writing.

A point where decisions can be made and lives can be rewritten.

Rewinding back to Culla and Rinthy’s respective discrepancies in their simple forward journey, not ignoring that fact that it was riddled with ambivalence and uncertainty of course, their road led to discovery; their questions to answers.

If we travel along the road that McCarthy has paved, whether it is laced with dirt, dust or even the dead, it highlights something distinctive in his view. The road has always been a symbol of industry and development, and a crucially rooted part of human relationships. McCarthy’s road is a symbol of evolution and ambiguity; whether under guilty or curious footsteps, or in the wake of catastrophic turmoil, it sits still, says nothing, braves the icy wind and the blistering heat, yet eloquently carries the fire

057

direCTor John hillCoaT reveals how he approaChed The adapTaTion of one of The deCade’s greaTesT novels.

ohn Hillcoat’s films are possessed of a spartan poetry – gruff, elegiac, macho lyrical. It began with Ghosts… of the Civil Dead in 1988, a hard hitting prison drama, but his form found its most eloquent expression in 2005’s The Proposition, a savage, sun-bleached western set in the ‘fresh hell’ of colonial Australia. It was The Proposition’s mixture of mordant beauty and simmering violence that put Hillcoat in the hot seat for a planned adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a novel which, at first, hadn’t exactly fired the director’s enthusiasm.

When Hillcoat originally heard about The Road, “my heart actually sank,” he admits. Fearing that the book would add little to the ranks of post-apocalyptic literature, he approached it with some trepidation, only to realise that McCarthy had indeed achieved something uniquely powerful.

That, of course, merely added to the pressure when the time came to translate his flowing prose for the screen. “The primary thing for me was the emotional story of the father and son,” says Hillcoat. “If you get rid of all that poetry and you see just the pressures and the choices that they have to face, and then you hear their conversations and the incredibly moving things that they say, that’s when I thought, ‘Hang on, this can be a film.’”

His first step was to seek out McCarthy himself and involve the author in the early stages of planning the film. It proved to be a smart move, as McCarthy quickly made it clear to Hillcoat that he expected the director to chart his own course through the material. “Cormac understands that they’re completely different mediums, and so he helped release me of the burden,” Hillcoat explains. “Our very first conversation was him saying, ‘You’ve gotta do your thing.’ What I was trying to do is just be as faithful to the spirit of the book, the themes, the emotion, and then in the visual world and the music try to create a lyrical poetic quality in its own way.”

Adaptation is a delicate process. Stray too far from the source material and you inevitably anger fans of the original. Stay too rigid and you sacrifice the singular power of cinema. Hillcoat brought writer Joe Penhall on board to do the job. Pretty soon, he says, “we realised that we wanted to put the legacy of McCarthy right to one side, and not actually feel intimidated by it. So we did actually change some key things.” They ditched McCarthy’s version of the cannibal house for a more claustrophobic, more cinematic version. But more than that,

059

“The point that Cormac is making is that there’s a real arrogance to humans and the way they dominate and try to control everything when actually we’re one of many species.” “in the book there were basic things that would just never work, that are ludicrous when you make them physically a reality. Like running through the woods with a shopping cart in the snow. But I think there is a way of trying to distil what’s important. That’s what it all comes down to – you find what’s important and that’s what I mean by the ‘spirit’ of the book, as opposed to the red herring of being too literal.”

Just like lead actor Viggo Mortensen, the circumstances of the shoot itself have left a lasting impression on Hillcoat. Although Mortensen encapsulated the emotionally raw and taxing journey of the story, “it was enforced method for all of us,” says Hillcoat. “We were in the middle of winter, and in actual fact when the sun was shining we were like, ‘We’ve got real problems,’ but when it was miserable weather that’s when we’d be out filming. But there were moments also of great humour to release all this that we all shared in. Viggo got us all addicted to dark chocolate,” he reveals.

If The Road is a novel of fearful and shattering power, it is also one with a degree of prescience. Published in 2006, it prefigured an economic collapse that induced a new frisson of fear in the global community.

After a decade of economic invincibility, we are vulnerable again, unsure of ourselves in a world that seems suddenly to threaten us from all sides. Does this explain the rash of post-apocalyptic movies currently doing the rounds?

060 the road ISSUE

“It’s a projection of your worst fears, and I think in recent times more than ever before a lot of this stuff has landed on our doorstep,” agrees Hillcoat. “I think we’ve been in a bubble for a long time and the bubble’s now popped to some degree. Certainly, for me, the environment is the biggest concern by far – it overshadows everything. But with 9/11, that’s another wave of terrorism where the chickens have come home to roost.

And economically the chickens have come home to roost now. There’s wave after wave of things that are getting our attention now because we’ve buried our head in the sand for too long, and I think that’s what’s brought about this cycle. I think people are more conscious.

“It’s a wake up call as well,” he continues. “Because there’s got to be changes that are made, like with the Cold War. So I think in that sense it can be a very positive thing because it engages you on a more realistic, constructive level.”

For some, the book is an indictment of the way we’ve sleepwalked into oblivion, distracting ourselves with the baubles of capitalism while the world prepares to burn; for others it’s a religious metaphor; for still others it’s proof of the futility of civilisation itself. Hillcoat’s particular perspective sounds like an amalgamation of all three.

“It’s incredible when you look at places that have experienced either man-made or natural disasters how quickly things devolve as opposed to evolve,” he says. “It’s interesting how civilisations can come and go.

I think the point that Cormac is making is that there’s a real arrogance to humans and the way they dominate and try to control everything when actually we’re one of many species. And yet what he’s really focussing on is what makes us innately human no matter where we are.”

“A movie geek’s oasis.” ANDREW STANTON

We walk among you.

T-SHIRTS AND OTHER MERCHANDISE INSPIRED BY THE MOST MEMORABLE PLACES, COMPANIES AND CORPORATIONS IN CINEMA HISTORY.

062 the road ISSUE

Author and academic Nicholas Guyatt takes us on a guided tour through the world of America’s apocalyptic Christianity.

063

Around 50 million Americans now Book of Revelation will literal t started back in 1998 with Deep Impact and Armageddon, the asteroid-disaster double bill, but since then it’s got much worse.

Hollywood loves the end of the world.

Roland Emmerich alone has trashed the planet three times (four if you count Godzilla). In the United States, there’s also been a huge upsurge of religious interest in the apocalypse during the past decade.

Around 50 million Americans now believe that the events of the Book of Revelation will literally take place in their lifetime. They are convinced that, any day now, the Antichrist is going to take over the world and start the doomsday clock that will count down to Armageddon.

In my day job I write about American history, and this apocalyptic enthusiasm seemed weird to me. Wasn’t America all about can-do spirit and sunny optimism? I’d just written a book about manifest destiny – the nineteenth-century belief that God had a special plan for the United States – and I wondered why so many contemporary Americans were gloomy about the future. In the Christian doomsday scenario, the United States isn’t going to ride to the rescue and save the world: it will be overrun by the forces of the Antichrist just like everyone else. So I decided to take a road trip through the American prayer belt – which runs from Virginia on the East Coast to California on the West – and chat to some apocalyptic Christians.

Why were they so convinced that the world was going to end? And should the rest of us be more freaked out about it?

Hollywood apocalypse is rarely subtle: a big rock is on a collision course with Earth; aliens invade and try to wipe us out; the sun goes haywire and threatens to fry or freeze the planet.

064 the road ISSUE

For Christians, the end of the world is a more complicated affair. The Bible actually has dozens of different prophecies, and part of the confusion comes from trying to fit them all together. The easiest way to think about it is this: imagine that the Bible is a history of everything, from Adam and Eve until the end of time. God created the world and he knows everything that’s going to happen, so he’s laid down some clues for sharp-eyed believers about what’s coming next.

Most Christians don’t pay too much attention to prophecy, and they treat the Bible as a kind of moral handbook. The apocalypse crowd, by contrast, focus obsessively on the details of the Book of Revelation. With one eye on the headlines and another on the prophecies, they constantly look for evidence that the End Times are upon us.

I saw this at first-hand when I sat in a trailer park in Branson, Missouri, with Jack Kinsella, a former US Marine who is one of the leading lights in the prophecy movement. Branson is a wholesome place, full of old-fashioned theatres celebrating Dolly Parton and Johnny Mathis.

Bart Simpson once described it as ‘Las Vegas run by Ned Flanders’. It was the perfect venue for Jack to meet his followers, who wouldn’t be seen dead in Sin City.

He was walking me through the apocalypse in his RV – a sort of souped-up caravan – and pointing to a particular passage of the Book of Zechariah in his crumpled Bible: “’And this shall be the plague with which the Lord shall strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem’,” he read, sounding a bit like Charlton Heston. “’Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand upon their feet’.” Jack waited for me to make the connection, then stepped in: “That’s a neutron bomb, you know. I’m not reading something into it that isn’t there. There is no historical plague in which people melt.”

Jack gave up a career in law enforcement to spread the word about the apocalypse across

America. He also helps Hal Lindsey, the David Dimbleby of the doomsday Christian movement, to produce a weekly ‘news’ broadcast in which today’s headlines are mapped onto Bible prophecy. It was clear from the caravan and the trailer park that Jack wasn’t motivated by money (unlike some unscrupulous doomsday preachers).

Instead, he wanted to sound the alarm about the end of the world and to give people a chance to repent before the Antichrist showed up. That way, you still have a chance of being raptured before everything on earth goes to hell.

The Rapture is one of the oddest parts of modern doomsday belief. Here’s how it works: if you accept Jesus as your saviour, you’ll be teleported up to Heaven just before the Antichrist takes over. Then you get to watch the seven terrible years (aka ‘The Tribulation’) from a sort of celestial private box, before coming back to earth with Jesus to smite the Antichrist and live in peace for a thousand years.

I say ‘odd’ not only because the Rapture seems far-fetched, even in the context of the apocalypse, but because it’s not part of the major prophecy books of the Bible. There’s a brief reference to God beaming up his followers in one of St Paul’s letters, and this passage appealed to the Irish theologian who spliced all these prophecies together in the nineteenth century. Americans don’t remember John Nelson Darby very well, but his mash-up of different Bible predictions has become received wisdom among apocalyptic Christians. The idea of instant salvation is the most exciting part of the doomsday scheme, and true believers take it very seriously: some have stickers on their cars saying, ‘In case of Rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned.’

Back in the old days, before apocalyptic Christianity got really big, believers tended to

believe that the events of the ly take place in their lifetime. see the Rapture as their one shot at salvation.

If you missed the heavenly teleport, you were going to get wiped out by the Antichrist during his seven-year rampage. Some of today’s End Timers still believe this. Jack Kinsella told me that, if you try to embrace Christianity after the Rapture, “you’re going to stick out like a turd in a punch bowl.”

But this doesn’t sound very American.

Surely everyone deserves a second chance?

That was the thinking of another giant of the prophecy movement, Tim LaHaye, who is responsible for the mega-selling Left Behind books (60 million copies and counting).

I caught up with LaHaye in Denver at a book signing, and he fits all the stereotypes about American televangelists: shiny suit, bleachedwhite smile, hair that appears to have been fried in ghee. He’s in his eighties but he looks like he’s going to be around forever.

LaHaye used to be a fairly conventional Christian conservative. He was full of despair about modern values, and especially perturbed by abortion and promiscuity. He wrote a horrifying book in the 1970s called The Unhappy Gays in which he tried valiantly to discover what makes homosexuals unhappy. Some fieldwork in the gay bars of San Diego left him none the wiser.

He was 70-years-old when he found fame and untold riches with the Left Behind series. He and his co-author decided to cross Bible prophecy with the breathless thrillers of Tom Clancy. The plot: an airline pilot called Rayford Steele lusts after a pretty stewardess on an overnight flight from Chicago to London. Suddenly the Rapture happens and many of the passengers disappear, leaving behind their clothes, shoes, watches and hairpieces (one of the many alluring things about the Rapture is that everyone ends up naked).

Ray realises that he’s been a schmuck when he discovers that his wife has vanished, and he resolves to lead a better life. For the next seven years, and 13 books, Ray becomes part of the Tribulation Force – a kind of apocalyptic

Ocean’s Eleven – and tries to foil the plans of the Antichrist. Ray manages to dodge the carnage and survive right to the end, when Christ comes down from Heaven and begins an awkward conversation about how super the millennium is going to be. When LaHaye got to that point in the sequence, he started writing prequels.

One of the things I learned from my trip is that apocalyptic Christians are still under the radar in the US. Most people in the big cities don’t know much about them, and even the Left Behind books are huge in pockets of the country rather than in the major markets. But if you fan out in the suburbs of Los Angeles, or you travel to second-tier cities like San Antonio, it’s easy to see the influence of doomsday Christians.

They have megachurches with tens of thousands of members, and they get involved in local and national politics. But they can’t quite cross over into the mainstream; at least, not yet.

Sony got involved in the Left Behind movies, but they weren’t given the big-budget treatment and didn’t make a dent at the box office. Unlike Mel Gibson, who managed to turn The Passion of the Christ into a huge hit, apocalyptic producers and directors have settled for DVD sales or screenings in churches even as they’ve been able to recruit bigger stars to their projects – Louis Gosset Jr and Michael York have both turned up in recent prophecy movies, but they don’t make much of this on their CVs. One of the problems is that the Christian apocalypse is so insanely complicated that audiences don’t have the patience to stick with it: the plot of Armageddon is a lot easier to follow than the Book of Daniel, and dumbing down the End Times would defeat the purpose of a Christian movie.

Washington may be a more friendly venue than Hollywood for doomsday thinking, especially since the war on terror has made politicians fall in love with apocalyptic language. Prophecy preachers now target ambitious Congressmen and conservative think-tanks, and they’ve learned how to edit out some of the kookier stuff when they speak to a Washington audience.

Last year, Republican presidential candidate John McCain forged a close alliance with the Texas doomsday preacher John Hagee. McCain made Hagee seem respectable in Washington circles, while Hagee gave McCain credibility with Christian conservatives. Hagee has written several prophecy books, and he’s played a key role in lobbying for a US military strike on Iran. When glad-handing senators or foreign ambassadors in Washington, Hagee doesn’t always admit that he believes an Iran showdown may usher in the Tribulation and the rise of the Antichrist, but he’s perfectly explicit about this in his books and sermons to the faithful.

Hagee’s alliance with McCain eventually soured – but only because he was artless enough to say that Hitler was doing God’s will in the Holocaust. Hagee didn’t mean this to sound quite as bad as it does, but that didn’t matter. Since then, McCain has faded into the background and Hagee is helping to lead the right-wing crusade against Barack Obama.

As the Republicans look to regroup for the next presidential election, it will be fascinating to see whether apocalyptic Christians continue their march on Washington. If they can once again catch the ear of a presidential candidate, and if they cling to their apocalyptic visions for American foreign policy, 2012 may yet be a disastrous year Nicholas Guyatt teaches American history at the University of York, and is currently a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center in California. His book, Have A Nice Doomsday:

But perhaps things are starting to change. A new wave of prophecy preachers has worked out that

Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World, is published by Ebury.

065

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and all these reviews will be delivered to your inbox on the day of release, along with those we couldn’t squeeze into the mag. Read, watch then head to www.littlewhitelies.co.uk and post your opinion online.

cApiTAliSM: A love STory RELEASED February 26

DIRECTED BY Michael Moore STARRING Michael Moore, Thora Birch, William Black

It’s all about the Benjamins in the latest heartfelt, incendiary but jarringly sarcastic missive from America’s answer to Wat Tyler.

Here, Michael Moore again dusts off his docu-thermometer to gauge the wellbeing of a country in the midst of major economic decline, and his findings show that much of the chaos and distress stems from a small row of skyscrapers in New York’s financial district.

As with his previous films, Moore opens on a reality check, pointing his camera straight at his bedraggled kinsfolk: the working Joes. And those who haven’t bothered to flick through any magazine, newspaper or business journal in the past year may be shocked to learn that all is not well. Evictions are up, unemployment is up, crime is up, poverty is up and the paper trail runs right back to Wall Street.

As is now the Moore staple, Capitalism is more interested in

the absurd idiosyncrasies that a distressed and morally unhinged climate can generate than it is in the widespread bread-and-butter calamities. In assembling his case against the intrinsic greed of the capitalist system, Moore covers such topics as criminally low wages for commercial pilots, the folly of privately owned prisons, the dangerous boys’ club cross-over of the financial institutions and government, and the creative profitmaking tactics employed by banks, mortgage lenders and insurance companies. Many will also be familiar with both the structure and tenor in which his arguments are delivered: occasionally amusing and ironic, sometimes stirring, sometimes pig-headed, always (though some may dispute this) entertaining.

The problem that Moore now faces – and one he makes no attempt to address with Capitalism – is the increasing cynicism felt

towards his shopworn brand of radical populism. The progressive, left-leaning congregation he preaches to are now so au fait with his methods that he needs to work much harder for his points to hit home. It’s a hard task made harder by his choice of target, which is far too broad to intellectually engage his fanbase or amply provoke his legions of detractors. When he does try out some more abstract lines of thinking, such as suggesting that capitalism goes against the strictures of modern Christianity – and is thus fundamentally unAmerican – they are either too cute or too clever-clever.

The most interesting aspect of Capitalism is a strain of melancholic nostalgia that runs through its latter segments, represented best in a vignette where Moore escorts his elderly father to the site of the nowdefunct spark plug factory where Moore Snr used to earn a living.

In many ways, it brings Moore’s documentary oeuvre full circle as it rekindles many of the (warranted) gripes aired in his devastating 1989 debut, Roger & Me. Though referencing his own film may seem a mite selfindulgent, the point he is making is perhaps Capitalism’s most bracing: that where there’s money, greed is sure to follow; and unless the entire system changes from the top down, the fat cats will be allowed to purr as long and hard as they want. Alan Mack

Anticipation. Sicko was his most nuanced doc to date. Could this be as thoughtful?

Enjoyment. Moore takes on a massive subject, and manages to hit the target more than he misses.

In Retrospect. This scattershot undertaking should force him to aim his blunderbuss a little more carefully next time.

067

up in The Air DIRECTED BY Jason Reitman STARRING George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) spends his whole life in the wild blue yonder, jetting across America downsizing companies and firing people. He takes no pleasure from his role as a ‘transitional counsellor’ – it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it, and Ryan just happens to possess the requisite blend of steeliness, affability and detachment to do it very, very well.

Once it’s done, he packs his hand luggage (no wasteful check-ins for a seasoned pro like Bingham), scarfs down a bowl of complementary peanuts in a faceless business class lounge, and sits pretty at cruising altitude, zooming ever closer towards his cherished dream of being one of the very few people ever to rack up 10 million air miles.

068 the road ISSUE

RELEASED January 15

Like a shark, Bingham’s only motivation is incessant motion.

He has no real home, no friends or emotional ties, and that’s just the way he likes it. But when head office calls him back to base and informs him that, henceforth, his job will be done via videoconferencing and that he can hang up his wings – along with his million-mile dreams – cracks start to form in his immaculate GQ veneer. He gradually comprehends that the hermetic, temperature controlled insularity with which he has cocooned himself might not serve him so well back on terra firma.

And won’t be so easy to slough off.

As an allegory for the dislocation that the modern world can foster, and the atomisation of the family unit

in whatever form, Jason Reitman’s ultimately wan adaptation of Walter Kirn’s novel couldn’t proceed from a finer set-up. Comfort, ease and the pointlessly rinky-dink trappings of the world around him have seduced Bingham to the point where he no longer needs human interaction, and Reitman explores this mindset with a good deal of wit and style.

When the film strands Bingham on the Tarmac, however, things become a good deal more complicated for him, and – alas – immediately and supremely formulaic for us.

His boss (a bearded Jason Bateman) foists a bright young hotshot (Anna Kendrick) on him, through whom he learns that his job affects more lives than he imagined.

A casual relationship with a similarly self-satisfied high-flyer (Vera

Farmiga) gives Bingham a glimpse of the life he might have had. While a family wedding offers him a chance to come back into the fold.

None of this is at all hard to watch, but it feels like the second half of the film is a Movie of the Week adjunct to the first. What begins as a surprisingly successful mixture of Michael Clayton and Intolerable Cruelty eventually skirts uncomfortably close to the asyet-unfilmed epilogue to Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Adam Lee Davies

Anticipation. Clooney rides a permanent wave of good will.

Enjoyment. Never recovers from second act turbulence.

In Retrospect. Déjà vu hits before you’ve even got to the pub.

Tony

DIRECTED BY Gerard Johnson STARRING Peter Ferdinando, Vicky Murdock, Neil Maskell RELEASED January 29

Gerard Johnson’s feature debut is a British companion to John McNaughton’s chilling Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. So… just what we’ve all been waiting for.

It’s not that Tony is a poorly made piece of cinema. Yes, it’s ugly, but that ugliness – both moral and aesthetic – is appropriate in a story about the everyday pathology of murder, where the metropolitan anomie of tower blocks and pent-up despair has been transformed into a kind of psychic contagion. But does that mean you’ll want to watch it?

As embodied by Peter Ferdinando, Tony is an outsider who murders because he can.

He is clearly ill (he sleeps next to a decomposing corpse) but

ASTro boy

if he takes any pleasure in what he does, it is only insomuch as he feels more comfortable around the dead than the living.

Johnson and cinematographer David Higgs shoot this mundane horror in drab, flat colours, accentuating the invasive intimacy with which we’re thrown into Tony’s life. The entire screen has a greasy texture of accumulated filth.

But Tony is a man who lacks any kind of interiority. In part, that’s the point – he’s a cipher whose

fate is left resolutely unresolved.

But at the same time, Tony is a creation of tabloid caricature.

He’s an unemployed, repressed homosexual who watches violent films and visits prostitutes. One character calls him ‘a noncy-faced cunt’, and he is. He’s not a chilling psychopath, he’s a reassuring fantasy of evil: he looks the way we want our murderers to look – weird, identifiable, not like us.

It doesn’t help that there are a couple of narrative clangers

that further shake your faith (no one would invite this guy to dinner with their children). In one scene, Tony looks at himself in the mirror.

“You’re a fly on a pile of shit,” he says. Quite. Matt Bochenski

heart, not to mention the perennial appeal of large-scale mecha mayhem, the film also engages with issues of utopianism, exploitation and the environment, presents a villainous Bush-like president (who uses populist war-mongering as an electioneering weapon), and offers an allegorical critique of American insularity and the disposability of those deemed ‘other’ by the state.

While Astro Boy is certainly rich in scope and ambition, this brings with it a lack of focus.

Just as our hero rockets through the high-rise landscape at great velocity, the film itself speeds from this to that, without ever settling on anything long enough to give pause for thought – which is just as well, given that even a moment’s reflection would expose the many implausibilities in the plot.

David Bowers’ stunning CG landscapes are populated with memorably funny characters (both human and robot), and resonate with a chaotic bunch

of half-realised ideas left floating in mid-air like Metro City itself.

Yet for all the deficit of grounded substance in Astro Boy, there is never a dull moment. Anton Bitel

Anticipation. A forensic serial killer movie?

Sounds unedifying.

Enjoyment. Very little of that to be found here.

Deliberately? Even so…

In Retrospect. See it and take a shower.

RELEASED February 5

DIRECTED BY David Bowers STARRING Freddie Highmore, Kristen Bell, Nicolas Cage

Here’s a film that has history.

The nuts and bolts of this Japanese icon were laid out in Osamu Tezuka’s original 1951 manga and the three popular TV cartoon series that followed (in 1963, 1980 and 2003 respectively). But for his first big-screen feature outing, the perky young android with the black quiff has been upgraded with all manner of other cinematic influences too, from Pinocchio to Freaks, from Castle in the Sky to AI, from Robots to WALL-E. So while children can get lost in the film’s heady futurist world, adults can play spot-the-allusion.

Thematically, too, Astro Boy has something for everyone.

Besides predictable kiddie-flick clichés about the father-son relationship (“I love you, dad!”) and the robot-with-the-human-

Anticipation. Another nostalgic icon crushed by the Hollywood machine.

Enjoyment. Fast, funny and full of filmic allusions.

In Retrospect. A free-floating edifice of big ideas never quite brought down to earth.

069

A Single Man

RELEASED February 12

DIRECTED BY Tom Ford STARRING Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult

Tom Ford cuts a dash in his directorial debut

070 the road ISSUE

Imagine what might have happened if Douglas Sirk had created his own fashion line.

Conversely, imagine what kind of movie Donatella Versace might make given half a chance (on second thoughts, no, please don’t).

Well, famously provocative designer Tom Ford has gone one better. He conquered the empires of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent as a top trendsetter, got bored, and fixed his gaze on cinema instead. The result?

A Single Man: the kind of confident debut that radiates personality and visual flair while retaining a quietly fluttering heart.

It’s evident from the outset that Ford’s involvement in A Single Man isn’t based on a frivolous impulse.

Yes, the film is an experimental exercise, flaunting voguish superfluities. But scrape a little at its stylised veneer, and you uncover a film that swells with warmth.

Widely considered novelist

Christopher Isherwood’s greatest work (and the author’s own favourite), A Single Man is the tale of grieving middle-aged lecturer George. Eight months ago, his partner of 16 years died. Unable to escape his melancholy, George (played here with tantalising refinement by Colin Firth) is coasting through life on the currents of memory. Deciding he can go on no longer, he resolves to end his life. We meet him here, on what could be his last day.

Streamlining Isherwood’s 1964 novel, Ford snips away any nonessential characters to concentrate on the central quartet of George, his lovey, midlife-crisis-consumed pal Charley (Julianne Moore), dead love Jim (Matthew Goode, seen in flashbacks) and young student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult). The result is a curious convergence of both men’s personalities. Isherwood’s penchant for pretty youths is retained in the form of Hoult’s

beautiful, curious student, while Ford imbues Moore’s Charley with a distinctly British bent (there are definite whiffs of Ab Fab’s Patsy).

“When I die, people can look at this movie and know what I was about,” the director has said.

And it’s true, his fingerprints are all over A Single Man; from George’s new surname (borrowed from Ford’s first love), anecdotes about shaved eyebrows (Ford’s own weakness), even our lead’s dogs

are played by Ford’s mutts.

It’s fitting that the filmmaker’s opulent imagery should repeatedly return to eyes, this being as near to a celluloid imprint of a man’s soul as it’s possible to get. Hyperstylised but with careful nuance, A Single Man only stumbles in its third act as the visual tricks give way to a clumsy climax that feels strangely disconnected from the philosophy of what has gone before. Josh Winning

Anticipation. Firth won the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival, while the trailer suggests that Ford’s fashionista savvy could translate well to cinema.

Enjoyment. A film about death that is bursting with life and passion.

In Retrospect. Film couture, dazzling in its optical majesty. Shame about the third act stumble, but A Single Man establishes Ford as an auteur in the making. Singularly brilliant.

071

STill wAlKing RELEASED January 15

DIRECTED BY Koreeda Hirokazu STARRING Abe Hiroshi, Natsukawa Yui, You

“There’s a ghost at night.” So says young Mutsu (Hayashi Ryôga) of the house where his grandparents Toshiko (Kiki Kirin) and Kyohei (Harada Yoshio) live and where the whole family is gathering for an annual get-together.

Sure enough, while the house might be filled with the noisy presence of three generations, it is also haunted by several absences. For the gathering is to commemorate the anniversary of eldest son Junpei’s death a dozen years ago – while Junpei’s younger brother Ryota (Abe Hiroshi), a struggling art restorer from Tokyo who rarely (and reluctantly) visits, is only half replacing the late father of his stepson Atsushi (Tanaka Shohei). Meanwhile, the

grandparents, though still walking, are nearing the end of their own life’s journey without having resolved any of the tensions that they have with their descendants, or indeed with each other.

Still Walking is also, of course, haunted by the spirit of Yasujiro Ozu’s 1953 classic Tokyo Story, presenting perennial domestic themes in a composed style whose poetry derives from its plain simplicity. For while this film is full of all the bitterness, regret,

jealousy, disappointment, deceit and awkward love that make up any family, it depicts these with a calm restraint and subtlety, excluding even the slightest hint of melodrama – or as writer/director Koreeda, who previously brought us After Life, Distance and Nobody Knows, has so rightly put it himself: “There are no typhoons in this film.”

Instead, all the cruelties, conflicts, cracks and continuities in family life are collapsed into an uneventful yet revealing period

of 24 concentrated hours (plus a brief coda). And while Koreeda certainly prefers quietly observed, mundane details to grand gestures or shrill twists, it is his unflinching honesty that makes Still Walking so confrontingly painful and sad. Anton Bitel

coins, the two bright-eyed young girls anticipate their mother’s homecoming.

But when the bank fills up and their mother fails to appear, Big Aunt callously decides that she can no longer tend to the children. Taken to live on their grandparents’ farm (an experience that directly mirrors the director’s own following the separation of her parents), it is here that Jin comes to learn the importance of family bonds.

Yong Kim’s follow-up to the highly regarded In Between Days, Treeless Mountain is presented through the initially innocent eyes of its juvenile protagonists. A film comparable to early Kiarostami in

its non-manipulative evocation of childhood threatened by harsher and wider realities, this is an entirely unsentimental work that examines what happens in an uncaring world when children are simply not wanted anymore.

In a recurring attempt to find their way in an environment ill suited to the needs of children, Jin and Bin catch, grill and sell grasshoppers to the rural schoolchildren near their new home. These moments, born of a need to survive, nonetheless provide interludes of happiness, strengthening the bond between the two sisters as their innocence

slowly ebbs away. Beautifully shot to emphasise the contrast between the rampantly industrialised countryside and its rapidly disappearing pampas grass meadows where the children find brief moments of respite, Yong Kim also draws performances of tremendous naturalism from her remarkable young leads. Jason Wood

Anticipation. It sounds like Tokyo Story.

Enjoyment. It is like Tokyo Story.

In Retrospect. That is to say, it’s family drama at its most affectingly spare and sedate.

TreeleSS MounTAin DIRECTED BY So Yong Kim STARRING Hee-yeon Kim, Song-hee Kim, Mi-hyang Kim

RELEASED January 8

Inspired by the early childhood memories of director So Yong Kim, Treeless Mountain is a beautiful, meditative and deeply humanistic coming-of-age tale dealing with abandonment, resilience and perseverance in the face of apparent futility.

When their much put-upon mother is forced to leave their cramped Seoul apartment and go in search of their estranged father, seven-year-old Jin (Hee-yeon Kim) and her younger sister, Bin (Song-hee Kim), are left to live with their alcoholic Big Aunt (Mi-hyang Kim) for the summer. With only a small piggy bank and their mother’s promise to return when it is full, the two young girls are forced to acclimate to changes in their family life.

Counting the days, and the

072 the road ISSUE

Anticipation. Highly regarded at Berlin, but overlooked for festivals in the UK. Enjoyment. Profoundly affecting without being remotely sentimental.

In Retrospect. A film of insight and import.

FirebAll

RELEASED January 8

DIRECTED BY Thanakorn Pongsuwan STARRING Preeti Barameeanat, Khanutra Chuchuaysuwan, Kumpanat Oungsoongnern The Thai movie industry may be in the ascendant thanks to the international success of Ong Bak and its no-strings take on martial arts, but if Fireball is the future, then Tony Jaa has a lot to answer for. As mindless as it is visually polished, Fireball serves as an example of producers with too much money conceptually bayoneting a fledgling film industry armed with a back catalogue of Vin Diesel and Michael Bay movies.

When recently released convict Tai (played by Thai rock star Preeti ‘Bank’ Barameeanat) discovers his twin brother is in a coma after taking part in an underground bloodsport known as ‘fireball’, he joins in this ultraviolent cross between basketball and Muay

Thai to avenge him.

The direly simplistic plot makes everything remarkably straightforward from there on in as Tai assumes his brother’s identity, becomes embroiled in the feuds of the gang bosses who run the game and even manages to get off with his stricken sibling’s girlfriend without the barest flicker of character development. In fact, these are merely filler scenes before Tai and his diverse array of teammates dish out and receive

their fair share of fatal batterings on court while clumsily reminding each other (and the audience) that they are doing it for the money.

Indeed, money seems to feature heavily in this wannabe blockbuster, with its Formula One, logo-heavy approach to product placement.

The similarities to that sport don’t end there either: the action may be paced at break-neck speed but it has a sterility that neither frantic editing nor ludicrously over-dubbed fighting sound effects can make exciting.

In the end, Fireball merely feels like a flash stunt montage that apes the worst excesses of Hollywood.

It may bludgeon the senses but it leaves the cerebrum completely unscathed. Ed Andrews

Anticipation. Promising-looking martial arts fun from a film industry renowned for kicking ass in style.

Enjoyment. Kick, punch, blood, punch, kick, talk.

In Retrospect. An over-polished turd.

Thu 21 – Wed 27 Jan

london’s most diverse cinema www.barbican.org.uk/film 0845 121 6830

The Barbican is provided by the City of London Corporation

Another Type of Music

Discover Mexico’s current filmmaking talent in this season of award-winning festival hits and brand new features from Mexico’s new wave.

Lee Daniels: Kaleidoscopic Chameleon Interview by Emma Paterson

Lee Daniels is too run-down to meet in person. That’s a shame because the artist’s reputation for the baroque precedes our encounter, and suggests a flamboyance that might be enfeebled by the phone. Within seconds, however, the producer/director makes his restless, kaleidoscopic presence felt: “I’m going to name my next film after your magazine! Girl, with a name like that, you’ve got to be original.”

Gestures of familiarity like this pepper the conversation, but they often herald moments of equivocation. The result is a train of blanks during the most precarious points of our discussion, as words like ‘outsider’ and ‘race’ are met with caution.

Such evasiveness seems puzzling for a man whose back catalogue shows evidence of courting transgression, from capital punishment and interracial romance in Monster’s Ball, to the humanisation of paedophilia in The Woodsman. When asked if he feels like an outsider in Hollywood, Daniels responds curtly by asking what that means. After referencing the article in which he made the statement, he is momentarily forthcoming: “I know which article you’re talking about. I read it too and I cringed a little bit. I guess in print it seems weird, but I do feel like an outsider. My movies aren’t really Hollywood movies.” But this temporary self-exposure is quickly dampened by a flash of the banal that, ironically, is of a piece with the very Hollywood he feels separate from, declaring: “We all feel like outsiders in Hollywood because we’re all trying to conquer it and find our way.”

In Precious, Daniels resumes his thematic commitment to confrontation and difficulty. And yet it is perhaps his most mainstream piece of work to date – its redemptive and escapist qualities allowing for vital audience relief.

His second directorial feature (his first was the little known Shadowboxer starring Helen Mirren as an assassin with terminal cancer), Precious looks set to cement his critical and popular recognition as a filmmaker of note.

Adapted from the novel Push by poet and one-time Harlem teacher Sapphire, the film follows the harrowing existence of Claireece ‘Precious’ Jones, an overweight, illiterate black teenager, physically and sexually abused by her mother, and pregnant with her father’s second child. Rejected by an education system where apathy is easier than intervention, Claireece is accepted by an alternative school for challenging students, and there finds the courage to break free from her domestic nightmare.

Daniels likens Sapphire’s book to a lover, which he kept beneath his pillow at night, and whose emotional power deluged his every thought.

“I’d never read anything so breathtakingly honest and original,” he says.

“Every page, my mouth was open. I thought it was real. She tricked me.

I said, ‘There’s no way this can be a figment of anyone’s imagination.’ But it’s a combination of many characters along the course of her life, from which she created this tour-de-force piece of literature.”

074 the road ISSUE

FILMOGRAPHY LEE DANIELS Precious (2009) Shadowboxer (2005)

Daniels’ identification with the novel is born of more than just narrative verisimilitude. During our conversation, he is keen to stress his first-hand experience of the poverty and privation that characterise Sapphire’s portrait of 1980s Harlem. “I know what it’s like to have a social worker, if you’re on food stamps from the government, or if you wait for a government cheque,” he explains. “Growing up and having them come in to inspect your house to see whether or not you have an extra trinket in your house that would then come out of your little stipend. And I identified with that.”

To what extent was this empathy informed by the fact that he, like Claireece, is black? On this point, he is more reserved. With the question rephrased and contextualised by pointing to a central scene in which Claireece gazes into the mirror and imagines looking at a white face, we work our way around the issue of how important race is to the fate that Claireece has suffered.

“I think it goes beyond a black/white thing,” argues Daniels. “It goes into a human thing. I’m black and when I look into the mirror, I want to see somebody good looking. Everybody that looks into the mirror wants to see perfection. We can all connect with this.” His desire to universalise a scene that is so politically specific in the film is confusing, and later it seems insincere – a guarded compliance with the current proposition that we live in a post-racial era.

Not everyone has addressed the political significance of the film in such ambiguous terms. Certain critics have identified Claireece’s character as emblematic of a long history of racial crimes. Others have expressed concern that the film’s aspirational figures – Mariah Carey’s social worker; Lenny Kravitz’s nurse; Paula Patton’s teacher – are so many shades less black than its protagonist. That’s a potent anxiety in the context of Claireece’s desire for a light-skinned boyfriend. Such reactions are a testament to the racial complexity of Daniels’ film, and make troublingly conspicuous his ideological reserve.

Such restraint seems all the more paradoxical in light of Daniels’ next project, a film called Selma. Its focal point is Selma, Alabama, the site of desegregation and voting rights campaigns during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. In true kaleidoscopic fashion, the director’s caution vanishes when he describes it: “I’m in talks to do a movie called Selma, which is a moment in time between Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson.

It humanises both men and it tells the story of what happened there. It’s a really important moment in history that I’d like to talk about.” Just how voluble he is upon its eventual release, however, remains to be seen.

Check out the full transcript online in the week of release.

preciouS RELEASED January 29

DIRECTED BY Lee Daniels STARRING Gabby Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Mariah Carey

Writing about Precious surpasses even the difficulty of watching it, for the manifold abuses inflicted upon its eponymous protagonist simply confound articulation. The result is a film that, on first viewing at least, speaks – and often roars – in tones that are more bodily than they are cerebral.

It seems ironic, then, that Lee Daniels’ second outing as a director began life as a novel, written by one-time Harlem teacher and poet, Sapphire. More ironic still is Daniels’ account of Sapphire’s recalcitrance when first presented with the idea of a film adaptation. But Daniels’ directorial management of the material is a triumph. Employing a suitably chiaroscuro film language to balance the emotional extremes

of the subject matter, his vision is a lively composite of urban nightmare and garish escapism, over which he demonstrates remarkable control.

Claireece ‘Precious’ Jones (Gabby Sidibe) lives on the margins of just about everything. Black, obese and illiterate, when we meet her she is carrying her father’s second child. She is also being abused and force-fed by her mother and is on the verge of expulsion from school. In between these horrors, she seeks refuge in colourful fantasies of fame or having a lightskinned boyfriend who whisks her away from hell on a motorcycle.

In one crucial moment, she looks into the mirror and imagines herself as a blonde white girl. The scene is a striking visual précis of the

racial injustices that have shaped Claireece’s life – and a million black, disenfranchised lives before it.

And yet this harrowing portrait of domestic abuse and societal neglect is continuously imbued with glimmers of hope, be they manifest in Claireece’s brave imagination as visions of fame and desirability; the more grounded forms of empowerment offered by the class to which Claireece is sent following her expulsion; or in the levity of her classmates’ piquant street banter.

This tonal diversity works beautifully to wrest Daniels’ film from excessive gloom while remaining faithful to the disturbing gravity of Claireece’s situation, and is rendered with a fluency that forestalls the fleeting impression of dissonance.

Holding these complexities together is a range of performances that are sure to sustain awards buzz.

US comedienne Mo’Nique casts off the jocular in an extraordinary turn as Claireece’s odious mother whose final soliloquy shines through as the emotional centrepiece of the film.

She is joined in actorly distinction by an unpolished Mariah Carey, wholly convincing as the choral voice in this urban tragedy. Emma Paterson

Anticipation. Award. After award. After award.

Enjoyment. Not quite the word this harrowing picture brings to mind.

In Retrospect. The emotional equivalent of an intestinal crank.

075

oil ciTy conFidenTiAl

DIRECTED BY Julien Temple STARRING Wilko Johnson, John Martin, John B Sparkes

After the Sex Pistols (the Filth and the Fury) and Joe Strummer (The Future is Unwritten), Julien Temple closes out his triptych of groundbreaking British musicians with a rugged piece of pulp entertainment charting the unlikely rise of UK blues outfit Dr Feelgood.

Emerging from a toxic brew of refinery fumes, isolation and rebellion, Dr Feelgood re-imagined the bleak mudflats of the Essex peninsula as a Thames Delta – a twin-town to the creative energy of Mississippi.

Inspired by the likes of Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters, they laid waste to the prog-rock pretension that was suffocating British music in the early ’70s. But in influencing the likes of Johnny Rotten and Joey Ramone, the band planted the seeds of a punk revolution that

076 the road ISSUE

RELEASED February 2

would ultimately undermine it.

Temple tells their story with his usual razzle-dazzle, employing deft in-camera effects to recreate the high wire energy of the band’s live performances. Described by Temple himself as ‘100 per cent pure Canvey Island noir’, he envisions Dr Feelgood as cultural gangsters staging a smash-and-grab on UK music. To this end, the film is smartly intercut with material from the likes of Brighton Rock and The Great Train Robbery. It’s a bit cute, but it works.

And yet the real pleasure is to be found in the band members themselves. Lead singer Lee Brilleaux is interviewed in archive footage, while drummer John Martin (aka The Big Figure) and bassist John ‘Sparko’ Sparkes provide the droll commentary of men long-used to standing in the

background. And with good reason, because the band’s totem, and the film’s focal point, is guitarist-slashacid casualty Wilko Johnson.

Johnson is a magnetic character, a herky-jerky personality of tics and twitches, whether scanning the heavens in his rooftop observatory (looking for the rescue ships) or skittering across stage, bug-eyed and jittery. Johnson followed the psychedelic songlines of the early ’70s, from Canvey Island to India via the rainbow road of LSD. Returning home, it was his charisma and song writing that gave the band its edge, but it was also the paranoia induced by his drug taking that would scuttle them on the brink of greatness.

So yet another story of a band that had it all and threw it away?

Yes, but it’s more than that, too.

It’s a story about what it means

to be rooted, to have a sense of the past and connection to a place even as the world opens out in front of you. With its chip shops and amusements, empty arcades and broken attractions, Canvey Island is the band’s founder member.

Where most bands dream of escape, Dr Feelgood always returned home. It was a place that damned and defined them, and Oil City Confidential is both haunted and ennobled by its ghosts. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. Temple is an idiosyncratic filmmaker, but non-music fans might be wary.

Enjoyment. A worthy addition to Temple’s docs on the Pistols and Strummer.

In Retrospect. Where does Temple go from here?

crude RELEASED January 15

DIRECTED BY Joe Berlinger STARRING Pablo Fajardo, Steven Donziger

Given that uneven balances of power underscore pretty much all interactions between big business and small communities, it’s odd that the English language seems only to have one analogy to describe such circumstances: that of David and Goliath.

Unsurprisingly, these are names which crop up more than a couple of times in Crude, Joe Berlinger’s passionate and frank environmental documentary-cum-thriller.

Between 1964 and 1990, oil extraction by Texaco – the US oil giant that later merged with Chevron – allowed 17 million gallons of crude oil and 20 billion gallons of drilling wastewater to be released into the environment. Or so allege the legal team representing the 30,000 people that live in the

drilling site’s back yard, an area of the Ecuadorian Amazon about the size of Rhode Island. The result is a landscape brutally vandalised, cultures and livelihoods decimated, and public health savaged.

Berlinger’s camera starts rolling in 2006 with the introduction of lawyer Pablo Fajardo. Having grown up in the region, he studied law in order that he might represent the community against the injustices resulting from the petrochemical industry’s incursion. Fajardo’s counterpart is energetic and savvy New York attorney Steven Donziger.

The film follows the pair as they make their case for recompense from the oil empire.

Crude offers a remarkably honest account of the fracas from both sides. Though it’s filmed from the Ecuadorian team’s perspective, the Chevron camp have ample opportunity to get their voice heard as the camera’s focus leaps from rainforest to corporate HQ. Flashpoints such as the enraged exchange between the two sides in the offices of one of Ecuador’s seemingly less scrupulous judges offer a harsh introduction to the

messed up realities of supposedly due legal process.

Gripping and powerful, Crude is documentary journalism as it needs to be. Blissful ignorance stirred with bland apathy is no longer an option. Olly Zanetti

Anticipation. Hot on the heels of The Cove, the eco-documentary genre retains its stripes.

Enjoyment. About turns, legal wrangles and corruption make for gripping viewing.

In Retrospect. Gulp. How routine are such backstories to our privileged lifestyles?

Watch 3D films at the Barbican!

Coming this March, Tim Burton’s hatter-mad extravaganza Alice in Wonderland, with Helena Bonham-Carter, Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Christopher Lee and Alan Rickman.

london’s most diverse cinema www.barbican.org.uk/film 0845 121 6830

The Barbican is provided by the City of London Corporation

Alice in Wonderland

3D Film tickets from just £9.50 when booked online.

nowhere boy RELEASED December 26

DIRECTED BY Sam Taylor-Wood STARRING Aaron Johnson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Anne-Marie Duff

Hamstrung by its reverence to history, Sam Taylor-Wood’s Nowhere Boy struggles to do justice to the memory of John Lennon. Cinema has rarely seemed such a deficient medium, here serving only to remind us that Lennon was both unique and inimitable. Outmatched and overawed, all Taylor-Wood can do is retreat to the safety of convention, offering only intermittent glimpses of a character beyond the clichés.

Liverpool, 1955. John Lennon lives with his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George. Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a straight-laced Tchaikovsky-and-tea type. John (Aaron Lennon) is an awkward teen whose life is thrown into confusion by the death of his step-father, George, and the re-emergence of his mum, Julia (Anne-Marie Duff).

078 the road ISSUE

In her vibrant red coat and cherry lipstick, she introduces John to rock ‘n’ roll, tells him it means ‘sex’, and strikes a spark that will ignite the rain drizzled streets of Liverpool.

You know what comes next.

But Taylor-Wood knows that you know. So after beginning with the familiar jangle of ‘A Hard Days Night’, the note dissipates into something new. The plan is to play with our expectations – to evoke and subvert in equal measure. But though there’s a shallow kind of fun to be found in the wink-wink moments – The Bit Where John Gets His First Guitar; The Bit Where John Meets Paul; The Bit Where John Plays His First Gig – they’re nothing more than the checklist of a film hell bent on respectability. When John declares, “I’m going to start a rock ‘n’ roll

group!” it elicits derisory laughs rather than an electric charge.

Which is not to say that Nowhere Boy doesn’t have its moments.

Taylor-Wood has assembled much of the dream team behind 2008’s Love You More, and in their better moments they recapture some of that earlier short’s erotic energy.

When Lennon hitches a ride on the roof of a bus or gets a blow job in the park, the film breaks through the barrier of imitation and creates something briefly its own.

The relationship between John and Julia is charged and ambivalent, as the thoughtless cruelty of adolescence is weighed against the more considered betrayals of adulthood. But despite nailing the accent and some of the swagger, Aaron Johnson remains a potential star in search of a defining

role. A couple of long shots apart, his pugnacious delicacy recalls a young Jake La Motta rather than John Lennon.

Almost by default there are brief moments when Nowhere Boy takes your breath away, when the frisson of future knowledge sends a shiver down the spine. But they’re outweighed by the melodrama and the politesse of this disappointingly toothless biopic. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. Taylor-Wood’s Love You More is brilliant, and legends don’t come much bigger than Lennon.

Enjoyment. Fails to capture the spirit of a unique individual.

In Retrospect. A thankless task. TaylorWood and Aaron Johnson may still have great things to come.

SpreAd

RELEASED January 1

DIRECTED BY David Mackenzie STARRING Ashton Kutcher, Anne Heche, Margarita Levieva

People who work in Hollywood love to make films about how tough it is to live there – all pretty faces, toned butts and vicious ambition. Whatever. So when Ashton Kutcher does modern day Holly Golightly as a playboy who hits on and rips off Tinseltown’s rich totty, you have to hope that Scottish director David Mackenzie (whose previous credits include Young Adam and Hallam Foe) will bring something new to the party. Sadly not – he’s brought cheap wine and drunk all the champers.

Spread depicts LA as a siren who lures the beautiful youth of America into a life of waiting tables

by day and shagging their way up the career ladder by night.

Kutcher’s Nikki targets older wealthy women, like Anne Heche’s sexy Samantha, and takes them for all they’ve got. He doesn’t so much fall on his feet as another part of his anatomy, as we see, over and over and over again. But when Nikki meets himself in the female form of Margarita Levieva, he’s thrown – what’s this love thing all about?

It makes Nikki unhappy that’s for

sure. But why should we care?

The film is not witty or poignant enough beneath the stylish and sexy exterior to draw us into this story of a playboy getting his comeuppance; we’ve seen it before. Nikki isn’t a complex or edgy character, just a boy who screws around and then sulks when he gets screwed. And doesn’t he just – there’s so much sex in the first half it starts to feel like overkill, until you get to the second half (cue mawkish Ashton) and you

wish Nikki had just stuck to what he does best. Laura Bushell

in exercising control from seed to supermarket, these corporations have turned food into the new automobile – profit, not protein, is what counts. Thanks to the free market ideology, we now have farm bills written by food companies, a revolving door between legislative bodies and corporate boardrooms, unsustainable levels of corn production to drive down prices, bankruptcies in Third World countries, new strains of E-coli in our food, and an obesity pandemic.

Kenner introduces us to the chicken farmers kept in economic

feudalism by their corporate overlords; the migrant workers exploited and abused in abattoirs; and the mother whose son was killed by poisoned meat and who can’t even get an apology from the manufacturers. But we also meet the good guys: the organic farmers and government representatives determined to turn back the tide of bad calories.

It would all be too depressing if Kenner didn’t have a fine sense for cinematic storytelling, with smart animation and a jaunty score. But more than that, he puts forward

a persuasive counter-argument to tackle the food giants: we vote with our mouths three times a day. All we have to do is realise that we’re the ones in charge. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. Ashton Kutcher plays a cougar hunter. There’s a joke in there somewhere, just can’t put the finger on it.

Enjoyment. Rutting a-go-go! But when Ashton’s trousers go on, the plot turns off.

In Retrospect. A yawny cautionary tale.

Spread reveals acres of skin but fails to delve beneath it.

Food, inc.

RELEASED February 12 DIRECTED BY Robert Kenner STARRING Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser ‘Fatter, bigger, cheaper’ is the motto of the American food industry, as exposed by Robert Kenner’s excellent and eyeopening documentary.

Kenner was originally interested in adapting Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. Beaten to it by RicharLinklater, he decided to embark on his own investigation inspired by a simple impulse to understand where our food comes from.

What he discovered is that there are vast forces aligned against anybody who dares look for answers. But in a nutshell, a small handful of giant corporations have staged a stealth takeover of our stomachs, offering uniformity and cheapness under the illusion of diversity.

Why does this matter? Because

Anticipation. Might make a change from being shouted at by Jamie Oliver.

Enjoyment. By turns an absorbing, enraging and entertaining experience sustained by Kenner’s unexpectedly lively direction.

In Retrospect. Traces an arc from the enlightening to the enraging to the inspiring.

Where do we sign up to the new food 079

crAZy heArT RELEASED February 19

DIRECTED BY Scott Cooper STARRING Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, Maggie Gyllenhaal

Country music is heart and soul.

It is tragedy, romance and lament.

It’s the beat of Middle America. It’s Dolly and Cash and Patsy. It’s easy listening but it’s essential. A film about a waning country music star needs a heartbeat and soundtrack to match; both of which are palpably missing from Crazy Heart.

Jeff Bridges is Bad Blake.

Trailing the States alone, playing Mexican bars and bowling alleys, the guy pees in a bottle, appears incapable of doing up either belt or fly, and peers out at the world from the bottom of a whisky tumbler.

From over the rotunda that is his belly he spies and speaks to journalist Maggie Gyllenhaal, who, for some contrived reason, appears as his conscience – a mirror

in which Blake sees himself and finds the vision shabby. Why she climbs into his bed and opens both her own life and that of her fouryear-old son is never explained.

Whether father figure or exercise in self-abuse, their relationship is what wakes him.

It’s not possible to flaw Bridges here. Akin to Falstaff, the detail of his characterisation – from stagger to cough to swagger to song – is fascinating. But he needs more thorough contextualisation to fly.

Potentialities are rife but momentary. When we meet his nemesis and protégé Tommy Sweet

(an uncredited Colin Farrell), their antagonism, like his relationship with Gyllenhaal, is intangible. Whether the young gun represents his former self, his reaction to decrepitude, or the son he never had is depicted simply in a duet they sing together; camera circling, reminiscent of Johnny and June walking the line. It’s curious and emotive but hardly insightful.

Similarly, there’s a wonderful scene with Bridges and Robert Duvall in a fishing boat, suggestive of a relationship that we never see.

It’s as if the emphasis is contrapuntal – all slightly off the beat.

a road trip to visit each one of them, with the vague, unformed intention of recombining his atomised family.

It’s a four-square set-up, but with only the barest flicker of familial friction heating the undercooked drama – and don’t be fooled by the jaunty trailer or upbeat home-for-the-holidays poster; this is drama all the way – you’ll be as hard pushed as the cast evidently are to muster any interest.

Sam Rockwell invests his role as De Niro’s well-adjusted slacker

son with all the vigour of a man paying off a long-standing gambling debt. Barrymore and Beckinsale offer no more spark as his largely content, perfectly centred daughters.

And De Niro himself does little more than huff around looking mildly disappointed that he didn’t take a bit more interest in his kids.

It’s all rather aimless, but the leaden-footed decision to include scenes with De Niro’s grown kids replaced by their ‘remember-me-like-this-daddy?’

Debut writer/director Scott Cooper clearly has potential, but he has trusted too much in his star alone without giving him a backing band, decent lyrics or a real passage to redemption. Bridges sings, “Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try.” Cooper might do the same. Lórien Haynes

Anticipation. The Dude channels Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen.

Enjoyment. More floating island than ‘Islands in the Stream’.

In Retrospect. A Bridge too far.

everybody’S Fine DIRECTED BY Kirk Jones STARRING Robert De Niro, Kate Beckinsale, Drew Barrymore

RELEASED February 19

From the psychotic bully of This Boy’s Life to the working stiff of A Bronx Tale or the semiretired black-ops wet-jobber of Meet The Parents, Robert De Niro has always made for a particularly gruff on-screen parent.

The tension of those films, be it dramatic or comedic, is built on resentment, anger or misguided overprotection. But in Everybody’s Fine – a remake of 1990 Italian flick Stanno Tutti Bene – De Niro’s grown children avoid him as much as they can simply because they find him, well, just a little distant. Recently widowed, De Niro’s retired bluecollar geezer invites his kids for a big family dinner. When they all give him the brush off he decides to take

080 the road ISSUE

pre-teen counterparts, a repellent and incessant indie soundtrack, and a saccharine epilogue terminally hobble any strides the film might have made. Adam Lee Davies

Anticipation. A new Robert De Niro comedy?

Everybody’s wary.

Enjoyment. A bright start gives way to a dull, derivative fam-dram. Nobody wins.

In Retrospect. What attracted such a strong cast to this tedious misfire is anybody’s guess.

RELEASED February 12

DIRECTED BY Takeshi Kitano STARRING Takeshi Kitano, Susumu Terajima, Kotomi Kyôno

Japanese superstar Takeshi Kitano applies a touch of Fellini to his twelfth directorial feature: a self-reflexive and utterly bizarre journey into the surreal.

Beat Takeshi (Kitano, playing himself) is a big shot celebrity and TV star about to complete a key scene in his latest actionpacked drama. During filming, he meets a struggling actor who claims to be called Mr Takeshi (Kitano again), and happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to Beat (albeit with bleached blonde hair). While Beat continues to enjoy the perks that come with all of his success, Mr Takeshi attempts to make ends meet at the convenience store where he works. However, while those

around him continue to mock and harass Mr Kitano, things take a surreal turn for both the celebrity and his doppelgänger.

Adopting a fractured structure that delves deep into the weird and sometimes wonderful subconscious of Kitano, Takeshis’ is a confusing and often unfathomable self-analysis of his own exceptional and extensive career, complete with references to his earlier work as an actor, director and comedian (with Sonatine being a particular favourite point of reference).

While this self-inflicted counselling session provides much in the way of colourful visuals and memorable set-pieces, as well as another off-kilter yet magnetic performance from Kitano himself, it fails to achieve any sort of emotional hook. So while you’re wondering just what the hell is going on, you’re simultaneously questioning if you actually care.

A strangely flat affair, the film offers only a fraction of the wit and humour of the director’s earlier works, and after the onslaught of crazy clowns, shootouts and deranged dance routines,

you’re still left feeling oddly unfulfilled. While certain fans of Kitano’s work will feel right at home amidst the illusory chaos, others are likely to feel alienated by the seemingly nonsensical lunges into lunacy. Lee Griffiths

Anticipation. Takeshi applies a touch of Fellini to a self-reflexive work.

Enjoyment. A deranged, dream-like journey into a subconscious that isn’t as fun as you’d hoped.

In Retrospect. A forgivable but inconsequential lapse into self-indulgence.

The Directorspective: Wim Wenders Sun 10 – Sun 31 Jan

A season showcasing one of the major filmmakers of contemporary European cinema in our regular strand showcasing the work of the greatest film directors of all time.

Highlights include internationally acclaimed hit Kings of the Road, iconic Paris, Texas starring Nastassja Kinski and a love letter to the city of Berlin, Wings of Desire.

Plus, the best new releases all year round from just £7.50 per ticket online.

london’s most diverse cinema www.barbican.org.uk/film 0845 121 6830

The Barbican is provided by the City of London Corporation

Paris Texas

TAKeShiS’

Andy Serkis: In The Flesh Interview by Matt Bochenski

Let’s say that you’re an actor whose career choices in the last decade have paid off spectacularly. Your films have a combined box office gross of around four billion dollars. You’ve been talked about not just as a major awards candidate, but as someone who’s affected the fabric of screen acting. Your experiences are the future. Do you think you’d be able to walk down the street unmolested?

Andy Serkis can. Ask a hundred people if they’ve seen The Lord of the Rings trilogy and most of them will say ‘yes’. King Kong? That too. Now ask them if they’ve heard of Andy Serkis and prepare yourself for a long line of blank faces. Some actors disappear into a character. Others are subsumed by make-up. But Serkis literally transforms on screen. As an integral part of Peter Jackson’s CG revolution, Serkis has brought both Gollum and King Kong to life, opening up an entirely new realm of physical performance.

That’s pretty impressive for a wonky-looking chap from Ruislip.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Serkis started out in the mid ’80s working with politicised theatre director Jonathan Petherbridge. Back then, says Serkis, acting was “a community-oriented thing, it was very much about providing a service. As an actor, you are paid to go out, research, come back and we are going to share it collectively with an audience and that is going to cause change. It’s old fashioned socialist politics.”

But not everybody was interested in resisting Thatcher’s jackboot.

“Towards the end of the ’80s, I remember seeing a whole raft of young actors coming up for whom it was all about the mobile phones, it was all about getting a publicist, an agent, going straight on to telly and earning cash,” Serkis recalls. “I just thought, ‘I never came to this to earn cash.’

Never, never in a million years. I was much more idealistic.”

Serkis may not have wanted the agent or the TV work, but by the end of the ’80s he had it anyway. In the early ’90s he did the usual suspects – The Bill, The Darling Buds of May, Pie in the Sky – building towards some minor-key film work in the likes of Stella Does Tricks and Topsy-Turvy.

In 2001 the game changed completely. Cast in the role of Gollum, a hobbit corrupted by the Ring of Power, Serkis donned a mo-cap body suit and created the most seamless CG character ever seen for Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring. He may not have become an actor for the cash, but now he was getting it anyway. A lot of it. The golden doors of Hollywood had been flung open. Come on down, Mr Serkis, the price is right.

King Kong followed in 2005. He’s signed up to Jackson and Steven Spielberg’s sure-fire Tintin trilogy. And there’ll be two more outings as Gollum in Guillermo del Toro’s Hobbit double-header. In the face of so much opportunity and so much temptation, what chance do those socialist principles stand?

“I’m creatively very inspired by the big canvas and working with an inspirational person such as Peter Jackson, but I’ve always held onto

082 the road ISSUE

SELECT FILMOGRAPHY Andy Serkis Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2009) Inkheart (2008) The Cottage (2008) The Prestige (2006) Stormbreaker (2006) King Kong (2005) The Return of the King (2003) The Two Towers (2002) 24 Hour Party People (2002) The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) The Escapist (2001) Topsy-Turvy (1999)

Jonathan Petherbridge’s ethos of art as service to the community. I think that’s always informed my choices as an actor. Otherwise, what’s it all about?”

Serkis asks. “I came back from King Kong and I did a film called Extraordinary Rendition, which was made for 50p and was all improvised. That’s equally as important to me as doing King Kong, but in a different way.

“I kind of feel I rather blew it anyway,” he says after a moment’s thought.

“I went to the Oscars in 2003, and America had just gone into Iraq three days before. It was the Oscars of Michael Moore standing up and saying, ‘Shame on you, Bush!’ On the red carpet I pulled out a poster that said ‘No war for oil’ and nearly got lynched. My agent said to me, ‘Andy, you could have waited until you got your green card…’”

But the fact remains that the actor’s life is one of compromise. As Serkis says, “I’ve got a family, I’ve got three kids and all the rest of it so you do have to make a living.” The difference, perhaps, is that he knows where to draw the line. “I did a voiceover last year – I didn’t know what it was but I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll come in and do it’,” he recalls. “Came in and it was for the Central Office of Information about asylum seekers being tracked, and it was really quite nasty. Half way through I was bleeding inside. So I said, ‘I’m really sorry, I know this has fucked up your day, but I can’t. I just can’t do it.’ I’m not willing to use what I’ve created to do that kind of thing. I think I still hold onto that.”

Despite sound principles and good intentions, Serkis has also stepped into a row over his portrayal of Ian Dury in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.

Having contracted polio at the age of seven, Dury was left in a leg brace, needing a cane to walk. When Serkis landed the role (in fact, he was involved in the project for three years before the cameras rolled), fellow actor Nabil Shaban wrote an angry letter in which he claimed that ‘the film industry is Body Fascist and panders to mass markets, and [is] only interested in the majority non-disabled audience… Ian Dury and I were mates… He must be turning in his grave, knowing how his life-story is going to be ruined by some Oscar-seeking non-crip star.’

It’s hard to defend the film industry from allegations of body fascism, but Serkis (who, as it happens, has a disabled sister) isn’t about to lie down for Shaban. He points out that the production worked closely with Film 101, a collective of disabled filmmakers, and cast disabled actors in the movie.

As for his ‘right’ to play Ian, Serkis says, “I think it’s all about your approach.

If you go in and investigate it in the way that I have done, I feel like there’s not one moment in the film where I’m playing his disability. Just because I don’t come from Manchester, can I not play someone from Manchester?

I don’t come from Middle Earth but I played a hobbit. I’m not from Skull Island but I played King Kong.”

Check out the full transcript online in the week of release.

Sex & drugS & rocK & roll RELEASED January 8

Limping onto the stage of his own imagination, Ian Dury – artist, singer and punk poet of the working classes – emerges as something both heroic and apologetic in Mat Whitecross’ lairy solo debut.

As embodied by Andy Serkis, Dury is an original musical hooligan – the kind of man who’d rather practice with his band than witness the birth of his son. Emerging out of the art school scene of the late ’60s, he developed a distinctive brand of urban lyricism, which Serkis delivers with lusty North London bluster.

The vehicle for this punk poetry is The Blockheads, whose success lifted Dury from the squalid pub circuit to the top of the charts.

But as his career accelerates, Dury suffers a kind of existential whiplash, struggling to balance the demands of family, mistress and music.

DIRECTED BY Mat Whitecross STARRING Andy Serkis, Naomie Harris, Bill Milner

The result of this emotional equivocation is the slow-motion implosion of his son, Baxter (played by Son of Rambow’s Bill Milner). Surrounded by temptation and denied any example beyond his father’s libertine impulses, it’s not long before the youngster has grown his hair, downed some pills and started throwing furniture out of school windows.

This disintegrating relationship illuminates the lingering sense of loss and betrayal that Dury feels towards his own father, played in flashback

by Ray Winstone. His father’s death left Dury, who had been crippled by polio at the age of seven, abandoned to a sadistic nurse (a convincingly cruel Toby Jones) in a hospital for disabled children, where the first seeds of rebellion took root.

All of which is ground covered

in a film that explodes into life from the minute pop-art guru Peter Blake’s opening credits crowd the screen.

Combined with Peter Christelis’ skittish editing and Mat Whitecross’ dynamic work behind the camera, it all adds up to a film that works very hard to distinguish itself from other run-of-the-mill rock biopics.

This is, at heart, a story about a frustrated family man, wary of but helpless before the pitfalls of fame. Andy Serkis, here divested of the CG baubles that have accompanied his best known work as Gollum and King Kong, kills it in the lead role, capturing the fine blend of joy and anger that defined Dury’s ‘polluted genius’. He’s especially strong in the scenes in which Dury stands up to the patronising attitude of the Spastics Society (as it was

then), delivering the anarchic broadside of ‘Spasticus Autisticus’ with defiant energy.

But there’s still something structurally familiar about the film. This is a classic three-act tale, with personal obstacles bested and lessons dutifully learned. For all that it’s enlivened by some strong performances and a convincing emotional core, Sex & Drugs is a family melodrama in rock ‘n’ roll trousers. But man, it knows how to wear them. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. Depends whether you’re a fan of Ian Dury, doesn’t it?

Enjoyment. Serkis is mesmerising and Whitecross has got an eye for style.

In Retrospect. Beneath the razzle-dazzle is a conventional tale.

083

broTherS DIRECTED BY Jim Sheridan STARRING Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal

Though a remake, Brothers is very much a Jim Sheridan film. The heartfelt anger of In The Name Of The Father returns, as do the family issues of In America. Even Sheridan’s thug-life curveball from 2005, the 50 Cent-starring Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, makes more sense when sat next to Brothers. Though different, both examine the consequences of violence as career choice.

Based on Susanne Bier’s awardwinning 2004 Danish film , Brothers moves the story to America but keeps much the same. Respected soldier Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) is about to return to Afghanistan, just as his wayward brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) returns from prison. Tommy’s presence unsettles the Cahill family – his laidback attitude at odds with their military work ethic.

However, when Sam goes missing on his tour of duty, it’s Tommy who surprisingly steps

084 the road ISSUE

RELEASED January 22

up to help sister-in-law Grace (Natalie Portman) look after her children. A stuttering romance follows until a traumatised Sam unexpectedly returns home, the joy of his miraculous survival tempered by post-traumatic stress.

The fragile peace that the family found without him recedes further with each paranoid outburst.

On the plus side, the casting in Brothers convinces. Gyllenhaal and Maguire have long been linked in the public eye, from relationships with Kirsten Dunst to competition for the lead role in Spider-Man. Their depiction as rival siblings has even more of a frisson thanks to the rumours they’ve endured.

Both are renowned for puppy dog performances but Sam’s metamorphosis from family man into aggressor shows Maguire’s other side. The secrets he brings back from battle torment him, the star raging with a cruel passion

hitherto unseen in his films. Sam’s pointless destruction of a new kitchen (installed by Tommy) raises the film’s most potent question: how do you cope with cosy domesticity after facing death in war?

There is no answer. The Cahills, perhaps like many, put on their blinkers and eschew aftercare by reiterating the mantra that it’s a ‘family matter’.

Breakthroughs never come.

Such bluntness might make Brothers psychologically admirable but with a narrative as bleak as this it’s an arduous watch. What’s more, the relationship between Tommy and Grace heads nowhere.

Deliberate no doubt – but it takes performances more surprising than these to make loose ends look attractive.

Brothers works best as a springboard for moral questioning.

The male roles offer debates on rehabilitation – after both

prison and battlefield – plenty of airtime. Meanwhile, Sheridan and screenwriter David Benioff ensure that dramas unfold in dining rooms, driveways and gardens, making the issues seem as everyday as possible.

However, weighty conflict isn’t necessarily the same as distinctive entertainment. It’s a problem that’s faced many issue-led films, from Redacted to Rendition, both of which were unable to find audiences. While Brothers is raw in its realism and loud in its chestbeating, it’s still mechanically cold to watch. James King

Anticipation. Iraq War dramas are so 2007, but the Jake Gyllenhaal/Tobey Maguire combo is enticing.

Enjoyment. Tough. It’s all about the issues, yeah?

In Retrospect. Maguire’s turned up to 11, yet the passion leaves you cold.

"Has a nice, rough-and-ready British B-movie look and there's something irresistible about the cheek of the whole thing"

Sheila Johnston - Daily Telegraph

"Sly nugget of a micro-budget British film noir" Jonathan Richards - FilmFreak

Jacques Audiard: Exemplary Artist Interview by Matt Bochenski

Directing isn’t an especially glamorous job. It involves long days and lots of stress, sometimes for little reward. Most directors started out as regular film fans, only with the passion and talent to take it a step further. So they tend to look like regular film fans. Even Spielberg spends most of his time looking like he’s just wandered on to the set from the nearest blue collar bar.

But not Jacques Audiard. Oh no. Audiard is different. Gloriously, splendidly and defiantly different. He is, of course, French, which probably accounts for some of it. But even by the standard of his compatriots, Audiard exudes an exemplary air of artistry. Pretentious, him? Well yes, and why not?

Audiard has been part of the French cinema establishment for three decades, scripting for the likes of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve.

He made his directing debut with 1994’s See How They Fall, a tough drama about a man seeking vengeance for a murdered friend. It was a critical hit in France, winning Audiard the César for Best First Film. Another smash followed with A Self-Made Hero, a comic drama of post-war disillusionment that earned Audiard a Best Screenplay award at Cannes in 1996. His third film, 2001’s Read My Lips starring Vincent Cassel and Emmanuelle Devos, won Audiard his second César, again for writing. But it was The Beat That My Heart Skipped, released in 2005, that represented an international breakthrough.

A stunning exercise in masculine cinema, it cleaned up at the Césars, won the Silver Bear in Berlin and a BAFTA for Best Foreign Film.

And yet for all that success, Audiard’s career so far has felt like a prequel, a proving ground. And out of it has come A Prophet, a singular, explosive cinematic statement and the most complete film of Audiard’s life.

So here he is, in person and how. Reclining carelessly in a chair, Audiard looks like the spiritual son of Jean-Luc Godard. Which, thinking about it, he might actually be. Vintage ’50s Wayfarers obscure his eyes; a dashing trilby sits handsomely on his bald head; and polished leather shoes sparkle beneath. His language is thickly accented and finely oblique. He is the image of the confident auteur.

But looks can be deceiving. “If I hadn’t had cinema at a specific time of my life I wouldn’t have been able to communicate,” says Audiard when asked how he fell in love with the medium. “When I started, when it suggested itself to me and I was given the opportunity to make films, I was actually in a very deep depressive state.”

A decade spent in confinement writing scripts had taken its toll on the nascent filmmaker. “Fundamentally, deep down I wasn’t satisfied,” he says.

“Why? Because the life of a scriptwriter is very solitary, and I found myself fallen in a hole. Really, to go from the situation where I was talking only to myself to talking to more than two people per day was very helpful. I got better. Although not completely…”

086 the road ISSUE

FILMOGRAPHY Jacques Audiard A Prophet (2009) The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) Read My Lips (2001) A Self-Made Hero (1996) See How They Fall (1994)

The switch from writer to director helped Audiard open his eyes to the world around him. “Today I have a clearer vision because I think what defines a depressive person is that he no longer sees anything,” he says. In doing so, he came to understand the essence of cinema and the role of the filmmaker. “It really is an issue of communication for me,” he reveals. “If anyone said it was anything other than that, I wouldn’t understand. It’s about communication in the sense that you’re going to produce something that’s going to be seen and, you hope, understood by people that you don’t know. I’ve noticed one thing while I’ve been in London,” he continues, “which is that A Prophet doesn’t have the same meaning as when it’s shown in my country, but what I’m astonished about each time is that still something has been communicated.

I find that really moving.”

In France, the film’s reception was defined, in part, by the ongoing debate surrounding the country’s long-standing issues with post-colonial integration. A Prophet is based on an original screenplay by Abdel Raouf Dafri, whose recent Mesrine films also drew attention to the racism suffered by French Arabs, particularly those returning from Algeria.

“France indeed has a problem of integration,” admits Audiard. “Those populations at one point were part of an empire. It seems mad now but Algeria was a French département like any other département, like Île de France around Paris.” So what does he hope to add to the conversation through a character like Tahar Rahim’s Malik? “For me the fact that I made a film like A Prophet is because the cinema nowadays no longer resembles what I see in the street,” he says. “And why this genre? Because it produces a democratic effect. It produces figures that are going to be accepted by everyone. If I’d done a documentary and filmed Arabs as sociologically and culturally defined, I’d be creating an Arab hero; but first and foremost I’m creating a hero.”

And therein lies a second problem. Malik is a dangerously seductive figure – a murderer who blinds us with his irresistible charm and beaten innocence. But Audiard doesn’t believe that his film will make us fall for him. It is simply the case that “he is a character to whom the authors have given an interiority, and that’s not usual. Tony Montana in Scarface has no interiority. I don’t know what his nights are like, what he dreams.” And yet the director can’t help himself – he admits that while on set they toyed with ideas for where Malik might end up in A Prophet 2: “With the profile he has, I totally can imagine him as a local elected member of office,” he says with a smile. “First of all…”

Check out the full transcript online in the week of release.

A propheT DIRECTED BY Jacques Audiard STARRING Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif

This modern gangster classic fires the imagination with the epic sweep of The Godfather combined with a brutality that grabs you and won’t let go. Just like Goodfellas, the audience is soon immersed in the shifting hierarchy of a Mafia family, here augmented by a feudal prison system where everything has a price.

When young Arab hoodlum Malik (Tahar Rahim) finds himself incarcerated for six years in one of France’s toughest jails, he’s ostracised by devout Muslim inmates disgusted by his lack of faith; shunned by Corsican gangsters who rule the yard; and destined for a fate worse than death.

Adrift in a deadly no man’s land where an early scene illustrates that life inside is worth less than a pair of trainers, reality hits hard.

RELEASED January 22

Malik – barefoot in the bleakest winter of his young life – is stripped down from the outside in. Taken under the wing of Niels Arestrup’s Italian gang boss after proving his mettle as a murderer for hire, Malik is faced with a dark dilemma: be blackmailed into becoming a gobetween, or die a nobody. But the underdog has big ideas…

It’s a remarkable performance from big screen newcomer Rahim – the young Algerian’s portrayal of a hard fought rise through the ranks from fresh-faced innocent to ruthless kingpin is breathtaking.

Devoid of bombast, the audience is presented with the always convincing story of a man who has no choice but to adapt and survive in a claustrophobic prison system.

Audiard’s clever use of magic realism allows us to glimpse Malik’s

inner struggle with his own humanity as we return to the scene of his first hit – a disturbing quasi-religious baptism of blood with a razor. It’s one of many chilling spikes in a narrative not for the squeamish.

But it’s not just in the portrayal of the dehumanising effects of prison life – with its cigarette currency, drug addiction and brutal cell shakedowns – that A Prophet excels. As the story moves beyond the prison walls, some blistering set pieces recall the quick fire bravado of classic Melville, and the brooding pyrotechnics of Jules Dassin’s Rififi. Audiard has provided French cinema with a shot to the main vein that should be a callto-arms to a new generation of French filmmakers to do it their

way, concentrating on character and avoiding the pitfalls of Hollywood high concept.

Following on from the double-barrelled biopic of Mesrine, the Gallic gangster tradition appears to be in rude health. Audiard’s film is a triumph that deserves international recognition, but as with the likes of Gomorrah, films that tell it like it is reap their own rewards. Dan Brightmore

Anticipation. A gangster movie from the director of The Beat That My Heart Skipped?

Interesting choice.

Enjoyment. You’ll be engrossed, shocked, scared, surprised and overwhelmed by a true tour de force.

In Retrospect. Takes its place among the greatest crime films ever made.

087

exAM RELEASED January 8

DIRECTED BY Stuart Hazeldine STARRING Colin Salmon, Luke Mably, Nathalie Cox

Inside a windowless room, eight applicants await the most important test of their careers. Ultra-modern and unnervingly symmetrical, the room is nondescript save for an ominously poised stop-clock set to one side. As the candidates take their seats, a sombre invigilator sets out the rules: there is one job and one question. They have 80 minutes to answer it; that is, if they can find it.

As time ticks away, tensions in the group become strained – the increasingly claustrophobic catacomb amplifying the fierce rivalry and distrust that lace the air. Such an intimately constructed atmosphere necessitates strong characters, and in this respect Exam delivers with aplomb. Covering all

The boyS Are bAcK

corners of the cultural spectrum, our would-be employees choose to conceal their true identities, labelling themselves instead with the crudest of monikers. In a sort of inadvertent ode to Reservoir Dogs, White, Black, Blonde and Brown lead the inquisition, as the group begin to unravel the not-sotenuous thread that links them.

Debut director Stuart Hazeldine has got the casting spot on, particularly with Luke Mably as the ostentatious, charismatic White, whose bullish

bravado gives proceedings some much needed oomph. When ulterior motives are revealed, however, a pseudo-sci-fi subplot momentarily steers the film uncomfortably close to blockbuster territory. Thankfully Hazeldine reveals a timely and effective twist, reminding us that the best answer often derives from the simplest question.

Sharp editing and slick cinematography mean that, though talky in places, Exam will have you gripped right up until the stopclock strikes zero. And the climactic

clincher? Let’s just say it’s a real kicker – although you’ll be far too concerned with what happens next to get hung up on should-have-seen-it-coming contemplation. Adam Woodward

categorically ignoring any potential Wendys until their necessity can no longer be denied.

Clive Owen makes for a quietly charismatic Joe. Although often burdened with clunky dialogue, he compensates in the film’s smaller scenes, investing unmistakeable meaning in fewer words. There is a subtle kind of darkness that Owen lends Joe, rendering him an ambiguous character even in his obvious grief.

Joe is not only a man with a broken heart; he is also a man who may or may not have cheated

on his first wife; who left said wife (and son) to traipse after a pregnant equestrian; and who begins a flirtation with a new woman soon after his second wife’s death.

But the fact that we are never fully granted access to Joe is both a blessing (it prevents Boys from becoming nakedly manipulative) and a curse, as Joe remains an island throughout.

His children, on the other hand, are portrayed with painful and breathtaking verisimilitude.

Young Artie (Nicholas McAnulty) is an unbridled creature of almost

primordial power. It is an astonishing performance from the young actor that injects Boys with an intensity that galvanises it through a somewhat sedate third act. Alice Levick

Anticipation. Think The Apprentice, only if Alan Sugar were an unhinged sadist. Oh, wait…

Enjoyment. An industriously constructed and deftly executed British thriller to savour.

In Retrospect. Well acted, timely and original.

As a first-time feature, Exam is in the same class as Vincenzo Natali’s Cube.

RELEASED January 22

DIRECTED BY Scott Hicks STARRING Clive Owen, Laura Fraser, George MacKay Though based on the true story of journalist Simon Carr’s struggle to contend with being thrust into full-time single parenting after his wife’s death, The Boys Are Back strains admirably against the stereotypes which tend to weigh down such tales of the expected.

Joe Warr (Clive Owen) – weekend dad, sports journalist, British émigré – is devastated when his wife of two years, Katy (Laura Fraser), is taken by cancer. Although several maternal figures stalk the film’s periphery (Katy’s heartbroken mother, Barbara; fellow single parent Laura; brittle Hitchcock blonde, Flick) Joe and his kids (an older son from his first marriage becomes another member of this band of brothers) are the lost boys,

088 the road ISSUE

Anticipation. Clive Owen in a poignant tale of self-discovery. With child actors. And cancer.

Enjoyment. Owen is a reliably intriguing screen presence and the kids can actually act.

In Retrospect. Plucks at the heartstrings but also possesses an economy of emotion rare in a film of this genre.

OSS 117: Lost in Rio

RELEASED January 15

DIRECTED BY Michel Hazanavicius STARRING Jean Dujardin, Louise Monot, Rüdiger Vogler A bitesized antidote to the post-Christmas blues, OSS 117: Lost in Rio is a sunny visit to more glamorous climes for those of us who can’t afford to jet off for some winter sun. Gormless French spy Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath (a reprisal of the role from Jean Dujardin) is back for a second instalment, and this time he’s headed for South America to track down escaped Nazis with information on French collaborators.

Following a very similar formula to Cairo, Nest of Spies – or, indeed, the ’60s Bond films that are clearly a strong visual influence given Rio’s beautiful women, foreign baddies and arrogant, trigger-happy Western

buffoons – this second in the series is even heavier on the laughs than its predecessor.

The gags are packed in tight and are a satisfying mix of those you can see coming from far over the horizon and those that jump out to surprise, although there are few real laugh-out-loud moments. However, there is a compelling irony in darkly humorous twists such as a Nazi chief begging for mercy by reciting Shylock’s plea for compassion from The Merchant of Venice.

There’s visual humour too,

particularly in the never-ending split screen homages to old-new technology. Indeed, true to form, Maamar Ech-Cheikh’s art direction is impeccable, with an attention to detail and stylish scene-setting so lovingly rendered it’s like watching porn for the committed retro-revivalist.

This is not just a ’60s fetishist’s wet dream, however: it is 1967 filmed very much through a twenty-first-century lens. It is the distance afforded by this satirical approach that makes the more

Infamously pulled just prior to transmission on ITV in 1973, this documentary features intimate interviews with Andy Warhol and his garish entourage by acclaimed photographer David Bailey. Offering a fascinating insight into one of the 20th Century’s most influential cultural figures, Warhol makes remarkable viewing.

This edition also includes Bailey’s documentaries on photographer Cecil Beaton and film director Luchino Visconti, as well as a booklet containing original transcripts of the Warhol film.

AVAILABLE JANUARY 18

risqué moments palatable.

And yet, like a Shoreditch mullet, very occasionally you feel that perhaps there will never be enough distance for some jokes to seem acceptable. Prudence Ivey

Anticipation. The first one was perfectly enjoyable; this should be a nice way to pass a couple of hours.

Enjoyment. Witty, chic and clever. Will make you wish you were in Rio. In Retrospect. Fun but a bit forgettable.

090 the road ISSUE

ponyo DIRECTED BY Hayao Miyazaki STARRING Cate Blanchett, Noah Cyrus, Matt Damon

RELEASED February 12

There is much that connects the films of Pixar and Studio Ghibli.

Both are powerhouses of ‘criticproof ’ animated features, and both have a complicated relationship with Disney. Apart from Pixar’s predilection for all-CG productions, and Ghibli’s preference for handdrawn cels, perhaps the greatest difference between them rests in sensibility, conveniently summarised by one word: ‘wow’.

This is the word that opens Pixar’s oceanic adventure Finding Nemo, uttered by neurotic protagonist Marlin as a hypervivid vista splashes across the screen.

Ghibli’s latest, Ponyo, similarly opens with a multi-hued spectacle of underwater life, but writer/ director/genius Hayao Miyazaki chooses to let his viewers say ‘wow’ for themselves – and they will.

For Miyazaki, a picture tells a thousand words, and here there are 24 pictures per second, some resembling a child’s inchoate drawings rendered in pastel pens, others impossibly detailed, but all exquisitely beautiful and bizarre. Together they tell a story as desultory, magical and protean as the gods and wizards of a blighted sea.

With its aquatic protagonist who defies her father to join her earthbound beloved, in outline Ponyo is not too many leagues away from Hans Christian Andersen’s (or Disney’s) The Little Mermaid, but Miyazaki has made this story unmistakably his own.

An idiosyncratic focus on women in a seniors’ home recalls the aged heroine (and anti-heroine) from Miyazaki’s previous film Howl’s Moving Castle, while the morose, epicene figure cut by Ponyo’s alchemist father, Fujimoto (voiced

by Liam Neeson), suggests the mercurial Howl himself. The bolshy ebullience of Ponyo, whether

reTurn oF The King

in goldfish or human form (or somewhere in between), evokes the similarly toddler-aged Mei from My Neighbour Totoro, Totoro whereas the ecological concerns swimming below the surface of Ponyo are shared by virtually all of Miyazaki’s oeuvre – as is the imaginative exuberance and visual brilliance of the ideas on offer.

The love between Ponyo (Noah Cyrus) and five-year-old Sosuke (Frankie Jonas) may represent an unnatural merging of sea and land, but all its most fantastic elements are presented so matter-of-factly, and in such domesticated detail, that you too will imagine you are witnessing events through a young child’s unquestioning eyes – which makes the film’s simple, even naïve, message that much easier to swallow without drowning in sentiment.

For while here, as in Richard Kelly’s The Box, the fate of the world rests in the moral choice of two individuals, Miyazaki brings us a far more optimistic vision of nature, human or otherwise.

If, he suggests, we all loved sea-life in the same unconditional way that we love the members of our own family, many of the world’s environmental problems could immediately be resolved. And so Miyazaki marries that staple theme of children’s cinema – family values – to much broader issues of respect and responsibility.

At its heart, Ponyo is a film about a global catastrophe no less destructive than the shifting plates and rising waters of 2012. But the apocalypse has seldom seemed so light, joyous or tender. Anton Bitel

Anticipation. Miyazaki!!!

Enjoyment. ‘Wow!’ In Retrospect. It is naïve, but that is part of its charm.

091

The lAST STATion DIRECTED BY Michael Hoffman STARRING Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy

Without prior knowledge of Leo Tolstoy, author of the infamously long War and Peace, it’s difficult to imagine any movie fanatic clamouring to see a biopic of his life. But the calibre of the cast – including Helen Mirren in the latest of her ageing femme fatale roles that inspire lust and guilt in equal measure – may be enough to draw in the crowds.

Once in cinemas, audiences will be surprised to discover a world of passion, power and politics behind the closed covers of dusty old Russian literature.

Tolstoy is played by a vigorous Christopher Plummer, who portrays the ageing, wealthy and idiosyncratic author in the last months of his life as warmly and compellingly as a favourite uncle. A rich man spearheading a cult that shuns the excesses of

092 the road ISSUE

RELEASED February 19

modern life (celibacy, vegetarianism and pacifism feature heavily) and the trappings of wealth, Tolstoy himself remains keen to indulge in other areas of earthly pleasures.

Wife Sofya (Mirren) is permanently incensed at the idea that their collective wealth should be handed over to the Russian people after his death, as is the wish of dogmatic Tolstoyan Vladimir Chertkov (an almost unrecognisable Paul Giamatti). Enter wide-eyed acolyte Valentin (McAvoy), Tolstoy’s new assistant, sent to spy on the fraught household by Chertkov.

Director Michael Hoffman encourages us to engage deeply with these characters – the drama is in the dialogue, while the circusstyle plot of Tolstoy’s final days is secondary. Given a fine script, Giamatti’s brilliantly nuanced zealot and Mirren’s volatile, angry

wife are a joy to watch; their tense relationship constantly bubbling under the film like a pool of gas in search of a spark.

In a sea of talented actors, it’s Mirren who stands out – in her devious manipulation of McAvoy’s naïve Valentin, and her private and public moments with Plummer.

Their uninhibited sex appeal and her constant, childlike tantrums at his obsession with spirituality paint a vivid picture of a marriage as brimful of passion as it was of mistrust and anger. It’s a rare actress who can play a devious grasper intent on hoarding money from the masses and still remain likeable.

Hoffman injects as much wit, humour and pace into an essentially dry sequence of events as possible – the constant documenting of every word Tolstoy utters by lackeys is welcome comic relief. And yet even

the film’s ironclad performances can’t save The Last Station from a distinct lack of action.

After his death, Tolstoy’s funeral sparked mass mourning from hundreds of peasants. But many of these had no idea who Leo Tolstoy actually was, nor why they should care that he died. So many years and so many other interesting and horrifying mutations of communism later, why should we? Andrea Hubert

Anticipation. It’s party time for Tolstoy-loving cinephiles. Assuming they like to party.

Enjoyment. Compelling performances sustain three-quarters of the film. After that, it begins to repeat itself.

In Retrospect. The subject matter is fascinating, but a murder halfway through wouldn’t have gone amiss.

W O G L AS

G

L A N O I T A N R E T D N I R A T S W A BE M L I F T SHOR F10 F G R O EW F

N

19 - 21 FEBRUARY 09 WWW.GLASGOWFILMFESTIVAL.ORG.UK/SHORTS

7dZh[m A jj_d] Z_h$ ¼=Wbb_lWdj½" ¼?lkb½

EYjeX[h½i fWjhed

9^h_ij_d[ LWY^ed

fheZ$ ¼>Wff_d[ii½" ¼<Wh <hec >[Wl[d½" ¼7 :_hjo I^Wc[½

Del[cX[h½i fWjhed

9[b[XhWj_d] j^[ X[ij d[m Ä bci Xo ekh )+"&&&! c[cX[hi >_]^[ij lej[Z Ä bci m_bb h[Y[_l[ W f[hiedWb h[l_[m Xo ekh fWjhedi0 F[ddo MeebYeYa" H_Y^WhZ ; =hWdj" 9^h_ij_d[ LWY^ed" CWhj^W <_[dd[i" IWbbo Fejj[h$$$

F[ddo MeebYeYa

Z_h$ ¼J_dW ]e[i i^eff_d]½" ¼' :Wo½

:[Y[cX[h½i fWjhed

(%% Ã abh VgZ XVhi VcY XgZlZY ZVX] lZZ`# :m]^W^i ldg` id eZZgh! i]Z ^cYjhign VcY i]Z ldgaY#

h]ddi^c\eZdeaZ#dg\$lViX]

Malcolm Venville: Lucky Beast Interview by Limara Salt

There are plenty of first-time directors who are saddled with the prospect of extremely low budgets, sets consisting of local council estates, and a non-professional cast who don’t know the difference between a camera and a clapper-board. On the other hand, there’s Malcolm Venville, who was gifted with an original script from the writers of Sexy Beast, and a group of experienced, some might say legendary, British actors for his feature debut.

On the surface, 44 Inch Chest has all the trappings of a typical British gangster flick in which a group of spectacularly foul mouthed, suited-andbooted cockney geezers kidnap a waiter and hold him in a wardrobe, beaten and bloodied, until further notice. This is the man that Colin Diamond’s wife has suddenly announced that she is leaving him for. While teetering on the brink of total breakdown Colin (played by Ray Winstone) must decide over the course of the night whether or not to get his revenge and live with the consequences that come with it. But despite the violence and strong language, Venville sees this as a film about love.

“It’s so much about fragility and the danger of being in a relationship because Ray Winstone is a big man, a big man brought to his knees by a woman,” he says. “It’s generally a film about love and the dangers of love, that terrible feeling, that crushing, gargantuan pain and suffering. For me, it was this great combination of the giant physicality of Ray, the great danger of him, and the fragility of his emotions.”

Given the on-going vogue in the genre for lowest common denominator blood and guts, there’s a danger that people might not receive the message, although it’s tightly weaved into the script by Louis Mellis and David Scinto.

“I love the writers,” enthuses Venville, “they’re incredibly atmospheric and lyrical. They’re not your average, everyday kitchen-sink writers; they write seriously intense feelings in a poetic style. I was just thrilled and gripped to work with that kind of dialogue. A chance to get to work with them again would be incredible.”

Venville’s exuberant love for the film – and filmmaking – is borne out of a long wait for the right project after a fruitful career as a photographer.

After graduating from the Polytechnic of Central London, he worked as a photographer’s assistant before embarking on a freelance career in 1990 that led to several books and awards. Like most first-time directors he did a turn in adverts and commercials on both sides of the pond before getting interested in films. “I did so many commercials it turned out to be the best film school imaginable,” he says. “I started to become interested in features and as I got deep into commercials I inevitably hooked up with producers and writers and agents and managers and started seeking out the right project. I waited a long time for it, for 44 Inch Chest.”

When quizzed on why so many directors from the world of advertising end up moving smoothly into the larger arena of feature films, Venville

094 the road ISSUE

FILMOGRAPHY Malcolm Venville 44 Inch Chest (2009)

remarks, “What’s so great about it is that you’re shooting these tiny little stories that involve actors and editing and lenses and photography and performance. You’re continually rehearsing it, so you’re sort of match fit.

Music videos have kind of died away now so commercials are really the only breeding ground apart from theatre and a few other areas.”

Venville’s experience in photography and advertisements undoubtedly came in handy given the lack of visual freedom that was a consequence of setting the entire film in an abandoned warehouse. The inspiration for the bleak palette stemmed from several sources. “I’m very inspired by painters like Michelangelo and Caravaggio, those kind of history painters from Italy, and some photography as well. I love English movies by people like Powell and Pressburger, and Hitchcock; Hitchcock was a great director of cinematic movies in small places. Movies like Rear Window, which really all took place in one room, were a great inspiration for this.”

At its core, 44 Inch Chest is a love story and a subtle inversion of our expectations. Colin’s breakdown puts him in a position that has rarely been explored through male characters. The film begins with him in a pitiful state amongst the ruins of the home he built with his wife during 21 years of marriage, as Harry Nilsson’s ‘Without You’ plays in the background. His friends rally around him and vow to support his decision no matter what it is – a situation that could easily have been lifted from the latest Katherine Heigl movie. But this is a man who has brutally attacked his wife; should we support him? Is it misogynistic? Who knows? Because Venville doesn’t.

“That’s such a huge question,” he admits. “I always felt that it was going to be a huge issue for women, it’s very difficult as a man to answer that question. The fact is, when he hits his wife, he crosses that line and hitting his wife ends it, it destroys their marriage and just destroys his family life and everything is broken. It’s his remorse for that crime that the film really is about. It’s pathetic, it’s about a pathetic act and it’s the punishment of that act that the film is really investigating.”

When we spoke, Venville was only a few days away from his next project, Henry’s Crime, a Capraesque romantic comedy written by Sacha Gervasi and starring Keanu Reeves and Vera Farmiga. Despite the swift change in genre, Venville’s interest with all his future films remains the same. “I think more than anything I’m interested in one particular idea; if I can find a really good idea to investigate in a movie then that’s what drives me forward.”

Though remaining excited about his future prospects, he isn’t entirely immune to a bout of homesickness. “Yeah, you know, I miss working with English actors already but I think a good actor is a good actor no matter where you find them in the world.”

Check out the full interview online in the week of release.

44 inch cheST RELEASED January 22

DIRECTED BY Malcolm Venville STARRING Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson

Writers Louis Mellis and David Scinto sure know how to give a firsttime director a story to work with.

Colin Diamond (Ray Winstone) is a gangster, a geezer and a broad-chested man’s man. But you wouldn’t know it from the opening shot. Staring blankly at the ceiling in a pool of sweat and tears, Colin is a broken man. After arriving home with flowers and chocolates, he’s been informed by his wife that she doesn’t love him anymore and is leaving him for another man.

Unable to cope, he turns to his henchmen who rally around him, kidnap ‘Loverboy’ and keep him bloodied and battered in a wardrobe until Colin can figure out if he wants to follow through with the promise of ripping his skin off with his teeth, and what the ramifications of his actions will be for him and his wife.

As with their best-known screenplay, Sexy Beast, Mellis and Scinto have intertwined gangster and love stories in an original and impressive way while retaining a sense of simplicity.

But that isn’t the most intriguing part. Everything about 44 Inch Chest questions the outdated idea of what it means to be a man, with Colin’s loyal gang of four all representative of masculinity – or the lack thereof – in different ways.

Archie (Tom Wilkinson) is a reliable right-hand man who still lives at home with his mum.

Old Man Peanut (John Hurt) is the traditional type who keeps his wife at home where she belongs.

There is Peanut’s malicious son, Mal (Stephen Dillane), and Meredith (Ian McShane) – hedonistic, calculating, violent and gay.

Each encourages Colin to exact a slow and malicious revenge on Loverboy, but their individual takes on the situation and differing words of support are more reminiscent of a chick flick than a gangster film. Strip away the effing and blinding and it becomes clear that Colin has taken on the stereotypically female role of agonised indecision.

This is a thrilling and unexpected deconstruction of masculinity, the male ego and gender roles.

Colin is a loving husband who has apparently done nothing wrong; his wife is the adulterer who ran away with a younger model. We should despise her and feel for him.

But we’re never put in a position to empathise with Colin – although he may be hurt, he is still capable of violence. But that’s life: too messy

and convoluted to take sides.

Malcolm Venville’s intriguing and entertaining debut manages to question without patronising.

And he’s extracted a magnificent performance from Winstone, who personifies the anatomy of a breakdown, swaying seamlessly from hurt to anger to violence to terror. And as Peanut says: all because of a woman. Limara Salt

Anticipation. The team behind Sexy Beast reunite. Potentially another classic on our hands.

Enjoyment. Blessedly original, hugely entertaining and surprisingly funny depiction of a breakdown.

In Retrospect. A ray of sunshine in a dour genre and guaranteed conversation starter long after the credits roll.

095

breAThleSS

RELEASED January 29

DIRECTED BY Yang Ik-joon STARRING Yang Ik-joon, Kim Kot-bi, Jeong Man-shik

Debt collector Sang-hoon (Yang Ik-joon) is never short of breath.

He is, in fact, a perpetual insult machine, spitting out offensive epithets to anybody who crosses his path. And his bite is worse than his bark. Breathless is an articulation of violence, a tone-poem to the dehumanising brutality that defines Sang-hoon’s professional and personal lives. Struggling with a father recently released from jail and a sister attempting to lead a normal suburban life with her son, he is a torrent of anger and festering resentment. But hope arrives in the form of a schoolgirl, Yeon-hue (Kim Kot-bi), who, after she has been physically assaulted by Sang-hoon, decides that he’s not so bad after all. This is a strange and occasionally trite debut from Ik-joon, but one that evinces a real talent in the making. Matt Bochenski

AdorATion

RELEASED January 29

DIRECTED BY Atom Egoyan STARRING Scott Speedman, Arsinée Khanjian, Devon Bostick

A powerful and provocative meditation on identity, family and the pervasive role of technology, Adoration is leant added resonance by its location in a world ruled by paranoia and suspicion. Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian), a high-school teacher, gives her class a translation exercise based on a news story about a terrorist who plants a bomb in the airline luggage of his pregnant girlfriend. The assignment has a profound effect on Simon (Devon Bostick), whose decision to imbue the item with his own troubled family history sparks an internet sensation. Populated with rich characters and woven with the common threads that characterise the perennially fascinating work of Atom Egoyan, Adoration’s impressive array of ideas is matched by its visual beauty and narrative ingenuity. Jason Wood

096 the road ISSUE

blur: no diSTAnce leFT To run

RELEASED January 19

DIRECTED BY Dylan Southern, Southern Will Lovelace STARRING Damon Albarn, Alex James, Graham Coxon

Easy as it is to hate reunion tour films, this doesn’t exactly fit the bill.

Blur aren’t milking their fanbase for every last penny; they’re (still) four talented blokes who, after a six-year hiatus, thought it might be nice to play a few gigs together. As a record company-sanctioned film, initially this has a school reunion vibe – a bit awkward, a bit pointless – but once the selfconsciousness subsides, the nostalgic reverie flows very nicely. There are still sore spots (discussing his alcoholism, Coxon relies on the euphemistic ‘spending too much time with the painters and decorators down the pub’) so don’t expect any heart-stopping revelations. That said, exclusive behindthe-scenes rehearsal footage does reveal Coxon requesting Crunchie bars for the band’s rider. Rock ‘n’ roll lives. Sophie Ivan

MugAbe And The whiTe AFricAn

RELEASED January 8

DIRECTED BY Andrew Thompson, Lucy Bailey STARRING Michael Campbell, Ben Freeth

When a farmer dares to defy President Robert Mugabe before a recently formed international tribunal, ironies abound. Not only is Michael Campbell, the ‘White African’ of this documentary’s provocative title, accusing a one-time hero of the Zimbabwean liberation movement of racism, but to get to the court in Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, Campbell must first drive down Robert Mugabe Avenue. Still, nothing quite sharpens irony like the constant (and soon realised) threat of home invasions, beatings and worse – and so Campbell’s brave challenge to Zimbabwe’s ‘land reform’ policies ends up putting on trial far broader injustices within the Mugabe regime. Here, one family’s catastrophe, filmed covertly to avoid a press ban, reflects a whole nation brought to its knees by a self-serving despot. Anton Bitel

winTer in wArTiMe

RELEASED January 29

DIRECTED BY Martin Koolhoven STARRING Martijn Lakemeier, Yorick van Wageningen, Jamie Campbell Bower

Dutch war movies – think the Girl With the red hair, Soldier of orange or Black Book – can be peculiarly bleak affairs but also tend towards the complex, morally equivocal and overtly realistic. Martin Koolhoven’s tale of a boy helping a fugitive RAF pilot offers stunning lowland snowscapes but is hamstrung by truncated plotlines and unexplored relationships among the major players. Weakest of all is a somnambulant Jamie Campbell Bower – pivotal as downed flyboy Jack but whose model good looks can’t compensate for being handed a ludicrous escape scene and some of the duffest lines outside of a War Picture Library comic book. The film is at its best addressing the doomed compromises necessary for life under a brutal occupation, but fails to escape its origins as a children’s novel. Paul Fairclough

bATTle For TerrA

RELEASED February 12

DIRECTED BY Aristomenis Tsirbas STARRING Evan Rachel Wood, Luke Wilson, Mark Hamill

Cute aliens, Star Wars-style space fighters and an inter-species friendship that blossoms as characters learn to put aside their differences and work together – all in exciting 3D. Battle For Terra ticks every Saturday morning, family fun box; but this is a multi-dimensional Trojan horse.

Sombre messages and ethical grey areas are found within, as Evan Rachel Wood voices a young Terrian girl, Mala, who makes friends with a crashlanded human (Luke Wilson). He is part of an invasion force that has come to take over the planet, and as their friendship develops, the pair are left with conflicted loyalties and difficult choices. Battle for Terra is subtle and poignant, but it is also confusing, implausible and serious without respite.

Take the family; just know what you’re in for. Jonathan Willliams

My FATher My lord

RELEASED December 26

DIRECTED BY David Volach STARRING Assi Dayan, Sharon Hacohen, Ilan Griff

A strict orthodox rabbi does his utmost to protect his young son from the corruptions of the outside world despite the child’s burgeoning independence and curiosity. However, a fateful day out at the Dead Sea puts the rabbi’s spiritual faith to the test. With a simple, circular narrative, which is wrapped up in a lean 73 minutes, My Father My Lord is a perfectly formed drama from Israeli writer/director David Volach. A delicate and elegantly executed interpretation of the Abraham and Isaac parable, the film is also a compassionate, humane commentary, intimately dissecting the dangers of fundamentalism from personal experience (Volach was raised as part of a separatist Haredi community in Jerusalem before leaving to pursue a filmmaking career). Lee Griffiths

The iSlAnd

RELEASED February 5

DIRECTED BY Pavel Lungin STARRING Pyotr Mamonov, Viktor Sukhorukov, Dmitriy Dyuzhev

When a Russian barge is captured by the Germans in 1942, a young worker, Anatoli, is forced to kill his captain by the Nazis. Thirty years later, Anatoli, now a world-worn old man living like a hermit on a remote island monastery, spends most of his time alone with his unremitting guilt, while the island’s locals have come to see him as some sort of prophet and healer.

A slow and sometimes testing parable of sin, faith and redemption, Pavel Lungin’s film escapes impenetrable tedium thanks mainly to a captivating central performance by former Russian music luminary Pyotr Mamonov.

A curious set of supporting characters ensures that the film isn’t without a subtle sense of humour, while Andrei Zhegalov’s stark photography radiates an eerie and mesmerising beauty throughout. Lee Griffiths

097

27

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY KAROLIN SCHNOOR

099 99

“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.”

Nobody knows the source of that quote, but chances are they were anticipating the third annual LWLies tribute to the year’s lost souls. From the much missed to the merely maligned, we give the acting world’s dearly departed the obitcharies they deserve.

CHRISTIAN BALE’S REPUTATION

JANUARY 30, 1974 – FEBRUARY 2, 2009 Christian Bale spent many years forging a sterling reputation as Hollywood’s Mr Nice Guy whether as lovable rogue Patrick Bateman in American Psycho or The Machinist’s happy-go-lucky Trevor Reznik. It was dedication to his fans, and in particular his fondness for his mother and sister, that cemented his standing in the national psyche. Knighthoods were pencilled in, keys to many a city were being polished and there were even murmurs that Esther Rantzen might award the adored actor a Heart of Gold.

But one day on a hot July afternoon in 2008,

100 the road ISSUE

tragedy struck. Bale, tired after working late the night before at a downtown soup kitchen, sadly lost his angelic temperament – with fatal consequences for his rock solid reputation. This altercation took place on the set of Terminator Salvation where a sardonic director of photography had devoted himself to maliciously goading the saintly actor.

During one particularly heart-melting rendition from Bale, the DP had the gall to move into his eye-line. Such torment was too much for the downtrodden thespian to bear and he let rip a torrent of abuse. Phrases such as, ‘What don’t you fucking

understand?’ ‘For fuck’s sake, man, you’re amateur!’ and ‘I want you off the fucking set, you prick!’ struck mortal blows to the Bale of old.

As Bale had many philanthropic engagements over the festive season, including dressing up as Father Christmas for a local orphanage and working several shifts at the Samaritans, the outburst was promptly covered up, granting his reputation a temporary reprieve. But in February 2009, bitter and brooding forces leaked the outburst to the press and his respectable stature perished in full public view. ED ANDREWS

MICHAEL JACKSON AUGUST 29, 1958 – JUNE 25, 2009 Forget Farrah Fawcett (and we did), truth is, even Princess Diana would have been overshadowed by the top trump in the celebrity death stakes.

Michael Jackson’s demise left fans in a deranged frenzy, while the rest of us pondered society’s mental collapse. MJ may have moonwalked his way through the pearly gates, but his spirit will live on, stitched into the public psyche like so much cheap merchandise. Touching generation after generation, when the King of Pop let his music do the talking he was unsurpassed. Off record he was a complex

fellow, with a face that made Pete Burns look like a Dove spokesperson. You have to wonder whether he ever thought to tone down the crazy and take a good hard look at the man in the mirror. Seeing as he left Diana Ross as the potential guardian to his kids, you’ve got to assume probably not. Personal indiscretions aside, it is his contribution to cinema that we salute with a solitary, diamond-encrusted mitt. From his dazzling cameo as the wannabe Agent M in Men in Black II, to… Actually, that was pretty much it. Can we get a ‘cha-mon’? ADAM WOODWARD

PATRICK SWAYZE

AUGUST 18, 1952 – SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

BROMANCE 300BC – 2009AD

DAVIDCARRADINE DECEMBER 8, 1936 – JUNE 3, 2009

David Carradine spent his life mastering the finer points of martial arts. Such were his skills that this white American could look uncannily like a man from South East Asia in 1970s television series Kung Fu. But it was in his role as Bill, in Quentin Tarrantino’s Kill Bill, that this Zenmaster would shine, mustering decades of training to cope with the tedium of listening to Quentin Tarantino talk about how great Quentin Tarantino is. But life for Carradine was forever a journey, and he wouldn’t rest on his laurels, learning new moves up until the very end. However, this dedication ended in failure when he attempted to master the five-point-exploding-palm-chokehold while staying in a Bangkok hotel. The fact that it looked like a tragic wanking accident was merely an unfortunate coincidence. EA

For the past few years, cinemagoers have had big love for man-love, but 2009 saw the comedy genre’s guiltiest pleasure finally run its course. Originally conceived by Aristotle around 300BC (seriously, look it up) bromance may be a long-established staple, but in recent times it has become little more than a lazy umbrella term. Now, thanks to the overactive homosocial antics of Judd Apatow, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, this cuddly, inoffensive brand of BFF buggery has started wearing thinner than the elastic on Adam Sandler’s slacks. Ever since Seth and Evan touched broners back in 2007’s Superbad, Hollywood’s funny fellas have been frantically scrambling aboard the ubiquitous man-love boat, eagerly coupling off and hugging it out in a warm, white mess of emotions and feelings. It wasn’t always this way. There was a time when men were men; when onscreen chums could open up and still share those tender moments without being so limp-dicked about it. Butch and Sundance, Riggs and Murtaugh, Han and Chewie, hell, even Timon and Pumba could get a bit bromantic from time to time without getting all mushy. Today’s Swingers have matured into sissies, odd couples have become ordinary, and Paul Rudd has become the gauchely mawkish poster boy for the twenty-first-century man. Enough! AW

When it came to a contribution to the world, Swayze was far more than just People magazine’s ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ 1991. Beyond being a hefty slab of ladies’ delight, Swayze was a man of principle and was always ready to stand up for what he believed to be right. And if there was one thing that Swayze hated more than anything, it was babies being put in corners. He lived by this mantra, giving lectures on the spatial issues affecting childcare, and in the summer of 2000, he funded the construction of a maternity unit in the shape of an igloo. It was by far his proudest moment, and the keen amateur pilot celebrated by getting drunk with his dog and crashing a plane in northern Arizona. Since his tragic death, Whoopi Goldberg is said to have been acting rather strangely, and has tried on several occasions to get off with Demi Moore. EA

101

K E E G F O H T A THE DE

Dear Mr Shatner You might remember me from last year’s Comic Con (you signed my copy of your book, ‘To My Biggest Fan’). I didn’t get a chance to talk to you properly then, what with security keeping a watchful eye out, so I thought it best to seek your counsel in writing. The universe is hanging in the balance. The final frontier has been breached. Everywhere I look, it’s now ‘chic’ (whatever that means) to be geek.

Conventions these days are chock full of clowns who couldn’t tell a targ from a tribble. Great Spock’s goatee, if I see one more inferior Klingon costume, I will have no option but to set my phaser off stun.

I ask you, when did it become cool to be a Trekkie?

It seems that 2009’s USS Enterprise mission sent the world’s obsession with our kind into warpdrive.

While the film wasn’t exactly The Wrath of Khan, I will admit that JJ Abrams did manage to break the curse, and in fairness did your NCC-1701 crew more than justice (although the void left by your personal absence was insurmountable).

Resultantly, however, I fear it may not be long before we start seeing more and more people joining The Academy. We cannot allow such sacrilege to imperil our beloved Starfleet. It is simply illogical.

Your leadership is now needed more than ever, Captain. Thus I implore you to dust off your communicator for one final voyage and guide us through these dark times, before it is too late.

SEPTEMBER 8, 1966 – MAY 8, 2009 102 the road ISSUE

IN MEMORIAM

HORTON JOSEPH

FOOTE WISEMAN

MAY 15, 1918 – OCTOBER 19, 2009

MARCH 14, 1916 – MARCH 4, 2009

Once described by a colleague as ‘America’s Chekhov’, Foote’s finest hour came when adapting Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird for the screen in 1962.

DOM

He may not have had a golden gun, cobalt canines or been Christopher Walken, but as original big screen Bond baddie Dr No, Joseph Wiseman will forever be remembered as one of cinemas most sinister super villains.

MICHELLE

DELUISE TRIOLA SHOUT-OUTS TO THE RECENTLY DECEASED

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Pat HINGLE Ricardo MONTALBÁN Horton FOOTE Dom DELUISE Wayne ALLWINE Budd SCHULBERG John HUGHES Joseph WISEMAN Michelle TRIOLA Edward WOODWARD

PAT

AUGUST 1, 1933 – MAY 4, 2009

NOVEMBER 13, 1933 – OCTOBER 30, 2009

They say never trust a skinny chef. On that sentiment, Dom DeLuise was probably one of the most honourable actors around. Still, probably wouldn’t have advised leaving him alone with your carbonara.

Best (only) known for her failed lawsuit against actor Lee Marvin. Although they were never married, Marvin vs Marvin was an infamous case in US law history. Kramer vs Kramer it wasn’t, but it has that begging-for-an-adaptation ring to it, dontcha think?

WAYNE

ALLWINE

FEBRUARY 7, 1947 – MAY 18, 2009 Allwine was named a Disney Legend in 2008 for voicing none other than Mickey Mouse from 1977 until his death in May (Allwine’s, not Mickey’s).

He was inducted along with his wife Russi Taylor, the long-serving voice of Minnie.

BUDD HINGLE SCHULBERG JULY 19, 1924 – JANUARY 3, 2009

MARCH 27, 1914 – AUGUST 5, 2009

Most recognised as Commissioner Jim Gordon in his four Batman appearances between 1989 and 1997, Hingle cut his teeth in theatre before landing a breakthrough role in On The Waterfront in 1954.

His award-winning screenplay for On The Waterfront carved Schulberg’s name into the woodwork of American cinema. At 95, he was much more than just a contender.

EDWARD

WOODWARD

JUNE 1, 1930 – NOVEMBER 16, 2009 Having survived his parents’ apparent stab at humour, The Wicker Man star became not only a cult hero, but was considered by his peers to be one of Britain’s most versatile actors. AW

JOHN MONTALBÁN HUGHES RICARDO

NOVEMBER 25, 1920 – JANUARY 14, 2009

FEBRUARY 18, 1950 – AUGUST 6, 2009

Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino had a career that spanned seven decades, but his most iconic role came as superhuman super villain Khan in the original Star Trek series.

As understated in death as he was in life. Hughes became the voice of a generation in the late ’80s, bringing Bueller, Uncle Buck and The Breakfast Club to the big screen and reshaping the comedy landscape.

103

104 the road ISSUE

cinematic obstacles – high piracy, low theatre penetration, poor distribution – and has stayed there to produce his third film, Tales From The Golden Age, a charming comedy of the Ceausescu years, available on DVD from February 8.

Cristian Mungiu on how you follow up a masterpiece, and the grim times facing Romanian filmmaking.

What do you do when you’ve won the Palme d’Or? It’s a tough enough question to crack the most seasoned of filmmakers, but Cristian Mungiu was only 39-years-old when he achieved that remarkable feat with his second film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days. It’s the kind of precocious breakthrough that can propel a director on a whirlwind of publicity and acclaim, and beyond that, to a lifetime spent looking back at a premature career peak.

Mungiu, however, has avoided that trap. Using the impetus gained from global success, he returned to Romania to tackle the country’s systemic

LWLies. After the success of 4 Months, was there a period where you thought, ‘Shit, what do I do next?’

Mungiu. Well, 4 Months was my second film, so I’d already spent some years thinking, ‘What now?’ This happens to every filmmaker after every film because no matter how successful you’ve been with your previous film, it doesn’t help you a bit. After you make a film that was successful, it’s like having a dead body – you can take a look at what’s inside but it’s not going to help you make it into a living person again.

The only thing you can do is put yourself into a position of being open, focussed and to start writing and not spend too much time thinking about things. You bake some ingredients but you can’t know how the recipe will turn out.

LWLies. Why did you settle on a portmanteau film?

Mungiu. I was very happy that I could deliver this project in between my films as an author because this is such a different project than the last one: it’s a collective film, it’s an episodic film, it involves people that I know, plus it’s a comedy. Cinema is entertainment for 90 per cent of filmgoers, so I said, ‘Look, there’s a way of making entertainment and still not being stupid.’ Entertainment shouldn’t just be simple-minded American-made films; there are ways of making people laugh while still saying something serious.

LWLies. After you won the Palme d’Or, you got involved in an initiative to educate Romanians about cinema. How’s that going?

Mungiu. I can’t say that real progress has been made. It’s a matter of political will but politics in Romania is very inconsistent. After two years of being used as a model of success in an emerging country, nobody did anything decisive to take advantage of the good moment that Romanian cinema was enjoying, in terms of structure, in terms of financing, in terms of education.

We were on our own.

LWLies. It seems strange that there’s no political will to transform Romanian cinema when it’s such a great cultural ambassador.

Mungiu. This is what we are saying all the time: if you invest in cinema, it’s way better as a promotion for the country than if you buy lots of stupid advertising. But the country is so poor now – they don’t have money for pensions and retired people. So whenever you go and talk to the government they say, ‘I understand you but it’s my last preoccupation. I’m just trying to find money to pay salaries next month.’

LWLies. What is the attitude of the Romanian people towards cinema?

Mungiu. The problem right now is that people enjoy watching films but everybody associates watching a film with watching it on a personal laptop or on TV or on DVD. The general idea in Romania is that films are public goods – you don’t need to pay to watch a film. Piracy is so widespread that people believe you must be some kind of asshole to pay for a ticket. MATT BOCHENSKI

105

AVAILABLE D E C E M B E R 2 8

1941 DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG, 1979

In the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attacks, a ragtag group of men assemble to protect California’s shores from future invasion. A comic case of paranoid hysteria follows in Spielberg’s infamous World War II box office flop. JB

AVAILABLE J A N U A R Y 1 1

SPRING AND PORT WINE

DIRECTED BY

PETER

HAMMOND,

1970

This rare British classic is based on a play by the socially conscious Bill Naughton, who also wrote the screenplay. It stars James Mason as the working-class Rafe Crompton, a man whose old fashioned bible-bashing ways eventually antagonise his family, including his pregnant teenage daughter. PE

THE GOLD DIGGERS THE HIDE DIRECTED BY SALLY POTTER, 1983

The Gold Diggers is Sally Potter’s first feature, an experimental masterpiece from one of Britain’s greatest filmmakers that now receives a long overdue release on DVD, backed by an archival interview and an essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum. JM

AVAILABLE J A N U A R Y 4 HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS

DIRECTED BY MAREK LOSEY, 2008

Marek Losey continues in the family tradition of filmmaking with this macabre adaptation of Tim Whitnall’s critically acclaimed play The Sociable Plover. When obsessive bird watcher Roy (Alex Macqueen) is interrupted by an odd stranger, it starts a deadly game of cat and mouse. LS

DIRECTED BY DAVID SWIFT, 1967

DIRECTED BY MICHAEL CARRERAS, 1968

J Pierpont-Finch (Robert Morse), a humble window-cleaner, learns to climb the corporate ladder in David Swift’s snappy ’60s musical.

Bullshit and backstabbing abound as Finch bullies his way to the top of the business world with the help of a comely secretary (Michele Lee).

Not much has changed, huh? HB

Like The Wicker Man, The Lost Continent offers proof that Hammer Horror occasionally produced something outside of their usual fangs-and -screaming fare. What begins as a high seas adventure mutates into a psychedelic assault of cult religions, corny monsters and hostile plants – heady stuff. IV

THE BEAST STALKER

TICKLE

Dante Lam returns with this non-stop, action packed kidnap thriller that’s already been heralded as one of Hong Kong’s great action films. It’s not as good as Beast Cops, but what is? LS

106 the road ISSUE

DIRECTED BY LAWRENCE HUNTINGTON, 1946 Robert Newton stars in this post-war spy melodrama-slash-espionage thriller as a highranking intelligence officer going undercover to track down a Swedish scientist whose work developing an atomic bomb is being leaked to the Nazis. CN

THE PROUD VALLEY

DIRECTED

BY

PEN

TENNYSON,

1940

This overlooked leftist British classic examines the dangers of coal mining in the Welsh valleys.

It stars Paul Robeson as a miner with a talent for singing who is called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice when there is a pit disaster. The film fully utilises Robeson’s under-appreciated talents. PE

AVAILABLE J A N U A R Y 1 8

THE LOST CRY, THE BELOVED

WITHOUT REALLY TRYING C O N T I N E N T

DIRECTED BY DANTE LAM, 2008

NIGHT BOAT TO DUBLIN

DIRECTED BY

NORMAN

ME

TAUROG,

1965

One of the many thrown-together studio romps starring Elvis Presley, this one single-handedly saved the Allied Artists studio from bankruptcy. Meshing as many genres as possible – western, musical, comedy and a good ol’ fashioned gold hunt – into its 87 minutes results in some unrelenting kitsch fun. LS

COUNTRY DIRECTED

BY

Z O LTA N

KORDA,

1952

Apartheid drama, based on the acclaimed novel in which a Zulu priest comes to 1940s Johannesburg to find his sister and son, only to discover his son on trial, accused of murdering the offspring of a wealthy – and white – landowner. JB

HOWLING II DIRECTED

BY

PHILIPPE

MORA,

1985

Schlocky sequel to Joe Dante’s 1981 cult horror.

Howling II turns up the terror meter, enlisting the services of horror icon Christopher Lee, who later admitted his only reason for accepting the part was that he’d never been in a werewolf movie before. AW

DIRECTED BY PETER COLLINSON, 1971

Before 1979’s When A Stranger Calls, before 1978’s Halloween, even before 1974’s Black Christmas, Susan George’s babysitter was already facing terror inside the house in this pioneering proto-slasher. AB

THE SECRET PEOPLE DIRECTED BY THOROLD DICKINSON, 1952

This suspenseful 1952 post-noir crime drama is most notable for landing Audrey Hepburn her first major role in a feature film. An underrated British thriller thoroughly deserved of a restored release. AW

SUSPIRIA DIRECTED

BY

DARIO

ARGENTO,

197 7

There is nothing quite like Argento’s nightmarish 1977 classic of macabre surrealism, and this brand new high-definition transfer should do full justice to its spellbinding design, lighting and soundtrack. AB

AVAILABLE J A N U A R Y 2 5

R oo m 3 6 DIRECTED

BY

Jim

Groom,

2002

Described by no less an authority than the Daily Sport as a ‘gutsy and startlingly original film’, Room 36 is a sweaty, seedy guilt trip of a movie in which a prostitute, a hitman, a politician and a lecherous guest get their wires fatally crossed in the titular hotel room. LS

GAEA GIRLS CAUGHT IN THE DRAFT DIRECTED BY KIM LONGINOTTO, JANO WILLIAMS, 1995/2000 These two documentaries guide the viewer through different Japanese subcultures (the transgender club scene and female wrestling respectively), with issues of sexual and cultural identity never far away. AB

DIRECTED

BY

DAVID

BUTLER,

1941

One of the many films in Bob Hope’s back catalogue featuring his regular love interest Dorothy Lamour, this is a typically zany allsinging, all-dancing screwball comedy. LS

LUBITSCH IN BERLIN: R A I S I N G MASTERS OF CINEMA BOX SET DIRECTED BY ERNST LUBITSCH, 1918-1921

Before arriving in Hollywood, Ernst Lubitsch created a catalogue of sophisticated and measured films that examined relationships and individual lives. Featuring Die Puppe (1919) and Anna Boleyn (1920), this collection can be appreciated by anyone sick of lazy rom-coms. LS

THE WI ND DIRECTED

BY GERALD THOMAS , 1961 Before going on to make the entire series of Carry On films, Gerald Thomas made this college caper in which a bunch of music students share a house to split the costs. Kenneth Williams and Sid James both show up. LS

UNE FEMME MARIÉE THE SIEGE OF DIRECTED BY

JEAN-LUC

GODARD,

1964

This monochrome series of portraits is considered to be the missing link in Godard’s filmography. Previously out of circulation, stunning cinematography and funny tales make this a must for Godard fans and those who have yet to discover him. LS

AVAILABLE F E B R U A R Y 8 IN THE ELECTRIC

DIRECTED BY TOMOMI MOCHIZUKI, 1993

MIST

This made-for-TV anime is one of Studio Ghibli’s lesser-known movies, a naturalistic tale of a love triangle that offers a nice contrast to the magical tales that tend to define their style. JM

Praised and panned in equal measure, this ambitious fantasy drama is both an adaptation of James Lee Burke’s novel and a sequel to 1996’s Heaven’s Prisoners starring Alec Baldwin. LS

THE OCEAN WAVES

AVAILABLE F E B R U A R Y 1 5

DIRECTED BY BERTRAND TAVERNIER, 2009

PINCHGUT DIRECTED

BY

HARRY

W AT T ,

1959

After escaping from prison, Matt Kirk (Aldo Ray) and his accomplices leave Sydney harbour by boat and end up on Pinchgut Island where they’re forced to take a family hostage as the police close in. An enthralling old-school classic. LS

THE PRINCE

AND THE PAUPER DIRECTED BY RICHARD FLEISCHER, 197 7

The classic novel by Mark Twain gets yet another adaptation, but although the story may be well known, the cast – Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, Mark Lester and Charlton Heston – bring something new to the table. LS

WORDS BY HENRY BARNES, JAMES BENEFIELD, ANTON BITEL, PRISCILLA EYLES, JAMES MANSFIELD, CHRISTOPHER NEILAN, LIMARA SALT, IAN VIGGARS, ADAM WOODWARD

F R I G H T SHINJUKU BOYS

107

There are plenty of contenders for the title of ‘Queen of French cinema’, what with the langueur of Catherine Deneuve; the sangfroid of Juliette Binoche; the je ne sais quoi of Sophie Marceau.

But if it came down to a fight (and God, that would be awesome) the steely sexuality of Isabelle Huppert would win the day.

In a career that has lasted more years than would be polite to mention, Huppert has done everything and worked with everyone.

New Wave legends? How about Claude Chabrol? International maestros? Try Otto Preminger. American iconoclasts? What about Michael Cimino and David O Russell? Not to mention the likes of André Techiné, Bertrand Tavernier and Claire Denis.

But it was in her role as a supporter of new talent that she came to work on Ursula Meier’s Home. A darker-thanexpected tale of familial dissolution and the psychic shock of being uprooted, it is a fine debut held together by Huppert’s characteristically imperious performance.

As the film prepares for its DVD release on January 25, the actress spoke exclusively to LWLies.

LWLies. You’ve been based in Paris most of your life, do you miss your own home when you’re away?

Huppert. Do I miss my roots? Not in the same way that I would in this film because there is no danger that I would be withdrawn from my roots or my home. I like to be away actually.

LWLies. Is that a prerequisite of being an actress – that you have to have expanded horizons?

Huppert. Yes, but when you are away doing movies you are not really away. It’s not like being in the middle of nowhere with nobody – it’s a very secure way of being away. You are able to recreate your little space and your little home. The movie set itself is like a home, it’s so protected.

LWLies. Michael Caine once said that he’s been acting for so long that he doesn’t really get directed anymore. Is that true for you too?

Huppert. It depends what you call being ‘directed’. I never really feel ‘directed’ but I always feel ready for new experiences, new encounters. Direction for an actor means so many other elements that are not strictly being directed. It has to do with more abstract and obscure things, not being told, ‘Do this’ or, ‘Do that’.

LWLies. How was Ursula? Was she nervous?

Huppert. No… Well, of course she was doing her first film so she was certainly nervous but she didn’t show it. There is a difference working with a first time director compared to someone like Chabrol, but that difference in itself is productive. It’s not sterile.

I was not scared of it. It’s quite interesting and sometimes moving to see someone creating their own language.

CROWNING ISABELLE HUPPERT THE QUEEN OF FRENCH CINEMA. 108 the road ISSUE

LWLies. Are you aware of your focus and motivation for taking roles having changed over the years?

Huppert. No, I don’t think it has changed so much. I always try to identify the point of high necessity for me to do a film – that’s what it is about, you know? When you think that a movie has to be done, then it can be a success, it can be a failure but no matter what it is in the end, at the moment of choosing to do it you have to do it with this extreme feeling of necessity. MATT BOCHENSKI

Words by Adam Lee Davies

Directed by Peter

Hyams

Starring

Billy Crystal, Gregory Hines, Jimmy Smits

Box notables

Lavish silver MGM box, reversible cover option

Tagline

‘They’ve got 30 days to clean up Chicago before they retire to paradise… Losing their police car, their suspect and their pants is a real bad start!’

Trailers

Walk Like A Man, Solarbabies, Dead of Winter

Cherrypick

“Waddya expect? I’m a paisano! What do you want me to do, cook you up a pot of ragu? Sweat garlic for you? Sing an opera? Lose a war?”

“Shine, sweet freedom,” beseeches housewives’ choice Michael MacDonald over an opening sequence that paints the bleak splendour of downtown Chicago as a scarred and snowbound Beirut entirely populated with pickpockets, peddlers and pimps. “Shine your light on me.”

This confident juxtaposition of music and image is reminiscent of the work of the young Nicolas Roeg, or perhaps Scorsese in his pomp.

It hints, much like one of Marty’s deranged Catholic fantasies, at the redemption, deliverance and even rebirth that this testing film will ultimately grant its pair of beleaguered Jobs.

Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal are Ray Hughes and Danny Costanzo, a couple of Chi-Town’s finest – and most emphatically heterosexual – police detectives. When not playing a sensual form of one-on-one b-ball with the local pachucos, they’re busy passive-aggressively hassling the remainder of the Windy City’s rather broadly rendered Hispanic community with extreme prejudice and seeming impunity, all the while disgorging an incessant stream of what is meant to be tough-guy male life-partner banter but is in fact a numbing white noise of witless, discontinuous drivel. Make no mistake, though – these guys are street!

So they both might live in vast exposed-brick loft spaces, drink Virgin Marys and share a badass lexicon that extends no further than referring to everyone as either a ‘douchebag’ or a ‘jag-off’, but they are nevertheless seen by their grizzled but benign Captain (Dan Hedaya) as the go-to guys when mysterious neighbourhood drug tsar, Gonzales (Jimmy Smits,

hang your head), is rumoured to be taking delivery of a consignment of high-grade ‘shit’ down at the (sigh) docks. While taking Gonzales down, the camp coppers blow some big DEA investigation or other.

Consequently packed off on enforced vacation, they merrily goose each other all the way down to Key West, Florida, for some sun, sea and sexual dilettantism.

Having been subjected to an extended scuba montage, our boys are soon whisked back to the Second City for further bickering and more shootouts. Roller-skating semi-nude down Muscle Beach may have been diverting, but it’s no substitute for the musty allure of the locker room, especially not when they learn that that douchebag Gonzales has walked on some bullshit technicality…

It’s not long before Ray and Danny are back on the beat, dishing out their particularly high-handed brand of lone justice to the film’s progressively deplorable depiction of the Latino Experience – every conniving member of which would appear to be a gang-banging recidivist, a strung-out crack whore or a trigger-happy punk in a bandana. None of this, of course, is racism – God bless you, no – it’s merely ethnic ‘flavour’.

With a couple of mandatory ERH boxes left to tick we’re treated to a truly bizarre car-chase along the tracks of the El-Train, and an interminably protracted Uzi showdown in an empty shopping centre with Gonzales riding a blood-spattered escalator to heaven/menswear while a sub-Roberta Flack soundtrack-dolly belts out Top 40 sure-thing ‘Show Me (What A Mansize Love Is!)’, and our boys cavort around in their long-johns. Jag-offs.

109

110 the road ISSUE

lwlies salutes the visioNaries whose imagiNatioN, passioN, madNess aNd geNius iNspires our love of movies.

At 13, The Road’s Kodi Smit-McPhee is already a veteran of TV and film, but he’s still only at the beginning of a journey every bit as perilous as Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic nightmare: the course from child star to well-balanced adult actor.

Because for every Johnny Mills, there’s a Corey Feldman losing the plot, Gary Coleman sleeping in an airport locker, or a Shirley Temple achieving the dubious honour of becoming both a cocktail and an unspeakable sexual practice.

It’s remarkable, then, that Jean-Pierre Léaud, whose role in François Truffaut’s 1959 The 400 Blows made him the symbol of a revolutionary cinematic movement at the age of 15, has not only stayed (relatively) sane but, at 65, has once again been dividing the critics in this year’s Palme d’Or-nominated Visage.

But is Léaud even an actor? The popular image of the boy outsider plucked from nowhere to play Antoine Doinel is overplayed – Léaud’s father was a journeyman scripter and his mother acted in a slew of French pulp thrillers and costumed also-rans – but the role of Truffaut’s mischievous alter-ego was his first starring part and, detractors would say, the only one he’s really ever played.

The iconic image of Léaud as Antoine Doinel, standing fists clenched on the beach at the end of The 400 Blows, has become such a naked expression of the revolutionary power of the New Wave that it’s almost a cliché. In fact, its appropriation by other filmmakers is greeted these days with bored disdain rather than the hoped-for association with soixante-huitaire cool.

But to many critics who witnessed the film’s impact first hand, Léaud’s development was a disappointment, both as Antoine and as an actor.

By the time he’d completed the Doinel chapter of the portmanteau Love At Twenty (1962) and the feature Stolen Kisses (1968), the cigar-chomping imp of his teens was long gone, replaced by a foxnosed ingénue equally baffled by the adult world.

Reviewers, even those supportive of the New Wave, thought him cold and disliked the ‘sly’ look of his elongated adult face. They were dismayed that Antoine had lost his anger and had become a stooge for Truffaut’s love of comedy. It’s an example of the over-identification of Léaud with both Antoine and Truffaut that has dogged the actor’s career.

And it was an effect to which Truffaut wasn’t immune, either: he once recalled entering a café the morning after one of the Doinel films had been on television. “I saw you on TV last night,” said the man who poured his coffee, “but you must have made that film some time ago, you look very different now.” That feeling of oneness, was something both Truffaut and Léaud felt: each described the incredible strangeness of finding themselves face-to-face on camera for the first time in 1973’s Day For Night. When the director ended the Doinel series in 1979 with Love on the Run, he claimed it was because he couldn’t stop treating his creation as a child, even though Antoine was by that time 23.

Despite confirming his spot as the New Wave’s number one player with roles for Godard, whom he described as an ‘uncle’ to Truffaut’s ‘father’, Léaud proved less malleable for other directors. After a spot in Alphaville (1965) and a starring role in Masculin Féminin (1966), Godard attempted to remould Léaud for La Chinoise in 1967. He wanted a real bourgeois to play his Maoist, which Léaud had never been,

so Godard put him on a daily stipend that he was to spend only in restaurants, eating well and at some expense. The result may have been convincing (more so than the film itself) but Godard knew Léaud’s cineaste reputation and always suspected that the actor, with very Doinel-ish wilfulness, had actually spent his money going to the movies.

After Love on the Run, Léaud at last seemed to succumb to the curse of the child actor, with a period in cheap thrillers and TV specials, which he was only shaken out of by the death of Truffaut in 1984. It was a rebirth for the actor, and an opportunity to show his range and skill. To be so closely associated with a defining cinematic oeuvre would be poison to a lot of performers, but Léaud determinedly imported his Antoine persona into his later roles, drolly in Last Tango In Paris (1972), with lugubrious mania in Kaurismaki’s I Hired A Contract Killer (1990).

Alone, he pulled off the feat of allowing Antoine to grow old in a way that his ‘father’ and ‘uncle’ could never have achieved. His weaving of the past into contemporary roles – in the underrated Irma Vep (1996) and the simply ridiculous The Dreamers (2003) – lend gravity and sweet dissonance to material riffing on another, more imaginatively fertile era, and are redolent of the slow-burn pig-headedness that Truffaut found so endearing.

Today, Léaud continues to play himself, which is to say he continues to play Antoine Doinel, in one form or another. Tsai Ming-liang, the Truffaut-loving director whose Visage retells the story of Salome, cast Léaud in the Herod role.

The character, of course, is named Antoine.

PAUL FAIRCLOUGH

111

112 the road ISSUE

A graduate of Australia’s Swinburne School of Film and Television, where he produced celebrated shorts The Blonde’s Date With Death and Frankie and Johnny, John Hillcoat went on to forge a successful career as a director and editor of music videos for the likes of Nick Cave, INXS, Crowded House and Depeche Mode. Ghosts…

Of The Civil Dead, Hillcoat’s first foray into features, immediately marked the arrival of a distinctive and visceral filmmaking talent.

Nominated for nine Australian Film Institute Awards, Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead was born of three years of exhaustive research into maximumsecurity prisons in Australia and America. Based on actual events that occurred in the project’s gestation period, the film, an incisive and biting piece of polemical social commentary, also extensively draws on the writings and experiences of Jack Henry Abbott, who after a lifetime of incarceration, hanged himself in his cell.

Abbott also gave the film its title, writing, ‘As long as I am nothing but a ghost of the civil dead, I can do nothing.’ Michel Foucault is another influence, particularly the writer’s theory that the prison

structure is an agent of the state that legitimises the use of violent and excessive force against its citizens. Make no mistake; this is a political and fiercely intelligent work that pulls no punches.

Set within the despairing confines of Central Industrial Prison, a state-of-the-art correctional unit surrounded by a vast and inhospitable desert, the film begins during a lockdown situation in which all prisoners are returned to their cells with privileges denied.

Unfolding in flashback following the formation of a committee founded to report on the lead up to the incident, the film focuses on the activities of inmate Wenzil (David Field), Officer David Yale (Mike Bishop), and maniacal psychopath Maynard (Nick Cave, shorn of his trademark crow-black mane) in stoking tension, conflict, retribution and violence.

Co-written by Hillcoat and producer Evan English (with input also subsequently attributed to Cave), the film was produced by the ironically named Correctional Services (in association with Outlaw Values), and was made on the strict understanding that all the creative participants would retain artistic and economic control. This in part explains the

film’s stark and striking documentary aesthetic (it’s a million miles from Nicolas Winding Refn’s recent Bronson) and its refusal to sweeten the portrait of a corrupt and dehumanising prison scheme which actively perpetrates violence and ritual humiliation in adherence to a rigid regime of discipline, punishment and control.

Establishing the director’s interest in characters driven to extreme behaviour by hostile surroundings, a motif present in To Have and To Hold, The Proposition and The Road, Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead also led to numerous enduring working relationships. Production Designer Chris Kennedy has proved integral to Hillcoat’s visual aesthetic, working on all of his features; and in terms of texture and thematics, Nick Cave (who here collaborates with fellow Bad Seeds Blixa Bargeld and Mick Harvey for the film’s abrasive score) has also proved an essential foil and like-minded spirit.

Words Jason Wood 113

Recently, attending a leaving party for an actress friend of mine who is moving to New York, I found myself engaged in a lengthy rant with a fellow director. I say ‘with’ but it was more a case of me, after several Jack Daniels and bottles of beer, doing my best impression of an irate Woody Allen. The director, a successful older Swedish gentleman who shall remain nameless, listened to me with a mixture of patience, empathy and amusement but mostly with raised eyebrows. He seemed surprised that a film director with a passion for creativity could criticise the industry so openly and frankly.

My rant went something like this: the role of an independent director within the film industry is one of the most thankless, unsatisfactory careers one can pursue. On a day-to-day existence, most directors are neurotic, racked with self-doubt, overly demanding and introspective perfectionists.

They have to be that way to bring their vision to life, but what more certain way is there to ensure that stress levels are high and disappointments (for any necessary compromise is a let down) are many?

Those wonderful moments where the creative

114 the road ISSUE

vision is realised with fantastic results – in a scene being nailed from exciting storyboards, in drawing out an emotional performance from your lead actor, in lighting that conveys the entire atmosphere of the film, in the pace hitting all the right notes in the editing – are just too few and far between. When they happen, it is a high that can sustain a director’s hopes, optimism and energy for several months, throughout the draining journey of making a movie.

But when the dust settles, you begin to look at the entire process and ask yourself, ‘What did I actually enjoy?’ For enjoyment is the key reason anyone develops a passion, and a career with passion is ultimately a search for enjoyment and fulfilment.

So if I don’t enjoy enough of the filmmaking process (I’d estimate those happy creative moments make up 15 per cent of the experience), where do I get my fulfilment? At this point, the Swedish director was edging away from me but I persisted. Should independent film directors look for recognition to reinforce a feeling of success, if success cannot be obtained from an enjoyable working experience?

Possibly, but then I couldn’t pick an area of

recognition that I trusted. Sales figures are as much as anything down to marketing, the lead actor’s profile and the timing of the release, so that can be dismissed. Critics offer only subjective opinions, and for every good review, you will find a disagreeable one. Fan following is probably as close to a source of approval as I would take to heart, but then even that is not really an indication that you, as director and visionary, have achieved the goals you set out to achieve and told the story you set out to tell.

And that’s my eternal dilemma. The filmmaking process is a painful, stressful one and the search for approval afterwards is an unsatisfactory and disappointing journey because ultimately the director is his/her own biggest critic. Finally, I took a breath from my rant and stared at the Swedish director with a shake of the head. ‘So why do this?

Why put myself through this?’ I asked again. He sighed, smiled and put his hand on my shoulder.

‘Because you do,’ he replied. ‘And because you can’t stop. You’ll do it again, over and over, and it will always feel too much. But really, it will never be enough.’ I guess I’m screwed then.

Must-have DVDs available exclusively from MovieMail Trafic

Betty’s Bath

Jacques Tati Jacques Tati’s final outing as the amiable, bumbling Monsieur Hulot sees him attempt to take his company’s new camper-van to a motor show in Amsterdam. A prescient satire on man’s obsession with motorised transport.

A fun and innocent collection of short, silent, erotic films shot in 1920s Hollywood. The films used studio stages after hours and featured wannabe starlets with their clothes off, disporting themselves in a variety of situations.

Includes new soundtrack.

Just £12.99 on DVD

Just £9.99 on DVD

The Pumpkin Eater

Sundays and Cybele

Jack Clayton

Serge Bourguignon

Anne Bancroft and Peter Finch excel as the couple in crisis in this multiple awardwinning, Harold Pinterscripted drama that, stylistically and thematically, invites comparison with Michelangelo Antonioni.

A beautiful, heartbreaking tale of the innocent but illicit friendship between Hardy Krüger’s traumatised Vietnam pilot and an abandoned child. Winner of the 1962 Best Foreign Language film Oscar.

Just £11.99 on DVD

Just £11.99 on DVD

View our full range of exclusive DVDs at www.moviemail-online.co.uk/moviemail-exclusives/

Order now at www.moviemail-online.co.uk or call us on 0844 776 0900

WHIP IT!

DIRECTED BY Drew Barrymore ETA Spring 2010 The poster is awful. news The trailer isn’t much better. But so far Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, about a rebellious Texan teen (Ellen Page) who trades her small town beauty pageant crown for the rough-and-ready world of roller derby, has fared respectably over the pond. We’re not converted just yet, although the soundtrack is decent enough, at least.

Melancholia Toy Story 3 A Town Called Panic DIRECTED BY Lars von Trier ETA 2011

DIRECTED BY Lee Unkrich ETA Summer 2010

Never one to follow news a conventional path, Lars von Trier is to follow up arthouse head-fuck Antichrist with… a sciencefiction disaster movie. Little is yet known about Melancholia, except that it involves a giant planet that drifts towards Earth. No cast yet, but we’ll keep you posted.

The second sequel to Pixar’s breakthrough movie now has a full-length trailer, and it looks every bit as funny and moving as you might expect. It seems Buzz, Woody and the gang are given to a local kindergarten after their now grown-up owner, Andy, leaves to go to college. Can Pixar do no wrong?

footage

Green Zone Carlos Source Code The Jackal DIRECTED BY Paul Greengrass ETA Spring 2010

DIRECTED BY Duncan Jones ETA 2011

Duncan Jones will news follow up sci-fi indie Moon with this Jake Gyllenhaal-starrer – a concept thriller about a soldier who has to repeatedly travel back in time to prevent a terrorist attack.

It sounds like Groundhog Day crossed with 12 Monkeys. Jones’ other project, Mute, is on the backburner for now.

Finally, a trailer footage for Paul Greengrass’ mega budget follow-up to The Bourne Ultimatum; an action thriller based on Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s novel Imperial Life in the Emerald City. With the ubiquitous Damon in the lead role it looks like another Bourne, but something tells us this is going to be even better.

DIRECTED BY Olivier Assayas ETA Spring 2010

We’ve been fans of French news director Olivier Assayas since Boarding Gate, but he’s been busy lately directing an epic TV miniseries in France on the life of Carlos the Jackal. While French TV watchers will see it in January, we in the UK can hope to see an edited theatrical version in cinemas later next year.

DIRECTED BY Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar ETA 2010

This Belgian stop-motion oddity is being given a limited release in the US over the winter holiday, so expect it to show up this side of the pond soon.

Animators Aubier and Patar were responsible for those stop-motion milk adverts with the cyclist and the cow.

news

La Meute

DIRECTED BY Franck Richard ETA Spring 2010 Fans of French horror (for the uninitiated, watch Ils or Haute Tension) will be overjoyed at early word that this low-budget indie has all the makings of a genre classic.

The poster, which looks like Village of the Damned as drawn by Munch, gives a good indication of what is to come, as a pack of feral looking bad guys bears down on an isolated house.

footage

117

118 THE ROAD ISSUE

Clash of the Titans DIRECTED BY Louis Leterrier ETA Spring 2010

A teaser trailer for French director Louis Leterrier’s remake of the 1981 classic is now online, and it doesn’t give much away save for a glimpse of a giant scorpion. It’s early days, but does this remind anyone else of the disappointing Brad Pitt-starrer Troy?

footage

The Last Word

DIRECTED BY David Mackenzie ETA Mid 2010 After an extremely illadvised trip to Hollywood to make piss poor Ashton Kutcherstarrer Spread, Hallam Foe director David Mackenzie is back to what he knows – misery, Scottish style.

Mackenzie’s latest is an apocalyptic drama starring Eva Green, Ewan McGregor and his Trainspotting co-star Ewen Bremner.

news

Showgirls 2: A Story of Hope DIRECTED BY Marc Vorlander ETA TBC

Even being the most infamous Hollywood flop of all time won’t prevent a sequel being made these days. This film reportedly centres on the character of Hope from the original Showgirls, played by soft porn actress Rena Riffel.

No word yet on whether former Saved by the Bell starlet Elizabeth Berkley will don her g-string once more.

Gossip

Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said?

DIRECTED BY Bill Condon ETA 2011

Marlon Wayans, last seen in GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, is to make a bid for awards glory by playing the legendary stand-up comic-turned-crack addict.

Wayans does have some acting chops, as evidenced in Requiem for a Dream, so this might not be so bad.

casting

Motorcade Muhammad DIRECTED BY Jon Cassar ETA 2010

DIRECTED BY TBC ETA TBC

This Ryan Reynolds-starrer news might not be such big news if it wasn’t the directorial debut of Jon Cassar, known to TV fans as the director and executive producer of 24.

In a plot that might have served Jack Bauer well, a retired Secret Service agent is called back into action when the President is kidnapped.

This will end badly.

An American producer of The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings has announced plans to film the life of the prophet Muhammad.

With help from a Qatari film company, Barrie Osborne hopes he can do for Islam what Mel Gibson did for Christianity. The $150m ‘epic’ (fail) is due to film in 2011.

news

Mad Max 4: Xtrme City Who Framed Fury Road Roger Rabbit 2 DIRECTED BY Paul Schrader ETA 2010

DIRECTED BY George Miller ETA 2011

After suffering all sorts casting of development hell, Brit actor Tom Hardy – last seen starring in Bronson – is to take over the role Mel Gibson made famous in George Miller’s twenty-first-century update of the post-apocalyptic revenge thriller. Hardy has also filmed a role for Chris Nolan’s mysterious Inception.

The next Colin Farrell? We say yes.

Fans of Paul Schrader might be wondering what he’s been up to since he announced last year that he was quitting Hollywood.

Well, the Taxi Driver screenwriter has moved to India to make this Bollywood thriller, written by Om Shanty Om wordsmith Mushtaq Sheikh. Filming begins in Mumbai early next year.

news

DIRECTED BY TBC ETA 2012

Robert Zemeckis, who has concerned himself with making ropey mo-cap films for the last five years, has commissioned the screenwriters of his 1989 hit to pen a sequel. The good news? Roger, Jessica and co will definitely still be in 2D, according to Zemeckis.

Gossip

Will You Black Swan Be My Black Predators Friend?

DIRECTED BY Darren Aronofsky ETA Late 2010

Darren Aronofsky’s follow-up to Theom shantyWrestler, a psychological thriller set in a New York ballet company, is rumoured to star Winona Ryder, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, as well as the charisma supernova that is Vincent Cassel. Mark Heyman, who co-produced The

Gossip

DIRECTED BY TBC ETA Late 2010

DIRECTED BY Nimród Antal ETA Summer 2010

With Precious about to news make Oprah Winfrey the most powerful woman in Hollywood, the TV presenter-turned-media mogul will produce this film based on a GQ article about a white man who attempts to widen his social circle to include non-whites. Chris Rock will star.

In one of the more bizarre casting decisions in recent history, Adrien Brody has signed up to play the lead in the Robert Rodriguez-scripted Predator reboot. He’s joined by Topher Grace and, of course, Danny Trejo. The film has already begun shooting and will be released in July next year.

casting

119

Submarine Les Aventures PRINCE ExtraOF PERSIA ordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec DIRECTED BY Richard Ayoade ETA Late 2010

Brit comedy alert! But this one might actually be quite good. Directed by Richard Ayoade of Garth Marenghi fame, this coming-of-age tale features such sterling thesps as Paddy Considine, Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins, and is produced by Warp Films.

news

The Fighter DIRECTED BY David O Russell ETA 2010

Is it too early to predict that David O Russell’s long-awaited return to filmmaking will be a big awards grabber? Mark Wahlberg plays amateur boxer ‘Irish’ Mickey Ward, who is trained and mentored by his former drug addict brother (Christian Bale). The first pictures from set are now online.

footage

Coriolanus DIRECTED BY Ralph Fiennes ETA Late 2010

Casting Ralph Fiennes is to step behind the camera for the first time to direct this adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. As well as playing the lead role himself, he has cast Gerard Butler in the role of bad guy Tullus Aufidius. The usual suspects are lined up for supporting roles.

casting

127 Hours DIRECTED BY Danny Boyle ETA TBC

Danny Boyle will reunite with Slumdog Millionaire scriptwriter Simon Beaufoy to direct the tale of mountaineer Aron Ralston, who spent five days crushed by rocks at the bottom of a crevasse before cutting off his arm to escape. Cillian Murphy is in talks to star.

news

DIRECTED BY Mike Newell ETA Summer 2010

Although a video game franchise has rarely been fitter for a big screen adaptation, Disney do appear keen to cash in on the successful Pirates of the Caribbean series here. Still, the trailer does seem promisingly faithful to the classic platformer and Gyllenhaal doesn’t look half bad either, even if his accent does sound suspiciously dubbed.

TRAILER

DIRECTED BY Luc Besson ETA 2010

Remember when a new Luc Besson film was something to get excited about? Well, not only is this based on a popular French graphic novel, it stars pre-eminent Gallic actor Mathieu Amalric. Okay, so we can’t erase memories of Angel-A, but this could be promising.

news

Short Circuit

DIRECTED BY Steve Carr ETA Summer 2011 Fans of the 1986 sci-fi romp will be overjoyed to learn that Dimension Films has greenlit a remake, to be directed by Paul Blart: Mall Cop’s Steve Carr. Odds are this will not involve a blacked-up Fisher Stevens doing a ‘comedy’ Indian accent.

news

True Grit

DIRECTED BY Ethan Coen, Joel Coen ETA 2011 News that the Coen brothers were set to remake this John Wayne western has been about for a while, but cast members are now being bandied about. With Jeff Bridges in the Wayne role, we might also see Matt Damon as his sidekick and Josh Brolin as the killer they track into Indian territory.

casting

Little White Lies DIRECTED BY Guillaume Canet ETA TBC

Marion Cotillard, who assured herself Hollywood stardom playing Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, will apparently return to her native France to team up with Guillaume Canet, the star and director of Tell No One, for this movie. Apart from anything else, it undoubtedly has the best title in the history of film, although we’re not ruling out the possibility of a lawsuit.

Gossip

At SwimTwo-Birds DIRECTED BY Brendan Gleeson ETA Late 2010

Brendan Gleeson has chosen Flann O’Brien’s surreal comic novel for his directorial debut, and it’s rumoured he’s bringing along a veritable Who’s Who of Irish cinema to star in it – Cillian Murphy, Colin Farrell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Gabriel Byrne, for starters. Surely there’s a role for Bono in there too?

Gossip

500 Rads

The Reincarnation Dinner For of Peter Schmucks Proud

This title is the only thing Gossip anyone knows about Cloverfield producer JJ Abrams’ latest project. Rads are apparently to do with radiation doses but beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. Expect a massive, confusing viral campaign any day now.

David Fincher is to reunite news with Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker for a remake of this little-known supernatural thriller from 1975. Don’t expect this until 2011, as Fincher has to finish directing Facebook movie The Social Network.

DIRECTED BY JJ Abrams ETA TBC

120 THE ROAD ISSUE

DIRECTED BY Jay Roach ETA Summer 2010

DIRECTED BY David Fincher ETA 2011

Yet another remake, this time of Francis Veber’s Le Dîner de Cons, in which a group of snobs invite a selection of idiots to dinner to laugh at their witlessness. Steve Carell, Paul Rudd and Office Space star Ron Livingston have been cast, with Meet The Parents helmer Jay Roach to direct.

casting

121

“I’ve never shit myself but I know I will, and when I do I’ll be really disappointed.”

“THE MOVIE OF THE YEAR” TOBY YOUNG, THE TIMES

+++++ THE TIMES

“GRABS YOU FROM MINUTE ONE AND NEVER LETS GO” UNCUT

“TAKES ITS PLACE AMONG THE

GREATEST CRIME FILMS EVER MADE”

+++++ LITTLE WHITE LIES

“UTTERLY GRIPPING”

THE TIMES

+++++ +++++

HEAT

TIME OUT

“STUNNING” +++++

DAVID EDWARDS, DAILY MIRROR

WINNER

GRAND PRIX CANNES 2009

WINNER BEST FILM LONDON FILM FESTIVAL

A FILM BY JACQUES AUDIARD

18

CONTAINS STRONG BLOODY VIOLENCE AND VERY STRONG LANGUAGE

CHIC FILMS, PAGE 114 AND WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS PRESENT A FILM BY JACQUES AUDIARD A PROPHET TAHAR RAHIM NIELS ARESTRUP WITH ADEL BENCHERIF REDA KATEB HICHEM YACOUBI JEAN-PHILIPPE RICCI GILLES COHEN ANTOINE BASLER LEÏLA BEKHTI PIERRE LECCIA FOUED NASSAH JEAN-EMMANUEL PAGNI FRÉDÉRIC GRAZIANI SLIMANE DAZI BASED ON AN ORIGINAL IDEA BY ABDEL RAOUF DAFRI SCREENPLAY BY THOMAS BIDEGAIN AND JACQUES AUDIARD AFTER AN ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BY ABDEL RAOUF DAFRI AND NICOLAS PEUFAILLIT CINEMATOGRAPHY STÉPHANE FONTAINE (A.F.C.) EDITING JULIETTE WELFLING ORIGINAL SCORE ALEXANDRE DESPLAT PRODUCTION DESIGN MICHEL BARTHELEMY (A.D.C.) SOUND BRIGITTE TAILLANDIER FRANCIS WARGNIER JEAN-PAUL HURIER MARC DOISNE COSTUMES VIRGINIE MONTEL CASTING RICHARD ROUSSEAU 1ST ASSISTANT DIRECTOR SERGE ONTENIENTE LINE PRODUCER MARTINE CASSINELLI A CO-PRODUCTION WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS CHIC FILMS PAGE 114 FRANCE 2 CINÉMA UGC IMAGES BIM DISTRIBUZIONE CELLULOID DREAMS WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF FRANCE 2 CANAL+ CINÉCINÉMA WITH THE SUPPORT OF LA RÉGION ILE-DE-FRANCE AND LA RÉGION PROVENCE ALPES-COTE D’AZUR IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE CNC IN ASSOCIATION WITH SOFICA UGC 1 SOFICINÉMA 4 AND SOFICINÉMA 5 DISTRIBUTION AND EDITIONS VIDÉO UGC INTERNATIONAL SALES CELLULOID DREAMS © 2009 WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS - CHIC FILMS - PAGE 114 - FRANCE 2 CINÉMA - UGC IMAGES - BIM DISTRIBUZIONE

www.prophet-movie.co.uk

IN CINEMAS JAN 22