We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)

 *Better late than never*

Misconception is a funny thing. Having heard great things about Lionel Shriver's novel We Need To Talk About Kevin, and excited at the prospect of an adaptation directed by Lynne Ramsay, I deliberately cut myself off from information about the about the book and the film. By the time I made my way to the cinema to see it, the only information I had been unable to escape was that it was about the mother of a boy who commits a Columbine style high school massacre (Everyone knows this right? Surely it can't be considered a spoiler.) But if I had been expecting a film thematically similar to Gus Van Zant's Elephant, I was mistaken. The specifics of Kevin's crime, while horrific, are totally irrelevant. The film is not about high school massacres, but about parenthood, and the relationship between Kevin and his mother Eva.

When we are first presented with Eva (Tilda Swinton), we are told nothing about her save for what we can glean from her haggard appearance, hermit lifestyle and the accusatory whispers that follow her everywhere. With a complex narrative structure that jumps backwards and forwards, we catch glimpses of her life before she became a mother and during Kevin's childhood. Although we begin to fill in the details, we are never entirely sure that what we are seeing is the full, objective story. From the moment he is born, Kevin seems to be evil incarnate, with a brooding glare to match Damien from The Omen. People who have criticised this less than subtle negative characterisation seem to have missed the point. We see Kevin as Eva sees him, and she is anything but a reliable narrator. However, the lack of any other perspectives means we never know how much of Kevin's seemingly evil behaviour is real, and how much is being exaggerated by Eva to mask her own failings as a mother. Coupled with the non-linear narrative, all this makes watching We Need To Talk About Kevin rather like trying to complete a jigsaw with only half the pieces and while blinfolded. It's an unsolvable puzzle of a movie, but Ramsay manages to stay one step ahead without ever patronising or condescending her audience.

The cast are incredible, with Swinton giving a surprisingly understated performance, which contrasts sharply with the unashamedly sinister Ezra Miller. John C Reilly also seems to have been overlooked by most for his role as Kevin's father Franklin, who refuses to believe that Kevin is anything other than a 'sweet little boy'. Ramsay however, is the star of the film; her stylised direction adding to the film's unsettling tone and making it seem like a much bigger budget movie than it actually is. All in all, it's a surprisingly low key affair that will probably be overlooked by the major awards who tend to favour flashier films, but it is an unnerving puzzle of a movie that refuses to give you any easy answers, and keeps raising questions long after it's credits have rolled.

Ken Russell: 1927-2011

Last year I woke up on the morning of my birthday only to hear the sad news that Leslie Nielsen, one of the greatest comic actors of his age, had died. This morning I once again woke on my birthday to tragic news; this time it was the death of Ken Russell. Losing a deadpan talent like Nielsen was one thing, but losing one of the most daring, original, brave and talented directors of all time was a tragedy. It wasn't just his death that was so sad (after all, he was 84 and had suffered multiple strokes), but that his extraordinary career seems to have been all but forgotten. The news report announcing his death that I later heard on the radio was shockingly brief, mentioning Women In Love but then tailing off as if Russell had simply retired after the success of that film.

But it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that Russell has faded from the consciousness of mainstream popular culture. After the underrated spy thriller The Billion Dollar Brain and the acclaimed Women In Love, his work became far less mainstream and awards friendly. He was always too provocative, too contemptuous of Hollywood, too unwilling to compromise to ever be thought of as anything other than an outsider. He ignored the whims of Hollywood, and as such they ignored him back and refused to recognise such a prodigious talent. His major breakthrough, Women In Love, caused shock and outrage, but even the normally prudish people behind the Academy Awards, who even decades later would rather reward the tepid Crash than Brokeback Mountain, felt compelled to shower it with nominations. After that however, his films became ever more divisive. The Devils, one of his most notorious works, was a shrieking, hysterical nightmare of violence, sex and religion based on a factual book by Aldous Huxley. While many derided it, with esteemed American critic Roger Ebert giving it a rare zero star rating, many other's felt it to be Russell's incendiary masterpiece. Most notable of it's defenders is Mark Kermode, who has long been among those arguing for a DVD release of the film's full X rated cut; calls that have recently been answered, with a DVD release planned for next March.

This barely begins to scratch the surface of the career, talent and appeal of Ken Russell, and I do not want to get into a detailed obituary. There are people who have written far better accounts of his life, and I do not have the time to mention every film he ever directed. Following The Devils, his work was often mired in controversy and usually far too idiosyncratic to ever be accepted by mainstream audiences. His last two commercial peaks came with 1975's gloriously overblown rock opera Tommy and 1980's haunting, psychedelic sci-fi Altered States, the only Hollywod film he ever made, and ironically one of his best works. Then there are the composer biopics, the horror films, the small TV works; Russell was nothing if not prolific. But his backing dried up and the scale of his films became smaller and smaller. His later films may have been pale shadows of his masterpieces, but the world was a better place for their existence.

Despite being abandoned by critics and audiences, Russell never broke his cardinal rule by making a dull film. His philosophy of “Wake 'em up” meant that even if his later films were horrifically flawed, they were always made even more fascinating for it. He proved that British cinema did not have to just be about kitchen sink dramas and Alfred Hitchcock; it could be flamboyant, provocative, daring and innovative. His drive to be different from everyone else meant that today he is mostly remembered as a director whose once promising talent deserted him after only a few films. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather than going mainstream, Russell demanded that the mainstream go to him. Most people refused, and for them Russell is a distant memory. For those who rose to the challenge, and threw themselves head first into his work, he will always be remembered as a visionary, and one who would rather have given up completely than make a boring film. He will be deeply missed by many, including myself. If you haven't seen any of his films, you could a lot worse than treating yourself to them. You might love them, or you might hate them. But whatever your opinion, I'm sure he'd have been happy with it.

Drive (2011)

*While editing my Drive review, I accidentally deleted it, so here's a new, improved version*

Well there's not actually that much driving. Glad we sorted that one out. In fact, far from being the vehicular Bayhem that it's misleading marketing suggested, Drive is a sparse, stylised, noir-ish thriller with a strong exploitation edge and hints of existentialism that justifiably won Nicolas Winding Refn the best director award at Cannes.

Ryan Gosling (in his third film in as many months) is the unnamed and laconic Driver who works as a stuntman and mechanic by day, and getaway driver by night. His world expands beyond automobiles when he falls in love with his married neighbour Irene, whose recently paroled husband is in trouble with local gangsters. When Irene and her son are threatened, the Driver intervenes. It's certainly not an imaginitive plot, but Refn uses what he has to minimalist perfection. Gosling gives a terrifically subdued but intense performance as the soft spoken titular character, equal parts Man With No Name, archetypal knight in shining armour and Travis Bickle. Despite his inherently moral intentions in helping Irene, there is a borderline psychotic tendency hiding beneath the implacably cool exterior that rears it's head in the films explosions of extreme ultraviolence. In keeping with the minimalist feel of the film, the violence is scarce but excruciatingly brutal. It has been acknowledged by the film's makers that the Driver's scorpion jacket is a reference to the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog, and it certainly seems that there is something violent and uncontrollable in his very nature. The films supporting cast are also brilliant, with Mulligan sparking perfect chemistry with Gosling and Albert Brooks cast superbly against type as the unashamedly villainous gangster. (There's murmurs of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod for him)

But despite all this, it's Nicolas Winding Refn who is the real star. He has created something that is disconcertingly original, despite, or maybe due to the disparate elements of early Scorsese, seventies exploitation, urban western and vague existentialism on display. This odd blend sits together far better than you'd imagine, helped by the brilliant synth-pop soundtrack. There are certain moments in Drive that I will probably remember for the rest of my life, and if the film does have flaws, it is all the more interesting for them. In many ways the film resembles it's titular character: cool, laconic and seemingly simple at first, but with a brooding darkness under the surface.

Not So Funny Games

Imagine this: your stern, elderly uncle is telling you off for some petty misdemeanour, all the while wagging his finger in your face patronisingly and doing exactly the same thing that you got into trouble for in the first place. Imagine all that, and you have an idea of what it is like to watch Michael Haneke's Funny Games. It was recommended to me ages ago by somebody whose opinion I trusted, but upon finally watching it recently, it was one of the worst viewing experiences I have ever had.

Ostensibly a horror film, Funny Games sees a family terrorised, held hostage and tortured by two nondescript adolescents who often break the fourth wall and show little regard for cinematic conventions. The idea is clearly to make a profound statement about our relationship with screen violence, pointing out that the terrible events that unfold do so for our entertainment. Rather than put this point across in any interesting or meaningful way however, Haneke (who has actually gone on to make some very good films in the years since) decided to just tell the audience off. For two hours. He seems to have a genuine contempt for the film's audience, and while watching it I kept expecting him to burst into my room with crossed arms and a haughty, patronising gaze, demanding to know why I was watching it. The whole movie feels like a stern lecture, which probably wouldn't be quite so annoying were it not such a nasty and violent movie itself. It's like someone trying to point out to you how cruel fox hunting is by ripping apart a live fox right in front of you and then waving it's corpse around on the end of a stick.

This is all made even worse by the simple fact that the film didn't even reach the audience that Haneke wanted to force his opinions down the throats of. The fact that it was a foreign language film, shown at Cannes and talked about as an intelligent commentary on cinematic violence meant that the mainstream horror audience it was targeted at ('targeted' seems appropriate for such a vicious attack of a film) didn't even see it. Realising that he was preaching to the converted, Haneke went through the effort of remaking the movie, shot-for-shot, in English. Clearly he felt that the audience really, really needed to be told off.

Despite the smug claims of those who champion the film, it's questions and comments aren't even particularly original. Many films have said the same things far more stylishly, subtly and effectively. The idea of the audience as voyeurs, complicit in the crimes being perpetrated on screen can be seen as far back as the brilliant 1960 cult classic Peeping Tom. And then there's the endlessly disturbing Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, the brilliantly ambiguous Man Bites Dog, or even films that questioned the way in which the media marketed violence in general, such as Natural Born Killers or Videodrome. With Funny Games, Michael Haneke was not just raising old questions, he was going to bizarre lengths just to have a go at his own audience. So if you want to be patronised, bullied and accused by an old Austrian bloke for two hours, watch Funny Games. Otherwise, just stick The Texas Chainsaw Massacre back on.

An Incoherent Rant On Remakes

If you were to look at a list of recent cinema releases, you could be forgiven for thinking that Straw Dogs, Sam Peckinpah's highly controversial film about violence, masculinity and revenge from 1971 had been re-released. You would be mistaken. This is a shiny new remake, which inexplicably relocates the action from rural England to the deep south of America and replaces Dustin Hoffman's unhinged performance with the staggeringly bland James Marsden. All of the film's troubling moral complexity and fascinating raggedness is nowhere to be found. But although I am unashamedly wary of remakes in general, my response to this one was one of sheer confusion. It is genuinely puzzling as to why anyone would even consider remaking such an idiosyncratic and intriguingly flawed film. It has nothing to say that wasn't there in the original; no fascinating new insights or perspectives. The original was a flawed film to begin with; Peckinpah himself thought that he had already made his definitive statement about violence with 1969's The Wild Bunch. It can't even by shrugged off as purely financially motivated, as it is very unlikely to draw in any new fans, while admirers of the original will simply not be interested.

But Hollywood's love of inferior remakes seems to have gone into overdrive in the last few years (calling it rebooting or reimagining isn't fooling anyone). It's been most notable with horror films, with new and totally pointless versions of A Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and even Last House On The Left, arguably the most notorious of all the video nasties. I love horror cinema and will always defend it's artistic integrity and importance, which makes it all the more galling to see them stripped of everything that made the originals unique, exciting, provocative and, most importantly, scary. Instead we have a standard colour pallette of dull browns and a cast hoping for work in the next series of The OC. So strong is the vogue for remaking anything and everything that even the notorious grindhouse shocker I Spit On Your Grave has been remade. This is by far one of the most baffling of all. The few people who didn't find the original to be morally repugnant will surely not be bothered by a remake that is exactly the same as the original (I'm reliably informed that it's the same, I never had any wish to sit through it). One of the most entertainingly misguided of recent years was Neil LaBute's butchery of The Wicker Man, which has at least found a second life as an unintentional comedy thanks to the sight of Nicolas Cage punching a woman while dressed as a bear (see a previous post).

Obviously this has not just been limited to horror films, but it's where the problem is most widespread and most noticeable. And I'm not even going to go into the issue of English language remakes of foreign language films, something that deserves a piece all of it's own (I may have to do something on the subject in the future)

Remakes do not have to be bad. Werner Herzog's Nosferatu, John Carpenter's The Thing, David Cronenberg's The Fly, Brian De Palma's Scarface, the Coen brothers' True Grit; all examples of brilliant remakes that are just as good, if not better than the originals. When those involved have something genuinely new to add to an old story, the results can be spectacular. But for the most part, maybe they should just be left as they are.