Cecil says: Some of the billboards for this film refer to it as 'Joe Wright's Anna Karenina'. Hmmm, that sounded a note of warning in my mind. And once the film began, I just thought: What the...
What's with all the West End choreography? For goodness sake.
It's funny, though, isn't it? When we went to see Brief Encounter on the West End stage, and they combined film clips from the movie with the stage performance, it really worked.
But the ridiculous synchronised office staff, and frozen fixed dancers, who begin moving at a signal from somewhere off-stage. And the constant views of the stage ropes and stage floor.
What WAS he trying to do? A Brechtian distancing of the audience from the action on the screen? Maybe it was to distract away from the less-than-convincing acting on the stage...
Honestly, for one the best, most passionate pieces of literature ever, this was contrived nonsense.
Where it stuck to 'normal' cinematic bits, I got engaged with it. It's hard to ruin totally such a fantastic plot and such amazing characters. But Joe Wright did his best to (and it surely wasn't Tom Stoppard's screenplay?).
I didn't really care about any of the characters; I didn't feel much empathy for any of it.
Oh dear, the whole charade made me want to read the book again just to take away the image of Keira Knightley as Anna...
**.5
Bea says: I have been waiting for the right moment in my life to read this classic work of literature. After seeing this, I think that time might be now. I wonder if I had read it, this would have been an easier film to watch - but according to Cecil it made no difference at all.
In some ways I didn't mind the whole theatrical premise - it was very opulent and beautiful to look at certainly. But it was - distracting. And it did make me not enter the characters and their situation quite in the way I might have if it had been more conventionally told. But maybe that was also the somewhat wooden acting of Keira Knightley, who has her place but it is not really this. I just don't think she acts well enough - my emotions weren't really hooked at all as Anna moves further and further down the path of self-destruction, and I didn't care enough about her. I wasn't too sure about Matthew MacFadyen either - both he and Knightley seemed to have been told to ham up their Britishness, which was frankly odd in Imperial Russia.
I did enjoy some of the subplots and the actors involved in those - particularly Domhnall Gleeson as Levin, who we have just recently seen in Shadow Dancer, and perhaps I am being too fanciful but there were some references to Dr Zhivago too, or was it just Imperial Russia, steam trains and steppes?
Nice to look at, but if you want to really get caught up in the story, you might be better off buying the book.
**.5
Sunday 9 September 2012
Shadow Dancer
Cecil says: We'd just been to Northern Ireland earlier this summer, so were keen to see this film. On one level, it's historical: beginning with a sectarian killing in the early 1970s but then picking up the threads and the characters some 20 years later, just as peace talks began to make some headway. On another level, it's what the French would term a 'drame psychologique', with issues of trust, loyalty, tribalism, community which never really go away.
Northern Ireland is a better place now than it was 20 years ago, though there are still tensions and a sense of the tribal in some parts even today.
It was a tough place to grow up in, though. And this film does a good job of showing the underlying tension around every aspect of life. I think I'm right in saying that nobody laughs even once throughout the 100 minutes of the film - it's grim. But it's good drama.
Andrea Riseborough stars as the sister of the little boy, shot in a 1970s sectarian attack. She's good, interracting with Mac from MI5, and her family, itself torn apart by conflicting loyalties and demands. Kevin of the IRA is an ever-present sinister character, making sure 'his' people don't stray.
No spoilers in this review. Just to say that, for me, the only weakness in the storyline comes right at the end, when someone acts without the due caution you'd surely be used to taking after years in a place like Northern Ireland.
Interestingly, among the key actors in the film, only Brid Brennan - playing Ma - seems to be from Northern Ireland herself (there's even Gillian Anderson playing the top MI5 bod), and maybe that's why she gets her part across so well.
This is good drama, but no barrel of laughs.
***
Bea says: Grim, gritty, and as Cecil says, not a whole lot of laughs, but a good, suspense-filled thriller plot as we follow the story of a family who are deeply involved in the Troubles, and their complex relationship with both the IRA and MI5. Set in London and Belfast in the early 1990s, I enjoyed the focus of the film on the life and choices of a young woman during that period of history (although I didn't think all of the costuming was entirely accurate). I didn't guess all the twists, and if you enjoy Spooks, you'll like this.
***
Northern Ireland is a better place now than it was 20 years ago, though there are still tensions and a sense of the tribal in some parts even today.
It was a tough place to grow up in, though. And this film does a good job of showing the underlying tension around every aspect of life. I think I'm right in saying that nobody laughs even once throughout the 100 minutes of the film - it's grim. But it's good drama.
Andrea Riseborough stars as the sister of the little boy, shot in a 1970s sectarian attack. She's good, interracting with Mac from MI5, and her family, itself torn apart by conflicting loyalties and demands. Kevin of the IRA is an ever-present sinister character, making sure 'his' people don't stray.
No spoilers in this review. Just to say that, for me, the only weakness in the storyline comes right at the end, when someone acts without the due caution you'd surely be used to taking after years in a place like Northern Ireland.
Interestingly, among the key actors in the film, only Brid Brennan - playing Ma - seems to be from Northern Ireland herself (there's even Gillian Anderson playing the top MI5 bod), and maybe that's why she gets her part across so well.
This is good drama, but no barrel of laughs.
***
Bea says: Grim, gritty, and as Cecil says, not a whole lot of laughs, but a good, suspense-filled thriller plot as we follow the story of a family who are deeply involved in the Troubles, and their complex relationship with both the IRA and MI5. Set in London and Belfast in the early 1990s, I enjoyed the focus of the film on the life and choices of a young woman during that period of history (although I didn't think all of the costuming was entirely accurate). I didn't guess all the twists, and if you enjoy Spooks, you'll like this.
***
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