(Kevin MacDonald, 2014)
MacDonald is now that rare thing; an excellent genre craftsman who never makes a bad film. His work in fiction - setting aside his excellent documentaries - goes from pretty good (State of Play, How I Live Now) to excellent (The Eagle). He has a skilful way with actors and a feel for textures which makes each of his films smell and play very differently.
Black Sea is an old-fashioned men-on-a-mission movie transplanted into the submarine genre. As such, it features a great cast of grizzled character actors playing strong, instantly recognisable types. Jude Law (attempting a passable Scottish accent) is Robinson, fired by his long-term employers at the start of the film, sulking in his dingy Aberdeen flat (MacDonald finds the poetry in the net curtains dancing the breeze) and missing his ex-wife and son, who left him because he was at sea too much. An old colleague suggests he take on a dangerous job - leading a team into the black sea in search of a Nazi U-boat that sank during the Second World War, stuffed with tons of gold.
They have to get the backing of a wealthy patron, recruit a team of Brits and Russians, buy a second-hand submarine, and evade the Russian fleet en route to the gold. Only their team contains one shifty psychopath (Ben Mendelsohn, good as ever), a weaselly Corporate American (Scoot McNairy, doing Paul Reiser in Aliens, and doing him pretty well) and a bunch of Russians and Brits who do not trust one another and cannot communicate. Tensions rise as their journey begins, and inevitably lead to death and disaster.
The cast, MacDonald's intense direction and a taut script by Dennis Kelly mean that early on the tension settles in like an extra actor and it is never off screen. This is one of those submarine films that is excellent on the sheer terror of the alien world beyond the sub's hull ("Just cold, black death", as Michael Smiley's character puts it, sharing all of the film's best lines with David Threlfall) and features a terrifying diving sequence alongside some equally eerie shots of the sub cutting through the murk. Those scenes only increase the claustrophobic feverishness of the paranoia crackling between the men onboard, all of them familiar from the sort of mission movies that were popular four or five decades ago. I mean that as a compliment; Black Sea is a great little yarn, suspenseful, gripping and unexpectedly funny in places.
It is also a study in working class rage - Robinson is motivated by fury at "them", the men who have ruined his industry and taken his career, and he inspires his men with promises of wealth, only to find himself turned and somewhat corrupted by so much beautiful gold, captured by MacDonald glimmering and reflecting across his wide-eyed face. A mission movie for our times, then, and a thoroughly satisfying one, the odd lapse in plot logic aside.
Showing posts with label Kevin MacDonald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kevin MacDonald. Show all posts
Wednesday, 10 December 2014
Saturday, 5 October 2013
HOW I LIVE NOW
(Kevin MacDonald, 2013)
How I Live Now presents WWIII from a single viewpoint. That viewpoint belongs to Daisy (Saoirse Ronan), an annoying American teen spending a summer in rural England with her cousins. Daisy has issues - ignored by her father who has remarried and is enjoying a new baby, she mourns the mother who died giving birth to her, and we overhear the white noise of her thoughts, a stream of unfocused anger and self-help tips. But her cousins are joyously unsupervised (their mother is tellingly absent working on some "peace process") and Daisy is soon won over by their chaotic, fun lifestyle. She also falls in love with the eldest, the intense, moony Edmund (George MacKay), as the world appears to open up to her. MacDonald shoots all this to best emphasise the picturesque beauty of rural England; sunlight through trees, streams twisting alongside fields, children skipping across meadow. These scenes of rural idyll are scored to the likes of the Fairport Convention and Nick Drake, and the beauty of it all makes it unsurprising - unavoidable, perhaps - that Edmund and Daisy should fall so hard for each other.
And then the bomb falls. One scene is interrupted by a sudden rush of wind, a distant whomp, and then a rain of ash. The children freeze, the quiet horror of what has happened evident even to them. London has been bombed, the war begun. Soon the power will be gone, the food run out.
After that the army will come, separating girls and boys. Daisy and her young cousin Piper wind up on a work farm, but Daisy has told Edmund she will return to the house, and driven by her love for him, she and Piper desperately attempt to gain their freedom.
The last act of the film is harrowing and unbelievably dark for what is otherwise a teenage coming of age romance. The scenes of war, when they do come, are beautifully effective for being limited to one viewpoint. Daisy barely has any idea of what is going on - tv and radio speak of terrorists, poisoned water supplies, and the countryside is transformed into a sinister landscape like something from a 1970s UK television show (Survivors, most obviously) - grimly pretty, filled with threatening strangers, burning houses, eerily abandoned towns and clapped out land rovers. The glimpses we get of the enemy are frightening but vague; we don't know who they are or where they're from, but they kill young men, rape women and burn villages down.
Through this world Daisy and Piper trek; driven remorselessly by Daisy's need to see Edmond again. The all-consuming nature of her passion for him is skillfully evoked by MacDonald and his trio of screenwriters, but more specifically by Ronan and MacKay, whose mute physical chemistry is aided by her charisma and his introspective charm. The link they forge early on carries the emotional load through the ordeal of the third act, making the climax surprisingly emotionally charged and moving.
Daisy's character arc feels hard-won and true, not mandated by screenwriting rules, a rarity in a film based on a young adult novel.
Ronan's commitment plays a big part in that, but it is MacDonald's direction that makes the film feel so gritty, its textures so vivid and distinctive. He includes one too many montages, but How I Live Now is beautiful, tough, and strange. He has had an odd, schizophrenic career, from his many high-quality documentaries (Touching the Void, most impressively) to his somewhat anonymous but generally decent feature films, which makes him seem like an exceptionally capable craftsman without much of an individual voice. There are worse things for a director to be.
How I Live Now presents WWIII from a single viewpoint. That viewpoint belongs to Daisy (Saoirse Ronan), an annoying American teen spending a summer in rural England with her cousins. Daisy has issues - ignored by her father who has remarried and is enjoying a new baby, she mourns the mother who died giving birth to her, and we overhear the white noise of her thoughts, a stream of unfocused anger and self-help tips. But her cousins are joyously unsupervised (their mother is tellingly absent working on some "peace process") and Daisy is soon won over by their chaotic, fun lifestyle. She also falls in love with the eldest, the intense, moony Edmund (George MacKay), as the world appears to open up to her. MacDonald shoots all this to best emphasise the picturesque beauty of rural England; sunlight through trees, streams twisting alongside fields, children skipping across meadow. These scenes of rural idyll are scored to the likes of the Fairport Convention and Nick Drake, and the beauty of it all makes it unsurprising - unavoidable, perhaps - that Edmund and Daisy should fall so hard for each other.
And then the bomb falls. One scene is interrupted by a sudden rush of wind, a distant whomp, and then a rain of ash. The children freeze, the quiet horror of what has happened evident even to them. London has been bombed, the war begun. Soon the power will be gone, the food run out.
After that the army will come, separating girls and boys. Daisy and her young cousin Piper wind up on a work farm, but Daisy has told Edmund she will return to the house, and driven by her love for him, she and Piper desperately attempt to gain their freedom.
The last act of the film is harrowing and unbelievably dark for what is otherwise a teenage coming of age romance. The scenes of war, when they do come, are beautifully effective for being limited to one viewpoint. Daisy barely has any idea of what is going on - tv and radio speak of terrorists, poisoned water supplies, and the countryside is transformed into a sinister landscape like something from a 1970s UK television show (Survivors, most obviously) - grimly pretty, filled with threatening strangers, burning houses, eerily abandoned towns and clapped out land rovers. The glimpses we get of the enemy are frightening but vague; we don't know who they are or where they're from, but they kill young men, rape women and burn villages down.
Through this world Daisy and Piper trek; driven remorselessly by Daisy's need to see Edmond again. The all-consuming nature of her passion for him is skillfully evoked by MacDonald and his trio of screenwriters, but more specifically by Ronan and MacKay, whose mute physical chemistry is aided by her charisma and his introspective charm. The link they forge early on carries the emotional load through the ordeal of the third act, making the climax surprisingly emotionally charged and moving.
Daisy's character arc feels hard-won and true, not mandated by screenwriting rules, a rarity in a film based on a young adult novel.
Ronan's commitment plays a big part in that, but it is MacDonald's direction that makes the film feel so gritty, its textures so vivid and distinctive. He includes one too many montages, but How I Live Now is beautiful, tough, and strange. He has had an odd, schizophrenic career, from his many high-quality documentaries (Touching the Void, most impressively) to his somewhat anonymous but generally decent feature films, which makes him seem like an exceptionally capable craftsman without much of an individual voice. There are worse things for a director to be.
Friday, 1 April 2011
THE EAGLE
(Kevin MacDonald, 2011)
This is Boys Own material done right; sober, intelligent and full of action, but with enough emotional weight to give its last act showdowns and reversals real sting. A handsome, rousingly old-fashioned sword & sandal Epic, MacDonald's film follows a Roman Centurion and his Briton slave over Hadrians Wall and out of the known world into Scotland in search of the Standard of the infamous "lost" Ninth Legion.
It plays much like a Cavalry Western, with the Painted Warriors of the "Seal People" standing in for American Indians, and indulges in much relatively subtle point-making on Colonial Imperialism and Occupation.
Based on Rosemary Sutcliffe's classic Childrens Novel, The Eagle manages to be both epic - in the sense that Anthony Mann would have understood - and intimate. MacDonald avoids the b-movie carnage of recent similar material (Centurion or Ironclad, for instance) and focuses instead on immersion, meaning that his film, which also eschews any modishly ostentatious production design, is full of interesting and vivid textures which suggest what life in Roman times might actually have felt like. In that sensuality the Epic it most reminded me of is Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans.
There are also buddy movie moments here in the somewhat homo-erotic relationship between the principles played by Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, both of whom acquit themselves reasonably well. The real star however is Anthony Dod Mantle, whose cinematography is stunning; evocative, lovely and raggedly gritty when it needs to be. Director MacDonald is becoming something of a high-quality craftsman; after the early documentary triumphs he experienced with One Day In September and the transcendent Touching the Void, nowadays you can expect an entertaining and beautifully-made film from him on each occasion, whatever the genre.
This is Boys Own material done right; sober, intelligent and full of action, but with enough emotional weight to give its last act showdowns and reversals real sting. A handsome, rousingly old-fashioned sword & sandal Epic, MacDonald's film follows a Roman Centurion and his Briton slave over Hadrians Wall and out of the known world into Scotland in search of the Standard of the infamous "lost" Ninth Legion.
It plays much like a Cavalry Western, with the Painted Warriors of the "Seal People" standing in for American Indians, and indulges in much relatively subtle point-making on Colonial Imperialism and Occupation.
Based on Rosemary Sutcliffe's classic Childrens Novel, The Eagle manages to be both epic - in the sense that Anthony Mann would have understood - and intimate. MacDonald avoids the b-movie carnage of recent similar material (Centurion or Ironclad, for instance) and focuses instead on immersion, meaning that his film, which also eschews any modishly ostentatious production design, is full of interesting and vivid textures which suggest what life in Roman times might actually have felt like. In that sensuality the Epic it most reminded me of is Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans.
There are also buddy movie moments here in the somewhat homo-erotic relationship between the principles played by Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, both of whom acquit themselves reasonably well. The real star however is Anthony Dod Mantle, whose cinematography is stunning; evocative, lovely and raggedly gritty when it needs to be. Director MacDonald is becoming something of a high-quality craftsman; after the early documentary triumphs he experienced with One Day In September and the transcendent Touching the Void, nowadays you can expect an entertaining and beautifully-made film from him on each occasion, whatever the genre.
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