(Thomas Vinterberg, 2015)
Chemistry is so important to on-screen romance. And in this tale of one woman and three men, it is important that she have some chemistry with at least two of them.
And while Cary Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts have an undeniable bucketload of chemistry as the two leads here - Batsheba Everdeene and Gabriel Oak, and yes, like Dickens, Thomas Hardy had a serious case of give-your-characters-apallingly-unsubtle-clues-to-their-personalities-in-their-names-itis - that mysterious quality is conspicuous by its absence in her scenes with Michael Sheen (as Mr Boldword) and Tom Sturridge (as the caddish soldier Frank Troy). And while that works in the movies favour in one sense (we really really want Batsheba and Gabriel to end up together), it absolutely does not in another (there is never really any doubt that Batsheba and Gabriel will end up together).
Still, three of those four actors are fine, and Sturridge is easily hateable as Frank, partly because the character is utterly unsympathetic and partly because he is so terrible in the role; modern and smug and posturing, he fails to communicate the suffering that has made Frank what he is.
Vinterberg's film does a good job of capturing what makes Hardy, well, Hardy. The landscape is a character here; beautiful and terrible and ever-present. Cutaways of nature between scenes suggest the small scale of the human problems on display. Passion broils beneath the surface of everyone, and Mulligan and - especially - Schoenearts do a good job of showing that, with each of their scenes seeming on the brink of something. It always looks fantastic, with a rich palette of browns and deep greens reflecting the earthy passions of Hardy's world in contrast to the more delicate tones of Jane Austen, say. and while novelist David Nicholls' script skirts romcom cliche, it never quite mis-steps, instead finding the simple dramas in Hardy's tale.
All in all it works because it treats the cliches of period romantic drama as if they are not cliches at all, as if they are the best thing ever. And that makes them feel somewhat fresh.
Showing posts with label Michael Sheen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Sheen. Show all posts
Wednesday, 27 May 2015
Monday, 10 October 2011
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
(Woody Allen, 2011)
Opening with a loving near three minute montage of static shots of many of the most familiar and touristy parts of central Paris seems more foreword than prologue; a statement of theme. Paris is lovely, Paris is inspirational. That's it. Allen seems content with that, adding the admittedly minor theme of the power and fallacy of nostalgia later. But then this is a film of modest scale; modest laughs, modest pleasures, modest ambition. It's minor key period Allen, with less substance than any of his other excursions into the past, and a disconcerting dose of fluffiness to it, which might partly explain why it's been his greatest commercial success for decades.
The high concept: a Hollywood screenwriter with hopes of becoming a serious novelist vacationing in Paris with his fiancee and her parents finds himself transported back to that City in the 1920s each night at midnight, partying with the likes of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso and Dali, and having Gertrude Stein critique his book.
Based around such an insubstantial gag - Wilson's Gil professes shock to meet his many heroes in the flesh as they live up to their popular images - Allen has fun with his material, having Hemingway go on about hunting, War, boxing and bravery at any opportunity, while Dali (played by a single scene-stealing Adrian Brody) is obsessed with incorporating a "rhinoceros" into his work and hangs out with Bunuel and Man Ray. There is a light love story, with Marion Cotillard displaying yet again just how great she looks in a 1920s frock, but the scenes of the tensions between Gil and his fiancee (a spiky Rachel McAdams) together with realistically strained social events with her parents and friends are probably the best in the film. The social unease, foibles and pretensions of pseudo-intellectuals are Allen's true, natural subject matter, and he shows an ease whenever he approaches that territory absent from much of the rest of the somewhat contrived narrative here.
Still, it's mildly entertaining, Michael Sheen is terrific as a classic pretentious Allen romantic rival, Wilson is a surprisingly natural Allen hero, and the sensual pleasures are manifold; from some lovely Cole Porter on the soundtrack to Darius Khondji's cinematography, an attractive cast rounded out by Carla Bruni and Léa Seydoux, and of course the beauty of Paris itself. Which is where we - and Allen - came in...
Opening with a loving near three minute montage of static shots of many of the most familiar and touristy parts of central Paris seems more foreword than prologue; a statement of theme. Paris is lovely, Paris is inspirational. That's it. Allen seems content with that, adding the admittedly minor theme of the power and fallacy of nostalgia later. But then this is a film of modest scale; modest laughs, modest pleasures, modest ambition. It's minor key period Allen, with less substance than any of his other excursions into the past, and a disconcerting dose of fluffiness to it, which might partly explain why it's been his greatest commercial success for decades.
The high concept: a Hollywood screenwriter with hopes of becoming a serious novelist vacationing in Paris with his fiancee and her parents finds himself transported back to that City in the 1920s each night at midnight, partying with the likes of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso and Dali, and having Gertrude Stein critique his book.
Based around such an insubstantial gag - Wilson's Gil professes shock to meet his many heroes in the flesh as they live up to their popular images - Allen has fun with his material, having Hemingway go on about hunting, War, boxing and bravery at any opportunity, while Dali (played by a single scene-stealing Adrian Brody) is obsessed with incorporating a "rhinoceros" into his work and hangs out with Bunuel and Man Ray. There is a light love story, with Marion Cotillard displaying yet again just how great she looks in a 1920s frock, but the scenes of the tensions between Gil and his fiancee (a spiky Rachel McAdams) together with realistically strained social events with her parents and friends are probably the best in the film. The social unease, foibles and pretensions of pseudo-intellectuals are Allen's true, natural subject matter, and he shows an ease whenever he approaches that territory absent from much of the rest of the somewhat contrived narrative here.
Still, it's mildly entertaining, Michael Sheen is terrific as a classic pretentious Allen romantic rival, Wilson is a surprisingly natural Allen hero, and the sensual pleasures are manifold; from some lovely Cole Porter on the soundtrack to Darius Khondji's cinematography, an attractive cast rounded out by Carla Bruni and Léa Seydoux, and of course the beauty of Paris itself. Which is where we - and Allen - came in...
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
THE DAMNED UNITED
(Tom Hooper, 2009)
More bromance than character study, with Peter Morgan's script decisively fudging the darkly alcoholic core of David Peace's intense novel and Michael Sheen adding a strange edge of camp to his portrayal of Brian Clough, what finally seals the mediocrity of Hooper's film is its inability to disguise its relatively low budget.
A back and forth time structure between Clough's glorious rise and inevitable fall makes it all a bit too dramatically predictable, and the football is given far too short shrift: the actors playing the Stars of the famous "Dirty" Leeds team of the 70s are too old, too fat, and never remotely convincing as professional athletes; and the brief snatches of games we are shown are violent pantomimes, lacking any of the beauty that Clough so admired in the sport. None of the players is granted a personality beyond sullenness and barely concealed contempt, anyway.
Hooper has an irritating penchant for gimmicky compositions when he isn't sticking to the resolutely symmetrical, but he does conjure some visually impressive scenes from the material and the grim atmosphere of mid-70s Yorkshire - all cigarette smoke and brown sauce - is vividly captured. The films strongest element is a fine cast of British and Irish character players surrounding Sheen, however, from Timothy Spall as the long-suffering Peter Taylor to Colm Meaney and Jim Broadbent as antagonists of different stripes.
Damningly, all of the best scenes and lines in the script come from Clough himself, and you can watch many of them on YouTube. Neithe Morgan nor Sheen can improve on the man they seek to portray, which is perhaps how it should be.
More bromance than character study, with Peter Morgan's script decisively fudging the darkly alcoholic core of David Peace's intense novel and Michael Sheen adding a strange edge of camp to his portrayal of Brian Clough, what finally seals the mediocrity of Hooper's film is its inability to disguise its relatively low budget.
A back and forth time structure between Clough's glorious rise and inevitable fall makes it all a bit too dramatically predictable, and the football is given far too short shrift: the actors playing the Stars of the famous "Dirty" Leeds team of the 70s are too old, too fat, and never remotely convincing as professional athletes; and the brief snatches of games we are shown are violent pantomimes, lacking any of the beauty that Clough so admired in the sport. None of the players is granted a personality beyond sullenness and barely concealed contempt, anyway.
Hooper has an irritating penchant for gimmicky compositions when he isn't sticking to the resolutely symmetrical, but he does conjure some visually impressive scenes from the material and the grim atmosphere of mid-70s Yorkshire - all cigarette smoke and brown sauce - is vividly captured. The films strongest element is a fine cast of British and Irish character players surrounding Sheen, however, from Timothy Spall as the long-suffering Peter Taylor to Colm Meaney and Jim Broadbent as antagonists of different stripes.
Damningly, all of the best scenes and lines in the script come from Clough himself, and you can watch many of them on YouTube. Neithe Morgan nor Sheen can improve on the man they seek to portray, which is perhaps how it should be.
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