BYZANTIUM

(Neil Jordan, 2013)

Neil Jordan makes films about the supernatural that specialise in atmosphere and eerie subtleties instead of shocks or sustained terror. This seems to be a good thing; there are more than enough horror films being made at the moment loaded with long passages of tension punctuated by sudden frights, just as there are plenty of gory shockers filled with blood and violence. But nobody else makes the kinds of films Jordan makes - visually lovely, often quite complex in their consideration of their themes.
Byzantium features both blood and violence, and plenty of each. It tells the story of Clara (Gemma Arterton) and Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan), a 200 year old mother-daughter team of vampires, constantly moving from dingy British town to dingy British town, fleeing the pursuing clutches of a cabal of male vampires led by Darvall (Sam Riley). When the cabal gets uncomfortably close to catching them, they find themselves in a fading seaside resort, staying in an old hotel named Byzantium with Noah (Daniel Mays). Eleanor is chafing against their lifestyle and struggling with the burden of her memories, and her life becomes more emotional when she meets Frank (Caleb Landry Jones). Meanwhile, both women need to feed on blood regularly, and the mysterious "Brotherhood" is closing in...
The strange thing about Jordan's approach is that it makes for "horror" films that aren't remotely frightening. But then that doesn't appear to be his intention. He makes these films feel like fairytales, playing up the mythic elements and emphasising the power of the archetypes he is dealing with.
In Byzantium he plays against some audience expectations. His vampires don't fear sunlight or sleep in coffins. But they do need an invitation inside to enter a residence. While Eleanor only kills elderly people who are "ready", Clara kills the powerful who prey upon the weak. They hitchhike and Clara works as a lapdancer and prostitute to earn money, while Eleanor, eternally 16 years old, goes to school. Many of these elements and twists on the traditional mythology are familiar from the recent surge of vampire films, and Byzantium's script, adapted by Moira Buffini from her own play, never really elevates any of them or says anything new. It does contain several of the motifs and ideas Jordan has addressed before in his career, but this story is just a little too convoluted and stretched to work as well as his best work does.
It tries to include not only an angst-ridden teen romance suggestive of Twilight and Let the Right One In but detailed flashbacks to the Georgian period when both women became vampires reminiscent of Jordan's own Interview With the Vampire. All of this is overlaid with a literary voiceover by Eleanor, who repeatedly writes their story then throws away the pages. The seaside setting is a reminder of Jordan's little-seen The Miracle. 
The most interesting sequences here are the ones investigating the Irish origins of the "ancient Gods" the Brotherhood worship, referencing the neamh mairmh of Irish folklore, and involving an Island off the Irish coast where there are so many birds they almost blot out the sun, and rivers of blood signal the transformation of a character from human to undead. The scene where Riley's Darvall and his friend and Captain (Jonny Lee Miller) travel there is almost Lovecraftian in its mix of awe and mystery.
Byzantium also contains a fascinating feminist reading of the genre - these women defy the brotherhood and are hunted purely because they broke a rule. In response, Clara uses her sexuality to survive, and she is the most energetic and active figure in the narrative.
Jordan has an attractive style - classical but arty, based on strong compositions and a sensible amount of cutting - and he can conjure atmosphere as well as anybody working today. He is helped immeasurably by the fine cinematography of Sean Bobbit to ensure that this film vividly suggests the textures and varying tones of the down-at-heel resort town in the present day and the same place in the Georgian era. The colours are rich and soft throughout, the lighting crepuscular.
And yet the whole thing never quite gels or hangs together; despite all these positives it works only fitfully. Jordan is a distinctive and capable enough filmmaker to make all of his work worth seeing, but there seems to be an undeniable shortfall between Byzantium and some of his earlier, better films.
The strong cast here help make it a pleasant, involving experience all the way through. Yet it always feels as if it could have been much more.

ON THE ROAD

(Walter Salles, 2012) I've got issues with Jack Kerouac's "On The Road". I read it at 17, and even then it seemed like I was too old for such a book, too cynical to be impressed by these tales of beatnik debauchery and striving for artistic greatness. I appreciated much of the writing but many of the attitudes and characters seemed silly to me. In a way, watching Walter Salles' adaptation of the novel (which benefits from a fine script by Jóse Rivera) persuaded me that Salles has a similarly conflicted relationship with the novel. For as much as On The Road is a faithful, respectful attempt to get a literary classic right, it is also an insightful, acute criticism of its own source material. Rivera and Salles get right to the heart of the materials preoccupations with a first act filled with jazz, drinking, drugs, lots of sex, Kerouac proxy Sal Valentine (Sam Riley) scribbling away feverishly in a notebook, and much conversation about creativity and freedom. Salles finds just the right idiom for it all; his mainly handheld camera, quick editing and a real attention to the textures of life in 1940s America all giving it an immediacy and intimacy, while the lovely photography courtesy of Eric Gautier ensures it carries an elegiac, poetic quality from the start. That allows for a deeper examination of the novel; specifically of its view and treatment of women. Every male freedom in On The Road is balanced by female pain, and Salles ensures that his camera catches every such instance. Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) leaves a trail of crushed and scorned women in his wake, swapping them like shirts, abandoning them on street corners and in apartments with his infant children, always seeking the next thrill with his buddies. Strong casting helps here. Kirsten Dunst and Kristen Stewart each give their role a charge of intelligence, disappointment and bitter heartbreak as two of Dean's wives, while Elizabeth Moss has one furious rant directed at Dean and one of his friends. Only Alice Braga - as an itinerant labourer briefly involved with Sal - and Amy Adams seem content in their lives, surrounded by children and her heroin addict husband (Viggo Mortenson, having a great time as Old Bull Lee, Kerouac's version of William Burroughs), who is the first one of the group who questions Dean's motives and saintliness. Hedlund is terrific as Dean. Just charismatic and interesting enough that his hold over so many people is believable, but with an edge of vulnerability and insecurity that makes him seem intensely human. Riley has less to do as Sal, but he gets across the watchfulness of a writer well, and the intensity of their relationship carries the film. The beauty of the photography and of the many desert landscapes, sunsets and mountain views certainly don't hurt, and even act as a partial explanation for the attraction of life on the road in this vanished America. There is also a strain of acute longing here, the cloying self-regard often obvious in Kerouac's writing transformed into something far more melancholic and interesting here. These are men in search of fathers - this made more explicit by a small change to the first line of the novel, emphasising a connection between Sal and Dean - and burying themselves in experience, travel and excess. Another aspect altered from the novel is the explicit homosexuality here; Dean is conflicted about his relationship with Carlo, but his scenes with an older travelling companion (Steve Buscemi) suggest his crushing need for intimacy with a father-figure, and the homophobia present in many of the books asides is exchanged for the good-humoured amusement seen in Sal's face on a few occasions. The story is thin, of course, following these friends as they criss-cross the country from New York to California via Denver, but it accrues emotional power as it follows the roads they speed down, until one final betrayal, in a vividly-evoked Mexico, has a particular sting. As a beat film, this is outstanding, Salles finding the perfect rhythym and register for such a story, intent upon the quiet moments, the lost moments of thought and regret. And as a literary adaptation, it is uncommonly intelligent and piercing. In all, then, this is a massively surprising success.