(James Kent, 2015)
Though it plays and feels very much like a modern BBC period production - all tasteful costumes and furnishings, semi-repressed passions and clipped accents - Testament of Youth works much better than that suggests. It has an earnest, even stirring sense of passionate feeling absent from much period drama. That is probably because it is about the effect of the First World War on a generation of young Britons, and as such, much of the story is suffused with a sense of loss, sadness and grief. Not only that, but here we see that effect through the eyes of a woman.
Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) is a headstrong, intelligent young woman who yearns to go to Oxford, and needs no husband. And then she meets her brothers friend Roland (Kit Harington) and falls in love; at first tentatively, and then in a headlong rush of romance, poetry and excitement. These scenes are full of sensual details reminiscent of a sort of watered down Malick or Wong Kar Wai. Sheets blow on lines, heathers ripples in the breeze, there are extended shots - fleeting, as if in memory - of Roland's arm and neck. While Vikander is sensational, Harington is a little dull in that first act, but improves during the passage when he returns, traumatised, on leave, and Vera has to shock him back to her.
And then, of course, he dies. As does her brother and all of his friends. WW1 destroys the world and the people she loves, and as she has signed up as a nurse and witnessed horrors of her own, it almost destroys her too.
Vera's journey is dark and full of pain, and Vikander is fearless in confronting that. Just as good and in fewer scenes is Dominic West, as her stiff-upper-lip father, who collapses upon losing his son. Taron Egerton is all charm and enthusiasm as that brother and Hayley Atwell brings a welcome touch of lightness to the role of a businesslike matron on the front. The structure nicely evokes the sense of an innocent world destroyed by an epochal apocalypse, and though Kent reveals a sensitivity to performance in his direction, he never formally echoes this, which is something of a shame.
But still; stolid and solid as this is, it always works, and is consistently powerful and impressive.
Saturday, 6 June 2015
Thursday, 4 June 2015
RESULTS
(Andrew Bujalski, 2015)
Bujalski pulls an abrupt hard left after the uniquely bizarre wonders of Computer Chess with this relatively slick rom-com. And yet the slickness is all in the production design and the sharp digital photography; underneath it feels strangely of a piece with his earlier, so-called "mumblecore" work, where people try to find happiness and stumble through relationships.
In this case those people are Danny (Kevin Corrigan), a stoner and recent divorcee who inherits a fortune from his estranged mother and has absolutely no idea what to do with it, so he spends it paying strangers off Craigslist $200 to fix his huge tv and decides to hire a personal trainer to get him in shape. That leads him to the gym owned by Trevor (Guy Pearce), who lives in shorts and a t-shirt and talks an awful lot about achieving "goals". He and Kat (Cobie Smulders) have an awkward relationship, having had an "unprofessional" affair some time before. When Kat becomes Danny's trainer, he is smitten, and that complicates her relationship with Trevor.
Classic eternal triangle stuff, then? Well; not really. The film seems to be heading one way before moving off in another entirely, portraying a realistically complex entanglement of friends, colleagues and lovers. These are people unsure of what they want or afraid to try and get it, people who blow their chances to communicate with one another repeatedly. Recognisably normal human beings, in other words.
Corrigan seizes a rare lead role with glee and plays Danny as a confused but likeable clown. Pearce is dryly hilarious as Trevor, and Smulders is perfect as Kat, all temper tantrums and spontaneous gestures she herself doesn't understand. Their relationship, filled as it is with conflict and longing, is beautifully nuanced by Bujalski, whose skill as a writer is growing.
Visually, he remains a little less convincing, although the way this film becomes more intimate and plays with space in his compositions is subtle and pleasing.
Bujalski pulls an abrupt hard left after the uniquely bizarre wonders of Computer Chess with this relatively slick rom-com. And yet the slickness is all in the production design and the sharp digital photography; underneath it feels strangely of a piece with his earlier, so-called "mumblecore" work, where people try to find happiness and stumble through relationships.
In this case those people are Danny (Kevin Corrigan), a stoner and recent divorcee who inherits a fortune from his estranged mother and has absolutely no idea what to do with it, so he spends it paying strangers off Craigslist $200 to fix his huge tv and decides to hire a personal trainer to get him in shape. That leads him to the gym owned by Trevor (Guy Pearce), who lives in shorts and a t-shirt and talks an awful lot about achieving "goals". He and Kat (Cobie Smulders) have an awkward relationship, having had an "unprofessional" affair some time before. When Kat becomes Danny's trainer, he is smitten, and that complicates her relationship with Trevor.
Classic eternal triangle stuff, then? Well; not really. The film seems to be heading one way before moving off in another entirely, portraying a realistically complex entanglement of friends, colleagues and lovers. These are people unsure of what they want or afraid to try and get it, people who blow their chances to communicate with one another repeatedly. Recognisably normal human beings, in other words.
Corrigan seizes a rare lead role with glee and plays Danny as a confused but likeable clown. Pearce is dryly hilarious as Trevor, and Smulders is perfect as Kat, all temper tantrums and spontaneous gestures she herself doesn't understand. Their relationship, filled as it is with conflict and longing, is beautifully nuanced by Bujalski, whose skill as a writer is growing.
Visually, he remains a little less convincing, although the way this film becomes more intimate and plays with space in his compositions is subtle and pleasing.
Wednesday, 3 June 2015
LISTEN UP PHILIP
(Alex Ross Perry, 2014)
Listen Up Philip features a narration - nicely spoken by Eric Bogosian - explaining the thoughts and feelings of the characters in what I assume is meant to be a parody of a pompous literary style, perhaps the style for which protagonist Philip (Jason Schwartzman, excellent) gains increasing fame and success during (and after) the events chronicled in the film. With that in mind, it's hard to understand whether the grammatical errors and thuddingly clunky writing in that narration are a deliberate thing, meant by Perry to indicate that Philip isn't half as clever as he thinks he is; or if they're just proof that Perry himself isn't half as clever as he thinks he is.
That throws up the question of just how auto-biographical this film is. It does follow the relationship difficulties suffered by a young artist in the aftermath of his first success. He slowly withdraws from his relationship with Ashley (Elizabeth Moss), who has supported him during years of struggle. He basks in the attention of Ike (Jonathan Pryce) a legendary, Roth-like New York novelist many years his senior, who himself loves the adoration and intense devotion of his young protege. He falls into a relationship with Yvette, a teacher at the upstate college where he gets a teaching job, thanks to Ike.
Throughout it all, Philip is insufferable; arrogant, misanthropic and pretentious. You watch it wondering why anybody wants anything to do with him.
Schwartzman plays him with no vanity, only a hint of self-absorbed melancholy. This is a young man who has read too many novels about romantic outsiders, but can't quite mange to make himself one. He's just selfish asshole. In that he resembles Pryce's Ike, who has ruined every relationship he's ever had due to his own ego, and alienates his own daughter (Krysten Ritter, an open wound of childhood trauma and neediness) with another diatribe here.
The only moments in the film away from egotistical artists are the passages focusing on Moss' character as she comes to terms with losing Philip and finds herself once again. She is fantastic here, subtle and moving in her halting attempts to rebuild her life and ego after his abrupt move upstate.
She has one moment - a series of emotions rippling across her face in the aftermath of her finally crushing any possibility that she and Philip might ever be together again - which is probably the best moment of screen acting I've seen this year. If the rest of the film is a darkly funny, quietly excruciating, often finely-observed literary-style comedy-drama, her storyline is uplifting and speaks of the light, beautiful moments in a life. The kind of thing we see in cinema all to rarely.
Listen Up Philip features a narration - nicely spoken by Eric Bogosian - explaining the thoughts and feelings of the characters in what I assume is meant to be a parody of a pompous literary style, perhaps the style for which protagonist Philip (Jason Schwartzman, excellent) gains increasing fame and success during (and after) the events chronicled in the film. With that in mind, it's hard to understand whether the grammatical errors and thuddingly clunky writing in that narration are a deliberate thing, meant by Perry to indicate that Philip isn't half as clever as he thinks he is; or if they're just proof that Perry himself isn't half as clever as he thinks he is.
That throws up the question of just how auto-biographical this film is. It does follow the relationship difficulties suffered by a young artist in the aftermath of his first success. He slowly withdraws from his relationship with Ashley (Elizabeth Moss), who has supported him during years of struggle. He basks in the attention of Ike (Jonathan Pryce) a legendary, Roth-like New York novelist many years his senior, who himself loves the adoration and intense devotion of his young protege. He falls into a relationship with Yvette, a teacher at the upstate college where he gets a teaching job, thanks to Ike.
Throughout it all, Philip is insufferable; arrogant, misanthropic and pretentious. You watch it wondering why anybody wants anything to do with him.
Schwartzman plays him with no vanity, only a hint of self-absorbed melancholy. This is a young man who has read too many novels about romantic outsiders, but can't quite mange to make himself one. He's just selfish asshole. In that he resembles Pryce's Ike, who has ruined every relationship he's ever had due to his own ego, and alienates his own daughter (Krysten Ritter, an open wound of childhood trauma and neediness) with another diatribe here.
The only moments in the film away from egotistical artists are the passages focusing on Moss' character as she comes to terms with losing Philip and finds herself once again. She is fantastic here, subtle and moving in her halting attempts to rebuild her life and ego after his abrupt move upstate.
She has one moment - a series of emotions rippling across her face in the aftermath of her finally crushing any possibility that she and Philip might ever be together again - which is probably the best moment of screen acting I've seen this year. If the rest of the film is a darkly funny, quietly excruciating, often finely-observed literary-style comedy-drama, her storyline is uplifting and speaks of the light, beautiful moments in a life. The kind of thing we see in cinema all to rarely.
Wednesday, 27 May 2015
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
(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.
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.
Tuesday, 26 May 2015
TOMORROWLAND
(Brad Bird, 2015)
Narratively, Tomorrowland is a mess.
It has a charming but disposable prologue that goes on for about ten minutes longer than it should. It starts after that, then restarts a while later. It doesn't introduce its big star until almost half way through. It doesn't really explain who the bad guys are or what they're doing until the last act, meaning that we don't understand what's going on or what the stakes are for most of the film. Even then it all culminates in a pretty stock "blow-up-the-big-bad-device" ending, with a couple of simultaneous fights going on. Much of the story is made up of (admittedly impressive) action sequences, though they never flow into one another and rarely arise organically from the story. Inbetween the action scenes, there is a hell of a lot of what Bird identified in The Incredibles as "monologuing", as characters explain the story to one another (and the audience).
There are many good things too. This is an ambitious and even personal blockbuster film, about optimism and dreaming. It's very earnestness is unfashionable, and it makes that unfashionability part of its theme.
The design is fitfully lovely and sometimes lazy (the future as a pastel world of odd fashions and flying skate-boards, essentially), and after taking forever to set up the relatively dull real life of its heroine, Casey (Britt Robertson), it feels like it skips through the interesting stuff later in the film at hyper-speed, making the climax rushed and under-explained.
The cast are solid - Clooney gives good grump, young Raffey Cassidy is excellent, and Laurie monologues better than most - and Bird delivers on thrills and incident, but it never really works, hamstrung by that bizarre structure, and the way so many incidental details are far more fascinating than anything happening in the main plot.
And then there is Bird's usual theme of special people, doing special things, twisted here around a strangely polemical disappointed tone: how dare we mess up the future and let down the dreamers and the optimists? We could have built a utopia! Instead all we want to do is sit around and watch disaster porn.
Narratively, Tomorrowland is a mess.
It has a charming but disposable prologue that goes on for about ten minutes longer than it should. It starts after that, then restarts a while later. It doesn't introduce its big star until almost half way through. It doesn't really explain who the bad guys are or what they're doing until the last act, meaning that we don't understand what's going on or what the stakes are for most of the film. Even then it all culminates in a pretty stock "blow-up-the-big-bad-device" ending, with a couple of simultaneous fights going on. Much of the story is made up of (admittedly impressive) action sequences, though they never flow into one another and rarely arise organically from the story. Inbetween the action scenes, there is a hell of a lot of what Bird identified in The Incredibles as "monologuing", as characters explain the story to one another (and the audience).
There are many good things too. This is an ambitious and even personal blockbuster film, about optimism and dreaming. It's very earnestness is unfashionable, and it makes that unfashionability part of its theme.
The design is fitfully lovely and sometimes lazy (the future as a pastel world of odd fashions and flying skate-boards, essentially), and after taking forever to set up the relatively dull real life of its heroine, Casey (Britt Robertson), it feels like it skips through the interesting stuff later in the film at hyper-speed, making the climax rushed and under-explained.
The cast are solid - Clooney gives good grump, young Raffey Cassidy is excellent, and Laurie monologues better than most - and Bird delivers on thrills and incident, but it never really works, hamstrung by that bizarre structure, and the way so many incidental details are far more fascinating than anything happening in the main plot.
And then there is Bird's usual theme of special people, doing special things, twisted here around a strangely polemical disappointed tone: how dare we mess up the future and let down the dreamers and the optimists? We could have built a utopia! Instead all we want to do is sit around and watch disaster porn.
Monday, 25 May 2015
MATEWAN
(John Sayles, 1987)
Matewan is a masterpiece. John Sayles' best film, and one of the greatest and most overlooked films of the 1980s, it tells the story of a Miners Strike in West Virginia in 1920 which eventually ends in horrible violence.
Sayles is a fascinating director. A true independent, with a maverick streak, he writes, directs and edits each of his own films, writes novels and short stories, acts in other films as well as working as an uncredited script doctor on bigger movies for the studios, notably Apollo 13. He was in the middle of a rich seam of creativity in the late 80s, when he made Matewan. His next film, Eight Men Out was set in the same historical period as Matewan, but in the utterly different world of East Coast Baseball. The two films do have some thematic similarities, with their stories of groups of comrades facing coercion, moral courage and the damage wrought by politics.
Sayles has always been a great writer. Each of his films, from his first, "Return of the Seacausus Seven" (1980), is beautifully written, with wise, truthful, rounded characters, nice, frequently witty dialogue and unforced, organic plotting. His visual style has been more of an issue. He can be slightly pedestrian visually, though his storytelling is always clear and his editing is natural and smooth. His solution to his visual limitations seems to have been to hire the best Directors of Photography he possibly could.
Matewan had a budget of just $4 Million, which is a tiny amount for such an ambitious film which is so dependent on a convincing, detailed period recreation for its authenticity. Sayles wisely recruited the great Haskell Wexler as his cinematographer, and as a result, Matewan is hauntingly beautiful, full of muted, dusky lighting and striking compositions.
Its plot details the arrival in the town of Matewan of a young, idealistic union Organiser, written by Sayles and played by Chris Cooper as an almost mythic figure. His attempts to unite the striking miners and the immigrant scabs brought in by the Mining company result in an escalation of hostilities by the company's thuggish strike-breakers. Alongside Cooper, there are appearances by actors who would become Sayles' semi-regulars like David Strathairn and Mary McDonnell. There is also a striking performance from Will Oldham as a young miner-cum-preacher. When I first encountered Oldham in his guise as a musician, some years after I had seen the film, I was shocked to discover that the man responsible for this music was the actor from Matewan. He's as startling a screen presence as he is a songwriter, and indeed all of the films performances are strong. Sayles has always been a fine director of actors. But perhaps his most obvious gift is a talent for Altmanesque multi-character narratives, such as City of Hope, Lone Star and Sunshine State. Matewan flirts with this sub-genre, following the effects of the strike and Cooper's arrival upon many of the people involved. Sayles' work generally has a significant political component also, and Matewan is perhaps his most explicitly political film, with its portrayal of a labour dispute as a Manichean struggle between good and evil, informed by the cynicism the distance of 60 years of labour struggle in America has provided him.
That struggle finally erupts in the film's climax, inspired by the historical "Massacre of Matewan", when the Union thugs and the miners battle in the town. Sayles' screenwriting for the studios has tended to take in more genre material than his own directorial career, but Matewan's finale seems to suggest a classic Western scenario, with the two sides meeting on a railway line before an apocalyptic gunfight begins. The shooting of this sequence itself evokes Sam Peckinpah or Walter Hill, with heads exploding like ripe fruit and the air ringing with the reports of fired weaponry. Its a fantastic, ferocious climax, unlike anything else in Sayles' career, and all the more powerful and surprising for that. It also shows him - in collaboration with Wexler - as a visually exciting director, in perhaps the only straight set-piece he has ever attempted in his career. But he shows us the consequences of such violence - characters lie dead and bleeding. Others weep over the bodies of their loved ones, and Sayles' camera takes it all in, just as it had the carnage beforehand. Its a great ending to a great film in what remains an interesting, unique career.
Matewan is a masterpiece. John Sayles' best film, and one of the greatest and most overlooked films of the 1980s, it tells the story of a Miners Strike in West Virginia in 1920 which eventually ends in horrible violence.
Sayles is a fascinating director. A true independent, with a maverick streak, he writes, directs and edits each of his own films, writes novels and short stories, acts in other films as well as working as an uncredited script doctor on bigger movies for the studios, notably Apollo 13. He was in the middle of a rich seam of creativity in the late 80s, when he made Matewan. His next film, Eight Men Out was set in the same historical period as Matewan, but in the utterly different world of East Coast Baseball. The two films do have some thematic similarities, with their stories of groups of comrades facing coercion, moral courage and the damage wrought by politics.
Sayles has always been a great writer. Each of his films, from his first, "Return of the Seacausus Seven" (1980), is beautifully written, with wise, truthful, rounded characters, nice, frequently witty dialogue and unforced, organic plotting. His visual style has been more of an issue. He can be slightly pedestrian visually, though his storytelling is always clear and his editing is natural and smooth. His solution to his visual limitations seems to have been to hire the best Directors of Photography he possibly could.
Matewan had a budget of just $4 Million, which is a tiny amount for such an ambitious film which is so dependent on a convincing, detailed period recreation for its authenticity. Sayles wisely recruited the great Haskell Wexler as his cinematographer, and as a result, Matewan is hauntingly beautiful, full of muted, dusky lighting and striking compositions.
Its plot details the arrival in the town of Matewan of a young, idealistic union Organiser, written by Sayles and played by Chris Cooper as an almost mythic figure. His attempts to unite the striking miners and the immigrant scabs brought in by the Mining company result in an escalation of hostilities by the company's thuggish strike-breakers. Alongside Cooper, there are appearances by actors who would become Sayles' semi-regulars like David Strathairn and Mary McDonnell. There is also a striking performance from Will Oldham as a young miner-cum-preacher. When I first encountered Oldham in his guise as a musician, some years after I had seen the film, I was shocked to discover that the man responsible for this music was the actor from Matewan. He's as startling a screen presence as he is a songwriter, and indeed all of the films performances are strong. Sayles has always been a fine director of actors. But perhaps his most obvious gift is a talent for Altmanesque multi-character narratives, such as City of Hope, Lone Star and Sunshine State. Matewan flirts with this sub-genre, following the effects of the strike and Cooper's arrival upon many of the people involved. Sayles' work generally has a significant political component also, and Matewan is perhaps his most explicitly political film, with its portrayal of a labour dispute as a Manichean struggle between good and evil, informed by the cynicism the distance of 60 years of labour struggle in America has provided him.
That struggle finally erupts in the film's climax, inspired by the historical "Massacre of Matewan", when the Union thugs and the miners battle in the town. Sayles' screenwriting for the studios has tended to take in more genre material than his own directorial career, but Matewan's finale seems to suggest a classic Western scenario, with the two sides meeting on a railway line before an apocalyptic gunfight begins. The shooting of this sequence itself evokes Sam Peckinpah or Walter Hill, with heads exploding like ripe fruit and the air ringing with the reports of fired weaponry. Its a fantastic, ferocious climax, unlike anything else in Sayles' career, and all the more powerful and surprising for that. It also shows him - in collaboration with Wexler - as a visually exciting director, in perhaps the only straight set-piece he has ever attempted in his career. But he shows us the consequences of such violence - characters lie dead and bleeding. Others weep over the bodies of their loved ones, and Sayles' camera takes it all in, just as it had the carnage beforehand. Its a great ending to a great film in what remains an interesting, unique career.
Sunday, 24 May 2015
BEACH RED
(Cornel Wilde, 1967)
Beach Red is the story of an American attack on a Japanese-held Island in the Pacific during World War 2. It opens with an almost 40 minute long sequence of the preparation for and action of the landing on the Island's beaches by the Americans, then follows one unit as they move inland, sending out various recon patrols and encountering pockets of resistance. This sort of material had been covered in a hundred films before, as well as in such novels as James Jones' "The Thin Red Line" and Mailers "The Naked & the Dead". But Wilde avoided the cliches of many of those films while adopting a sensitive, meditative approach suggesting he was aware of the novels. Beach Red uses several risky stylistic techniques in its attempt to tell this story differently. Wilde uses first person point of view shots. He throws in moments when we hear the men's musings in brief snatches of voiceover as they think their frightened, selfish, sentimental thoughts. His Captain thinks, a little comedically : "Would there be Wars if clocks were never invented?" Other men ponder their own fear of death, their chances of survival, their loved ones at home. He also features visual flashbacks, generally played out in artful montages of still photos, representing (surprisingly effectively) the memories playing through these men's minds under high stress. Men remember wives, lovers, children, houses. Several key men are given actual flashbacks, always to encounters with women. Wilde's own flashbacks to his wife (Wilde's then-wife Jean Wallace) are poetic and melancholy, the effect lessened slightly by images of his son playing with a toy gun leadenly intercut with shots of men dying on the battlefield.
If any of this sounds familiar, it may be because Wilde's film seems to have been a definite influence on Malick's sublime The Thin Red Line.
Beach Red features a moment where the advancing Americans troop though a field, passing by a still, ancient-looking native farmer, as does The Thin Red Line. Both feature cutaways to the Island's wildlife, both treat the Japanese defenders sympathetically, even acknowledging their inner lives (Wilde with flashbacks, Malick with a voiceover). Both feature conflict between pragmatic, stoic Sergeants and liberal, sensitive Officers. Beach Red may be Wilde's most beautiful film, it's lovely attempt to capture the play of shadow and light beneath the jungles canopy only slightly bettered by Malick's film. Wilde's film also seems to have influenced Saving Private Ryan, in the horrible violence of its beach landing scenes (which of course seem utterly tame in comparison with Spielberg's ordeal) and Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima in its even-handed portrayal of the Japanese side of the conflict. Violence and what it morally reveals about mankind was obviously a theme which interested Wilde, since it is central to The Naked Prey, Beach Red, and his next film as director, No Blade of Grass (1970). Beach Red stands out as a memorable and inventive combat film, and again its success is partly down to Wilde's determination to concentrate so singlemindedly upon the action at its centre. We are shown nothing of the wider campaign, and only learn of the men's pasts as they tell one another. Instead we follow them through this primordial jungle and all of the surreal horror of battle together. Distant explosions are picked out by Wilde's camera, but he is only really interested in what is happening inside these men as they deal with the violence closer to hand. The idea of violence reducing men somehow, tearing them away from civilization, is suggested. The film's most memorable moment may just be the one which best fuses the interior and exterior worlds of one soldier - as he lies dying by a tree, mentally listing his conquests, Wilde shockingly pours blood in a thick drip down a still photo montage, and the man dies.
Beach Red is the story of an American attack on a Japanese-held Island in the Pacific during World War 2. It opens with an almost 40 minute long sequence of the preparation for and action of the landing on the Island's beaches by the Americans, then follows one unit as they move inland, sending out various recon patrols and encountering pockets of resistance. This sort of material had been covered in a hundred films before, as well as in such novels as James Jones' "The Thin Red Line" and Mailers "The Naked & the Dead". But Wilde avoided the cliches of many of those films while adopting a sensitive, meditative approach suggesting he was aware of the novels. Beach Red uses several risky stylistic techniques in its attempt to tell this story differently. Wilde uses first person point of view shots. He throws in moments when we hear the men's musings in brief snatches of voiceover as they think their frightened, selfish, sentimental thoughts. His Captain thinks, a little comedically : "Would there be Wars if clocks were never invented?" Other men ponder their own fear of death, their chances of survival, their loved ones at home. He also features visual flashbacks, generally played out in artful montages of still photos, representing (surprisingly effectively) the memories playing through these men's minds under high stress. Men remember wives, lovers, children, houses. Several key men are given actual flashbacks, always to encounters with women. Wilde's own flashbacks to his wife (Wilde's then-wife Jean Wallace) are poetic and melancholy, the effect lessened slightly by images of his son playing with a toy gun leadenly intercut with shots of men dying on the battlefield.
If any of this sounds familiar, it may be because Wilde's film seems to have been a definite influence on Malick's sublime The Thin Red Line.
Beach Red features a moment where the advancing Americans troop though a field, passing by a still, ancient-looking native farmer, as does The Thin Red Line. Both feature cutaways to the Island's wildlife, both treat the Japanese defenders sympathetically, even acknowledging their inner lives (Wilde with flashbacks, Malick with a voiceover). Both feature conflict between pragmatic, stoic Sergeants and liberal, sensitive Officers. Beach Red may be Wilde's most beautiful film, it's lovely attempt to capture the play of shadow and light beneath the jungles canopy only slightly bettered by Malick's film. Wilde's film also seems to have influenced Saving Private Ryan, in the horrible violence of its beach landing scenes (which of course seem utterly tame in comparison with Spielberg's ordeal) and Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima in its even-handed portrayal of the Japanese side of the conflict. Violence and what it morally reveals about mankind was obviously a theme which interested Wilde, since it is central to The Naked Prey, Beach Red, and his next film as director, No Blade of Grass (1970). Beach Red stands out as a memorable and inventive combat film, and again its success is partly down to Wilde's determination to concentrate so singlemindedly upon the action at its centre. We are shown nothing of the wider campaign, and only learn of the men's pasts as they tell one another. Instead we follow them through this primordial jungle and all of the surreal horror of battle together. Distant explosions are picked out by Wilde's camera, but he is only really interested in what is happening inside these men as they deal with the violence closer to hand. The idea of violence reducing men somehow, tearing them away from civilization, is suggested. The film's most memorable moment may just be the one which best fuses the interior and exterior worlds of one soldier - as he lies dying by a tree, mentally listing his conquests, Wilde shockingly pours blood in a thick drip down a still photo montage, and the man dies.
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