'The Wolf of Wall Street'

Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is the latest contradiction to his earlier statement that he would never make another gangster film again. Scorsese then makes the oh-so-witty observation that the real crooks can be found on Wall Street in the form of stockbrokers.

Cue Jordan Belfort, main character and overall prick, and his half-wit, incestuous (alright, that was funny) beta-wingman Donnie Azorff. We follow Belfort through the excruciating first year of employment only for him to get fired on the very day of his first real job. Disgruntled, Belfort ends up in New Jersey where he quickly becomes savvy in the pump-and-dump scamming system in which naïve postmen, always postmen, are relived of their life savings by having them invest in so-called penny stocks of companies that, more often than not, do not exist. Of course, he makes money, subsequently switches his first wife for a glitzier version, buys a mansion, a yacht, some monkeys, cars, while having a rather extreme appetite for hookers, cocaine, Quaaludes: you name it, he takes it. Of course, the FBI soon starts paying closer attention and things slowly but surely unravel. Sound familiar? That’s because it is! We have seen this film in one form or another a thousand times. It is a self-indulgent, occasionally witty, highly over-the-top melodrama about … erm … I dunno … money?

The only difference to the admittedly rather conventional Wall street drama is that Scorsese does not abandon his fascination with the small-time criminal and don’t get me wrong, apart from their excessive wealth, these are essentially crooks. The Stratton-Oakmont office doesn’t look any better than the garage out of which they operate at first, only better lit. These characters never evolve, the hookers are getting more expensive, the food is eaten on a yacht, the drugs get more exclusive, but, in the end, these are excessively masturbating, vulgar, immature adolescents, living each day as if Mummy and Daddy are trying to relive their honeymoon on Barbados for the weekend, leaving the boys in charge of the family home. In its fascination with the small-timers of the demimonde, The Wolf of Wall Street shows clear parallels to Goodfellas or even Casino. It does lack the anxiety and underlying concept of danger of the former Scorsesean masterpieces. It mostly resembles the attempts of third-year film students having seen Goodfellas way too many times. The resemblance to Scorsese’s earlier work remains thus mostly structural in his use of voice-over, sleek visuals and in the all-male relationships as only bases of validation and authenticity.

The actors are really let off the leash in terms of performative freedom. DiCaprio gives a performance that is riveting in its very physicality. After a couple of hours, however, the burly extravagance becomes not so much powerful as annoying. Belfort as a character has no room for subtlety and DiCaprio’s performance is almost equal to his latest rendition of Jay Gatsby. He seems to be drawn to playing wealthy, all-powerful alpha males who get what they want through sheer persistence and charisma. Jonah Hill can be seen as the new Joe Pesci, though without the latters rage and violence. He does provide comic relief, though, in his downright silliness. His performance, to me, felt somehow more complete and honest in that he manages to convey the very pleasure of playing an immature, loud and crass scumbag. The only performance that really stands out is Kyle Chandler’s portrayal of Agent Patrick Dunham. Thus, the play-off between Belfort and Dunham relays the only real illustration of power relations between similar characters on different sides and all the connotative subtleties in dialogue that we have come to expect in a Scorsese film. I had some hope for the character of Aunt Emma, played by Joanna Lumley, but she is never given the screen time to fully develop her potential. Same goes for Matthew McConaughey, who nevertheless delivers one of the funniest monologues of the film.

Rather than Belfort, money is the real protagonist of this three-hour joyride: Money as temptation, money as abstraction, money as aphrodisiac, money as self-validation, money as doctrine. But, first and foremost: money in all its omni-presence as the base of our society in its very essence and the underlying power structures it fuels. Scorsese has never lain off the mantle of Catholicism and here; the new religion is called capitalism. Again, nothing new. The film not so much works through deconstruction in that underlying societal structures are embedded in the narrative for the spectator to decipher as by blatant superficiality. Here, money is not ideological; ideology has itself been replaced with money. Money is not a means to an end; it is the means and the end. Money is its own goal, where goods purchased are less important than abstract possession of capital.

We are sucked into this dizzying spiral of images in which any notion of contemplation becomes impossible. Here, the film clearly mirrors the hysteric tendencies of our own post-capitalist society in which success is equaled with wealth and sexuality becomes an economic principle in that it can be bought or is treated as the remnant of an inherent power relation that again draws on money and who has it, quote: “You have my money taped to your boobs. I think you work for me”. Time in this equation is compressed and accelerated; we are taken on a ride in the fast lane to insanity. The characters are driven to a schizophrenic frenzy in which subjectivity is forever propelled forwards to an ever greater accumulation of wealth as only self-validation. Here, the notion of hysteria, for once, applies to masculinity. Even though women also fall prey to the power relation of money, they do so either as wives and trophies, consumable objects, or have to adopt a typically ‘male’ behaviour in order to succeed and survive in this environment.

The mise-en-scène mirrors this sense of dizzying void and glitzy surface. The many slow motions and freeze frames convey a sense of staggering artificiality that perfectly suits the contextual abstraction that is this lifestyle. Terence Winter once again demonstrates his penchant for the glitzy nothingness of a world that exists as pure surface, as he has already proven in Boardwalk Empire. From the very start, the film is driven by excess and gluttony as a direct consequence of extreme capitalism. This excess is also conveyed through the sheer abundance of the word fuck in the dialogues (apparently over 500 fucks), the use of hyperbolic language and superlatives again highlights the lack of meaning, content and depth of this world, our times and, ultimately, the film.

The imagery is clearly carnivalesque in that the bodies that people the screen become grotesque to the extreme. DiCaprio, in the throes of a drug-related full-body paralysis, becomes almost animalistic in gestures that befit a contortionist. In this sense, the film regurgitates the stylistic conventions of a turn of the century vaudeville roadshow as we witness little people, women that are compared to witches with half-shaven heads, marching bands, monkeys and, of course, the female body as the eternal spectacle. The visuals, as the events and lives depicted, are but a hallucination: any notion of identity or subjectivity is displaced to a diffusive circumvolution of spectacular masks, misapprehensions, delusions, performances and uncanny mimetic misrepresentations. Remember the Popeye-scene? –There you go!

The protagonists as such become vessels for the destitute, wacky hollowness that pervades all aspects of the film. Spectatorial immersion proves impossible, as the viewer’s gaze slides off the glitzy surface of the visuals. I did not care for Belfort or any of the other characters for that matter. The characters are but elements in this side show of freakishness and the carousel of madness that is the narrative. Here, however, lies the film’s strongest element in that the narrative and mise-en-scène is fueled by a crazy energy that does not fail to captivate, even if limited to mere visual thrills and spectacle.

The film uncannily reminds us that in watching, we, too, become consumers of a product, but instead of feeding us hidden depths, Scorsese presents us with a grotesque imitation of our own desire to consume. The voice-over is by now a constant tool in Scorsese’s cinematic workbench. Nevertheless, it does not serve the furthering or framing of an individual narrative as it provokes an uneasy feeling of direct implication on the spectator’s side whom Belfort addresses directly on numerous occasions. At the same time, we are the dunces, the small-time consumers and when Belfort sneers that we wouldn’t understand the intricacies of his scams and we wouldn’t be interested in them anyways, we are reminded that, indeed, we are sitting here and, indeed, have paid for the spectacle of it all. And pure spectacle is what we get. The little man, here taken literally at times, is always the one to get fucked and why should someone like Belfort assume responsibility for a flawed system incorporating ideals to which we all aspire? The notion of responsibility becomes a parody as the lads discuss the health and safety risks of their scheme to play human darts with a little man (even though the real-life Belfort claims this never has, but could just as easily have, happened). One has to applaud Scorsese for the non-resolution and thematic constancy of his ending that negates any moral redemption or punishment. The immediacy of this late modern experience, the representation of desire as instant gratification and the absolute non-essence of existence in the universe of Wall Street (and the cinema of attraction for that matter) render any concept of personal or human responsibility futile.

The Wolf of Wall Street is clearly in love with its own visuals, witticisms, speed and shallowness and, to a certain extent, it works. We are sucked into the spiraling void that is this film as if helpless to face the dizzying velocity of the mise-en-scène that develops an extreme momentum. The issue of the film’s structure lies in its inconsistency. At full speed from the go, the film never reaches a peak and pure excess, even with such an experienced and skilled filmmaker as Scorsese, eventually results in boredom. After the fiftieth motivational speech given by Belfort to a hooting crowd of hormonal workers, I just did not care anymore. The stupidity of the characters and, occasionally, the script eventually overtakes the vehemence and spectacular pleasure in the skillful artificiality of the mise-en-scène. The notion of pure excess, visually and thematically, which worked so well in other films embracing the concept of pure surface (as for example, Spring Breakers), here proves flat and stale, while the performances could be expected of circus clowns in a village vaudeville. I wanted to like the film, I even loved The Departed which so many people abhorred, but here, Scorsese has lost me. It is not so much that I despise the film; I got some enjoyment from it. Nevertheless, what I can’t forgive is that, in the end, it remains utterly forgettable and this is not something I thought I would ever say of a Scorsese film.

'12 Years a Slave'

12 Years a Slave is based on the 1853 memoirs of freeborn violinist and carpenter Solomon Northup. Northup,who, through a series of deceptions, eventually ends up being drugged and sold into slavery. He is stripped of his name and becomes but another of the many nameless unfortunates who were nothing more than property to be handled and abused at the hands of wealthy Southern landowners. What follows is an Southern Odyssey in which Northup encounters cowardice masked as kindness (Master Shaw), acute humiliation in being treated in a worse manner than the farm animals (Master Epps) and tentative friendship with fellow slaves (Patsey).

12 Years a Slave might be set in the 1800s; however, it is hard not to draw parallels to our own capitalist system of cheap labor and sweatshops in which modern day slavery is conducted under the banner of progressive globalization. McQueen’s depiction of slavery then picks up where the likes of Amistad and Django Unchained have left open this open dirty secret of recent American history, albeit in a much more subtle, while shocking and intelligent manner.

The introduction of the landscape in its very autonomy relate the fascination of a filmmaker clearly enthralled with the Deep South as a piece of almost primordial wildness. The imagery encapsulates the archaic, beautiful and terrifying. I don’t believe McQueen would be so unsubtle as to suggest blunt associations between human nature and the wildness of the landscape, however, the wide and careless abandon of the latter serves as stark contrast to the imprisonment of the main characters. The fact that no physical bars exist in this South only exemplifies the brutality of stripping a human being of its own freedom to control his/her own life.

McQueens’ film functions through contrast. This also applies to the protagonist’s socio-economic background, as he is distinct from other slaves in being a violinist and carpenter with independent means. Northup is thus not only othered by his enslavement, he also finds no place within the slave community. There is a feigned arrogance to Northup that can only be described as a desperate attempt to hold on to a former notion of identity. Stripped of his real name, one of the most intense scenes of the films has Northup join the chorus of slaves singing at a funeral, for the first time giving any notion of coming to terms with a new existence and emplacement. In the South, the protagonist is neither Northup nor Platt, but represents an eternal subjective in-between. The extreme close-ups McQueen employs, keep lingering on Northup’s face, singling him out and thus re-appropriating an individual identity. The use of close-ups here allows no distance. The spectator is only allowed brief relief in the long shots of the incorporated landscape that nevertheless proves a rather hopeless and uncaring surround to the human drama that unfolds in it. The persistent close-ups on Northup thus relay a sense of visual claustrophobia, clearly conveying the impossibility of escape. McQueen literally forces the spectator to become a true seer. There is no means of visual escape short of covering one’s eyes.

On the one hand, McQueens’ choice of his protagonist’s background ties in with a very American notion of self-improvement and the necessity for individual and collective progress. Read in this light, the roles of the other slaves remain problematic as, of course, they never gain their freedom, almost as if Northup deserves his by the right of connection with powerful individuals, rather than by a human right of equality applicable to all.

One can read Northup’s privileged status, however, also in an instrumental fashion, in that in his life, the gulf between his former and present life becomes vividly illustrative of societal negation. Northup’s status thus clearly provides a comment on the barred access to education and career for most other African Americans in the film.

McQueen usually chooses one colour scheme for the film and then sticks with it, whether it be the inhumanly green of ‘Hunger’, the cold and detached blue of ‘Shame’ or, in this case, an anachronistic, almost rustic brown. I’m not sure whether the colour scheme in its sepia tones does not introduce a distanced view of events that still qualify as recent history. The rather stilted manner of Northup’s speech also transfers the viewed inhumanity to a space of the ‘far-removed’. I am aware that all these mannerisms serve an idea of historical authenticity and remain rooted in Northup’s own autobiographical account, however, I was left wondering whether the introduction of late modern elements to the mise-en-scène might not have rendered the historical nearness of the events themselves more accessible. Only in scenes of extreme violence does the film lose its detached, read historical view. In this sense, the film works through visceral shock.

As to the performances, McQueen, as usual, has a stock of actors who most of the time can do no wrong. Chiwetel Ejiofor’ performance becomes powerful not so much through grand theatrical gestures or outbursts as by subtle approximation. His performance consists in the minutest facial gestures that nevertheless capture the enormity of his life events. This man clearly is made for close-up and McQueen obliges.

Lupita Nyong’o is an absolute revelation in her role as Patsey, the unfortunate slave girl who has to endure her master’s infatuation with her, while Michael Fassbender here almost pales next to her. Fassbender nevertheless plays Epps with an intensity that relays not only the inherent sadism of the character but also a clear sentiment of self-loathing and torment. Benedict Cumberbatch does a fine job of playing Master Shaw and transmitting the shame implicit in conscious cowardice. The only proverbial bad apple lies in the casting of Brad Pitt as benevolent Canadian anti-slavery advocate, Bass. Surely it’s not for lack of trying, but his all American face does the role no favours, as does the flippancy of his performance.

One character that perhaps has not received the critical acclaim it deserves is the one of Mistress Epps played by Sarah Paulson. Her status is just as limited and unfree as the slaves in this society that is not only racist, but also patriarchal. Her only privilege, of which she takes full advantage, thus lies in the fact the she remains one level above the societal position of a slave. She is equally part of the property held by the master, in this case her husband. Instead of sympathizing, however, she indulges in cruelty, not so much inhuman, as shocking in its very humanity, as she is a product of her times, upbringing and sex. Her character thus illustrates how an individual is very much a construct of societal norms, rather than her character portraying a notion of the inherent human goodness against all odds.

As Fredric Jameson rightly notes: ‘History is what hurts.’ Too long has late modern historicity called for an abandonment of the legible body in favour of a polyvocal expression of embodied micro-existences. It seems as if the artist has taken up the call; here, Steve McQueen’s film excels in its depiction of the effect of history on the material body. The societal norms and cultural values thus lose their status as a discursive moral conceptualization and come to enter a dialectical relation between viewer-body and body-on-screen. Simply put, spectatorial distance is aggressively dismantled, as explicit images of torn flesh and the brutality of a whipping leave no safe space from which to observe. Here, narrative becomes as ineffective as unnecessary as McQueen clearly understand the usefulness of the visceral in terms of spectatorial identification. He cleverly blurs normatively lived lines from the past as no matter whether black or white, torn flesh remains torn flesh and will be related to as such. In the end, everyone’s got a body and we know what it means to feel pain. He thus introduces a notion of responsibility that has less to do with knowing a moral concept as wrong as with sensing and seeing the wrongs of a recent historical reality.

All in all, McQueen walks the filmic tightrope of historical epic and shocking reality of recent historical events with much skill. Even if certain elements of the mise-en-scène prove distancing in their provoked anachronism, the inherent and visceral material reality of abused bodies negate a notion of safe spectatorship and refuse the relinquishing of subjective spectatorial responsibility. The film’s crucial strength and force lies in the ferocity and brutality of a very visible notion of the topic of slavery. This is not a clean view of history; it is a portrayal of the blood, sweat and tears of a very recent historical reality that provokes the parallel re-alignment with our own lived reality and all its injustices. The telling of one individually lived and embodied narrative thus manages to convey the incomprehensive injustice and suffering of an entire people.

Not to be missed.

'Tyrannosaur'

Critics worldwide have rightly acclaimed Paddy Considine’s feature debut Tyrannosaur as one of the best films of 2011. Considine's first feature presents a brutally honest portrayal of a man lost in a spiral of violence, alcoholism and loneliness. It manages to provide a skilful illustration of the issues at hand while never indulging in a tone of bourgeois condescendence.

Tyrannosaur’s opening sequence has Joseph kick his dog with a brutality that only comes with a lifelong experience of violence and humiliation. This life relates as a direct result of an existence devoid of warmth, compassion and whatever other notion makes life in the world at all bearable. The opening scene sets the tone of the whole text and, in my screening, it also made the couple in front of me leave with bowed heads, in a shameful admission of their unwillingness to ruin their perfectly good Wednesday night with an hour and a half of raging bleakness. Fair enough! Considine's Tyrannosaur is by no means an easy watch.

Considine's main protagonist Joseph is your quintessential bully in a tracksuit, or so it would seem. After another night on, what he calls, 'the rage', he finds refuge in a charity shop owned by Sophie, a devout middle-class Christian. After Sophie offers Joseph a cuppa and a prayer, the latter, convinced of her being but another middle-class do-gooder, verbally lashes out at her, leaving her in tears. So far, so cliché, but Considine is too sensible a film-maker to leave it at that.

Soon enough the audience realizes that Sophie herself is imprisoned in an existence fuelled by rage, if, in her case, directed against her. In an almost unbearable scene of extreme, because poignant, humiliation, things spiral into unstoppable violence. The subtle and quiet strands of hopeful undertones in the friendship of Sophie and Joseph almost seem doomed from the start.

Rather than being mere symbolic representations of social issues, Considine allows his characters space to divulge a rich complexity. The tone and theme of the film, just as the characters themselves are build upon the foundation of conceptual Christian duality, namely, the admission of sins past and redemption sought. The characters are desperately looking for a means of communication to bridge the gap between their loneliness and the surrounding world. Disenfranchised, these figures on the fringes of society desperately seek not only a voice, but a further justification or explanation for their actions which in itself are nothing but the accumulation of respective existential circumstances. In Joseph's case, this takes the form of destruction through rage.  Unable to build, Joseph's only means of control is destruction. At the same time, however, Joseph is very much aware of the cruelty of his actions and capable of feeling the accompanying guilt. As such, Considine brilliantly portrays this extreme inner complex in the bar scene in which Joseph, seated in front of a pint in a lonely corner, almost goes out of his mind, muttering to himself, unable to give proper expression to the emotions that tear him apart. Again, Joseph turns to the only means of emotive execution he knows: violence.

Joseph is the man to make malevolent japes at his wife, while the cruel awareness of his own actions tears him apart.

Hanna, on the other hand, attempts to give meaning to her inhumane surroundings through, not so much her faith, but the rhetoric of the Christian dogma. She uses the Christian values of forgiveness almost in an endeavor to justify her martyrdom; most noticeably through the status of abused wife. She turns to Joseph in the certainty that he needs to be saved, until she finds herself in need of saving. Salvation, here, being somewhat a too blunt description for the relationship that is formed between the two protagonists. Considine never forces the topic, he lets it unfold in its own right, never feeling the directorial need to clarify the subtlety of character-motive. As such, the audience never feels certain as to the authenticity of Hanna's belief, which, in the end, is of little consequence. Joseph and Hanna's alliance is not so much one of love, a one of attempted redemption, shared loneliness and communal forgiveness for sins committed past and present.

As expected, the performances are nothing short of brilliant. Peter Mullan is superb in portraying Joseph with an underlying, omni-present rage that almost takes the physical form of a restrained twitch. The only slight discrepancy lies in his somewhat rugged, nevertheless quite healthy-looking physique, as his skin color lacks the greyish tone of a long-term alcoholic.

Coleman, of course, proves to be the revelation of the film. Known mostly for her performance in Peepshow and The Green Wing, Coleman couldn't have found a better role to break the typecast of a slightly ditsy, chaotic, but nevertheless lovable girl next door. She plays Hanna with a heart-breaking fragility that never descends into the saccharine. It is her smile that holds the most power over the spectator, as it is as innocent as it is melancholic. She is seen gulping vodka in tears in the kitchen of her charity shop, only to break into that dejected, sweet smile of hers once a customer enters.

 It is the poignant smallness of moments like these that make the film immensely powerful. Scenes of this cinematic quality tap into the full tapestry of the characters' inner life, without having to resolve to overly grand cinematic gestures. The depiction of a broken man who, while having initiated the death of his dog, nevertheless stays by his side, while the latter dies. The extreme humiliation of a woman urinated upon by her husband while being asleep. The destruction of a cuddly toy by a dog initiating the collapse of a childhood. Considine manages to let these moments manifest within the text without ever resolving to pathos. I have very much a mind to send a copy of the DVD to Clint Eastwood. 

'Silver Linings Playbook'

Pat is bipolar. Tiffany is depressed.

Pat nearly beat his wife's affair to death and has just left the mental institution where he spent the last eight months. He longs for a reunion with his wife, restraining order notwithstanding.

Tiffany has developed nymphomaniac tendencies after the death of her husband and battles a severe depression.

Sounds like the newest Ken Loach? Nope, here comes David O. Russell's Hollywood rom-com in the tradition of a 30s screwball comedy. Like the flawed individuals that people this film, the latter is at odds with itself. First things first though.

Pat then returns to the family home in Baltimore in order to live with his Dad, an OCD bookie who comes to regard his son as the good luck charm his team needs to win, and his mum, a woman of near saintly patience who seems to constantly be churning out sausages and meatballs from her kitchen.

When Pat is invited to dinner by his friend Ronnie and his dominating wife Veronica ( Julia Stiles here, again superb in her signature role as the Ice Queen), he (re-)meets Tiffany. Pat has no qualms about using Tiffany as a courier to get a letter to his wife, seeing as he isn't allowed to approach her. Tiffany in turn, fully aware of being used, strikes up a deal in which she forces Pat to take part in a dance competition to be held at a local hotel.

It is rather surprising how O.Russell tries his hand at formulaic cinema, especially with the last scene gaining in immense importance and momentum through a bet placed on the outcome, the presence of an emotional rival and a public platform for the couple's blossoming romance.

This is a film that lives through smaller moments as the plot is short of ludicrous sometimes. I won't say too much, but the bet? It seems as if the screenwriters constantly tried to find solutions to narrative hiccups and the film never quite feels a unified whole and always slightly out of sync. That being said, it thrives in its careful weaving of a rich character fabric, especially in the care and attention to detail given to the supporting roles, first and foremost of course Pat's dad and mum and the relationship they have, which comes across as very real in Pat's mum's acceptance of his dad's violent streak and the latter's apologetic and absolute loving of her. Everyone in this house is a culprit, his mum for her acceptance and negligence to act, his dad for the violent outbursts which resemble his son's in a way which he fails to see and Pat, in his absolute expectancy of complete tolerance from his surroundings. At the same time, no one's guilty as his mum's passivity becomes patience, his dad's aggression is coupled with a sincere desire to connect with his estranged son and Pat's self-involvement is fueled by the will to be a better man.

It is in O. Russell's never judging his characters that the film excels. While most of the audience accepts the ludicrous plot-line of the bet as we're so used to the cinematic code of 'if it's in the plot it must be true', the directorial restraint, however, also gives the spectator the chance to follow and evolve with the characters at his/her own pace, resulting in an emotional participation rarely found in contemporary mainstream, and make no mistake, mainstream this still is.

Pat's motivation and enthusiasm are a near-scary thing to behold. Remember Tom Cruise in Magnolia? You get the same vibe from Pat here. Pat is an incredibly dislikeable character at first, obnoxious, volatile and self-centred. This does provide, however, for the funniest scenes in the film. O. Russel unobtrusively manages to let the audience warm towards this self-proclaimed self-help pseudo-psychologist in letting us discover the genuine despair and honest will for betterment behind it all. One cannot help but feel admiration when faced with a man who has such a strong will for happiness. Still, the film seems to have done better with American audiences, maybe because the very themes of self-actualization and betterment through emotional bonding just seem more embedded in the cultural fabric of the States. At the same time, scenes like Pat freaking out because he cannot find his wedding video ring uneasily true and have an anguished authenticity to it; in moments like these character-development moves away from narcissistic self-entitlement as the magnitude of Pat's day-to-day struggle of keeping it together becomes apparent. Cooper's performance is loud, but honest and, I say this in full conscience of my own arrogance, a little unexpected.

Teaming him up with Jennifer Lawrence seemed even more of an odd choice to be honest, but proved to be one of the best of the film. Lawrence is as unafraid an actress as they come, she's not only constantly in Pat's face, she's in ours too. She plays Tiffany with a brashness which is as refreshing as it is, at times, uncomfortable to watch. She throws the offer of sex in Pat's face, hiding the vulnerability which inevitably accompanies asking someone to be your friend, even in your twenties. Tiffany becomes the voice of self-acceptance: yes she's dirty, but she also likes that about herself and can he say the same thing about himself. And can we? This scene by definition should have been uncomfortable to watch, yet, wasn't. Lawrence's performance is genuine and, most importantly, never over-the-top, which is not a given, considering this role. There's an appealing sloppiness to Tiffany with her low-cut cleavage and foul mouth, as she is the only one not afraid to tackle Pat.

Her quest for something joyful takes the shape of the dance competition and O. Russell deliberately chooses to make them pretty much suck as dancers, while in a clever twist on the joyful spectacle the musical interlude, he makes us watch a scene from Singing in the Rain. It is here, that the message hits home, as while the audience accepts joyful eruption in musicals or the modern equivalent of dance films, we absolutely refuse to integrate it into daily life. Yes, the final scene was incredibly cringe-worthy to watch, mainly because of its normalcy, at the same time, however, the spectatorial mood shifted from embarrassed to cheerful and here lies the film's greatest achievement. This might seem banal, yet, it has been a long time since I was involved and not merely observing characters on screen.

It further seems as if De Niro is back on track, playing the dad with an emotionally charged intensity and, lo and behold, funny subtlety at the same time, which make his performance a joy to watch, especially in combination with the wonderful Jacki Weaver who acts almost solely with her huge eyes, filling the screen in puppy-like dismay. Then there's Chris Tucker in the role of Pat's friend Danny. He's, and I never thought I would say this about Chris Tucker, but, surprisingly low-key, yet delivers some of the funniest lines of the film. Remains for me to mention Anupam Kher as Pat's therapist, who seems to take Pat with exactly the right kind of low-beat humour the latter needs.

Yet, there's an elephant in the screening room and here I'm left in two minds about the film. As such: Can mental illness be used as romantic premise of a screwball comedy? Love as miracle cure for mental issues, self-betterment and redemption through personal discipline and emotional connection almost seem like a chapter from screen-writing 101 under the heading of character motivation. Only in Hollywood. Even accepting the argument that it might be a useful thing to depict mental illness in its most rudimentary form and remove the stigma by putting it in the context of a romance, I still cannot rid myself of a slight feeling of exploitation when it comes to the use of bi-polar disorder as character-motivation and a happy ending which seems to advocate the fact that no matter how ill you are, the puritan values of a working discipline and the following of a value system helping your re-integration as full member of society, will miraculously cure you. Just like the American ceremonial nature of sporting and sport outcomes take on a nigh-ritualistic spirit, almost standing in for a substitute of sense-making in life. As such, the film, in raising these questions, leaves an after-taste completely counter-productive to its actual outset.

The American pursuit of happiness has a darkly hysteric underside in Silver Linings Playbook and the audience becomes an emotional participant after having witnessed scenes of an accuracy so utmost it becomes painful to watch, even if never in a voyeuristic, but in a compassionate manner. The film has its merits, foremost in its all-round excellent performances and genuinely funny moments, such as my absolute favourite, the Raisin Bran scene, absurd and original. Then again, the mixed message the film conveys never really sits easy as I'm not sure if dancing and free will cure bi-polar disorder and post-traumatic depression. Soundtrack's good though.

'Gangster Squad'

Ruben Fleischer's already proven his ability to gleefully play with extreme violence in Zombieland, so it seems it would only be a matter of time before he would turn to the potentially most violent period in American history, namely post-war LA.

Gangster Squad opens with the typical noir voice-over, here in the form of some such nonsense about badges men wear and how it defines them. It's that age-old American question dating back to the pioneers of who 'owns' a town. The answer is always the same: the wrong guy. Here, in 1949 LA it's Mickey Cohen, former boxer turned Jewish mobster whose physique resembles a squashed pit bull while his behaviour is not of much better quality. Cohen's got the whole town in his pocket and after getting rid of, whatchamacallit, his mobster superior Dragna, Cohen runs the show and there's not much anyone can do about it, especially with most of the police force on Cohen's payroll, unless one does it off the books that is. Which is exactly what police chief Parker, one old-school bastard and only incorruptible in the force proposes to Sgt. John O'Mara, war hero and straight shooter all round. Nolte's voice here sounds as raspy as wrapping a glass vase in tin foil and throwing it down some stairs, it's downright scary to watch at times.

O'Mara, with the help of his wife, The Killing's wonderful Mireille Enos, sets up a small squad with which to go after Cohen and his operation. The team consists of a nice bouquet of noir stereotypes, you've got the drunk cynic who has to be convinced by a dramatic event to do what's right, the crazy gun nut, the young tag-along, the street-wise uniform and the bespectacled intelligence genius. Leaving the badge at home, armed with righteous intentions, but never able to be accused of subtlety, O'Mara and his team hit Cohen where it hurts. Follows a visual feast of violence. Plot-wise this is pretty much it, with a sub-romance between Sgt. Jerry Wooters and Cohen's girlfriend Grace Faraday.

Remember that time when we were all able to sit in the cinema or in front of the TV on Sunday afternoons and just have fun, a kind of childhood ideal situation, uncritical and unbridled joy in film, no matter how good or how bad? Well, this is it people! There is nothing, I repeat, absolutely nothing subtle or refined about Fleisher's film. The clichés are milked for all it's worth and the characters almost seem like stereotypes of stereotypes, if you know what I mean. Nevertheless, it has been a long time since I was so thoroughly entertained for two hours. Gangster Squad will never be a classic, I'm not even sure it's a particularly 'good' film, but the thing is, it doesn't set out to be. It never pretends to be anything else than what it is, namely a good time in cinema. It's a sensationalistic vehicle, handsome in all its artificial glory, funny, though never witty, while the performances are good enough to save the one-liners from unbearably cringe-worthy to delightfully cheesy.

If you're looking for real noir or a Scorcese-like gangster thriller, you will inevitably end up wanting to hurl your cheesy nachos (Yes! I'm talking to you, you smelly pseudo-film buff in Metallica shirt and fuzzy facial pubes in the third row) at the screen. Do us all a favour and put Gangster Squad in context. This is pop-art cinema at its best, a shallow pastiche and I mean this in the best possible way. Cinema for the eyes, not the brain.

Anyway, it wouldn't be a critique without the criticising part now, would it? Surprisingly here it comes in the shape of Sean Penn's performance. It remains uncertain whether Penn's Cohen is supposed to be a spoof of the gangster or a chilling rendition of the alleged real-life lunacy of one Mickey Cohen. As it is, Penn's performance shifts uneasily between frightening intensity and a strange goofing around. I'm not even going to start on the deformed facial implants he wears and which seem to move throughout the course of the film. Or maybe it's got to do with the fact that we’re not used in seeing the method actor in an entertainment blockbuster of this scale. 

Josh Brolin is the one thing that saves his character from incredulous huffing on the audience's part, as he infuses O'Mara with a believability that is hard to explain, but has to do with the physicality of his performance. His body language tells you without the slightest doubt that this guy does believe in the black-and-white moral code he has created for himself. When Keeler questions their actions as the difference between cop and gangster vanishes, O'Mara seems downright taken aback.

Gosling plays Wooter with what he hopes is the suave laconic irony of a Kevin Spacey and even though Wooter has some of the best lines of the film, there is only one Spacey and Gosling's high pitched voice does not help his virility. Nevertheless, Gosling delivers a solid performance and especially stands out in the combined scenes with Stone, who plays the femme fatale with a sultriness which has mostly to do with her voice. Unfortunately the verbal pin ball dialogue between the femme fatale and the anti-hero, the life-blood of all noir, falls just short of witticism here. There is a lot of potential left unexplored in the Grace character, as Stone's screen time is slightly too limited and there is no sassy boldness or any sense of real danger to this dame, apart from the one inherent in the very idea of messing with a mobster's girl.

Michael Pena, Robert Patrick and Giovanni Ribisi are all underused in terms of their potential talent for that matter, nevertheless, quality lies in the detail, and all the performances are a joy to watch.

There has been quite a strong negative reaction to Dion Beebe's digital cinematography. Ironically, the very noir period was all about glitzy shallowness and the beginning of the materialistic age with the coming of the 1950s. Let's not forget that noir has always been a style rather than genre. If they would have had the digital means back then, I guess, they would have. The shoot-out in the lobby with the Christmas tree at the end is a thing of sheer beauty. Why Fleischer and Beebe felt the need to up things a little digitally in the fight scene at the end I'll never understand as it only disturbs the smooth sleekness of the visuals in general.

Gangster Squad is a swanky feast for the eyes. Its overblown silliness, both visually and thematically are a joy to watch, if that is your cup of tea. There's a comic-book feel pervading the film and, yes, the violence is glorified and stylish, but , come on!, this is pure entertainment as the numerous shots of the Hollywoodland sign keeps reminding us. Who says formulaic film-making must be bad as sometimes you want poptarts, not paté.