'Submarine'

Submarine is IT Crowds Richard Ayoade's début film about a rather disillusioned youth growing up in South Wales. Oliver Tate has all the issues a normal adolescent has, he has parents which seem to be from another planet, he fancies the girl sitting next to him in class and he is mildly unpopular. Be assured though, no one's got whitened teeth, there are no cheerleaders and most importantly, there is no adolescent twats singing while hopping around to a soundtrack which to the over 15-year-old-ear sounds like long fingernails being drawn over a blackboard. As a matter of fact, the soundtrack, mostly written and performed by Arctic Monkey's front man Alex Turner is understated, underlining a mood rather than trying to upstage the film. As such it perfectly matches the nostalgically tainted visuals.

Ayoade's images are stylish to say the least, in fact one gets the impression that he had NME peeping over his shoulder for the duration of the shoot. In fact, the film clearly targets an audience which grew up in the 1980's, cleverly leaving out all the embarrassing fashion mistakes we made back then, while highlighting everything that is back in fashion just now, inspired by the 80's. This is post-modern nostalgia at its best. This might sound like a criticism, but in fact, it is a lot of fun, as we can look back and chuckle, wrapping ourselves in the warm knowledge, that back then, we were different youths, without technological gadgets, still making mix-tapes while thinking thoughts that neither involved vampires nor wolves, nor any hard made decisions between the two. Even though the truth was that we all wore leggings, braces and wanted to either marry Andrew McCarthy or become the new Suzie Quatro. I have to say I like Ayoade's version better.

Oliver Tate is a self-centred, cynical, slightly morbid, but refreshingly naïve character whose best moments come from his overblown imagination, in for example, him fantasizing about his funeral and the suffering inflicted on his whole town by his death. His love interest could be taken straight from Don't Look Now with her red coat, her pyromaniac tendencies and her slightly sinister views on life. Submarine is most of all a character driven film, the performances are superb without exception, the dialogues, if a bit stagy at times, are witty, clever, funny and eloquent. The film is moving without ever descending into sentimentality, which is why one asks oneself, why Ayoade felt the need for freeze frames, direct written definitions on screen and several other supposedly quirky techniques, the film frankly does first of all not need and secondly makes it feel slightly pretentious with its obvious heavy nods towards the French New Wave. The last scene on the beach is taken almost straight from The 400 Blows, personally I couldn't concentrate on the action on screen as I kept waiting on Oliver to face us in a moment of self-reflexive irony. Don't worry, this never happens.

All of these techniques, filmic references and overly stylised iconography are enjoyable, they are well mastered, even though they sometimes feel like an exercise in indie film-making. All in all, Submarine is a hugely enjoyable coming of age story, if it's not quite got he making of a classic, it is nevertheless a very impressive first feature and proves that Richard Ayoade has firmly set foot on the British cinema scene. Everyone who makes the character of a mother admit a hand job to the weird neighbour with a mullet deserves no less.

'Howl'

Howl is Rob Epstein's and Jeffrey Friedman's attempt to translate Allen Ginsberg's epic four part poem 'Howl' into a visual form which aims not only to inform about the figure of the poet himself, including insights into the very process of writing and as such creation, but furthermore sets out to convey a sense of the despair of a post war youth coming to terms with a world in which the realities of sexuality, race, and language are changing, shifting, leaving its very ground unstable, so the very act of living seems like a tightrope act.  

Howl does so in four distinct aesthetic forms: first of all the black and white shots of a young Ginsberg, setting out, firstly to write, and later to perform 'Howl' in a San Francisco gallery in 1955. These segments are inter-crossed with nostalgically tainted shots of an older Ginsberg giving an imaginary interview in his apartment. Then, a rather conventionally shot courtroom scenario, depicting the obscenity trial against 'Howl''s publisher. Last, a series of hallucinatory animation sequences endeavour to reinforce the voice-over reading of the poem in a drawling sing song melody, imitating Ginsberg's intonation.
 

The film clearly aims at showing that the issues of the Beat generation echo through the times and are as relevant today as in 1955. They surely are, especially in drawing the parallel between the obscenity trial in the film and its general musings on homosexual love in the 50's and the trial of Proposition 8 going on in California as we speak. The film, however, fails to deliver in any original way. The scenes depicting young and slightly older Ginseberg are every art student's dream in that they are extremely stylish, to the point of being superficially stylized.

The black and white shots of the smoky back room of the gallery and the faded colours of the apartment shots are attractive, but have the quality of a stylish shoot for an independent London based fashion label. The court scenes provide several entertaining moments, especially in the array of so-called literary experts either condemning or praising 'Howl'. They deal with the age old question of what defines Art and its merit in, if not a new way, at least an eloquent one.

One of the main problems of these scenes is the unintentional irony introduced by the casting of Mad Men's Jon Hamm as the liberal defence lawyer. He pays an advocate of a poem which clearly satirizes the uniformity of the Madison avenue suits. This in itself could be clever pun on the consumer habits, not only of the advertisement and thus materialistic craze of the 50's or indeed of our contemporary society, instead, it only reinforces the impression that 'Howl's ideas and ideals have by now become an integral part of a bourgeois education it set out to antagonize at its time.

A clear distinction can here be observed between the power of 'Howl' the poem and its visual accompaniment that is Howl the film. The words in themselves, beautifully read out by James Franco have lost none of their sense of urgency, anger and indeed necessity. It is here, however, that the images let the language down as they feel too presumptuous, even pretentious at times, too much part of a cultural canon that is clearly aimed at a bourgeois society which can later on discuss their relevance over a glass of good Merlot (and maybe even a cheeky bit of Brie). As such, the film feels dishonest as it is clearly aimed and indeed sourced from academia, rather than tapping into the ugliness and roughness of a life on the fringes of society from which it was conceived. This is a shame, as it turns the language of the poem, which is still very much alive into a discourse, emptying them of their emotional resonance leaving the audience distanced and uninvolved.
 

This goes for the animation as well. One of the characters remarks that poetry cannot be turned into prose, that being the reason why it is poetry in the first place. One cannot wonder why the film-makers chose to include this particular observation if they then decided to transform the poems hallucinatory and imaginative observation into an animation which leaves no room for subjective interpretation. These animated sequences feel flat and strangely lifeless, their nightmarish qualities they were no doubt to convey lost in the artistically polished images whose overly phallic symbols attempt to translate the points made about homosexual love and life with the subtlety of a sledge hammer. Not that the poem isn't satiated with sexual explicit comments, it seems to me, however, that the main point lay in the sensual love between two men, which in the poetic language comes though as a thing, indeed, one of the only things of beauty in these bleak streets of an underground New York.

The images themselves have a strangely Orwellian quality, maybe because their very style reminded me so much of the animated version of Animal Farm. It thus felt like the authors forced a vision of the poem on me which left me feeling distanced and indifferent to the certainly relevant themes on the screen. Howl is certainly a very crafty piece of work, however failing to do justice to the raw energy and thematic force of the language and indeed experience of reading 'Howl'. The film as such doesn't howl so much as it discusses in a very civilised and cultured manner.

'Rango'

Rango is yet another of the CGI animated films laden with Hollywood stars doing the voices of an array of cute, wholesome and box-office safe characters in a sentimental fable which designed to give simplified moral lessons,will leave you with a sickly sweet feeling in your stomach, not unlike eating too many marshmallows and topping it off with a shot of aftershock. Or so I feared in making my way into the screening. Two hours later I was completely converted, as even the film poster, which I had not seen before, let me hope, seeing its Hunter S. Thompson qualities which let you expect a surreal tale about the dark side of the American dream.

The film's main protagonist is a lizard, without a name, which coincidentally is wearing an exact copy of the Hawaiian shirt Dr. Gonzo was wearing in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The film opens with said lizard starring in his own play with a lead villain whose mechanic motions might very well be a comment on wooden Hollywood acting and a female lead which is more a bust than anything else as she is missing a head, or face. Here, Rango very cleverly plays on the dilemma even the method actors of the 50's were very well aware of, as if you can be anyone, any role, which one is you?

I almost feel silly to write it, but Rango is very much a film about existential self-reflection as it echoes both Camus and Sartre in its assumption that man, or indeed in this case, lizard is very much the sum of his/her/its actions, not so much the product of either name or upbringing. Our Camusian hero, then is a domesticated lizard who through a car accident is left to his fate in the middle of the Mojave desert. he comes across a very Homeric oracle in the form of road-kill, whose musings have the doped-up characteristics of a new-age Californian guru of the 70's while literally bumping into Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo from the aforementioned Fear and Loathing. Here, lies the main enjoyment of the film as its self-ironic nods to other films are skilfully woven into this Western-pastiche which refers to the likes of mostly Sergio Leone with its sun-drenched visuals and Ennio Morricone-inspired soundtrack.

The self-referential crux of the film is without a doubt to be found in the scene in which Rango meets the spirit of the West,a character clearly inspired by Clint Eastwood who hilariously makes his exit in a golf cart normally used on the set of film studios, while several what appear to be golden Academy Awards shimmer in the back of his cart. Rango furthermore plays on the similarities of certain genres as, for example, characters spoken by Timothy Olyphant remind us of HBO's brilliant series about the real West Deadwood, while the thugs, one of them spoken by the ultimate Gangster number one Ray Winstone evoke the gangster thriller which essentially builds on the same foundations as the Western. As such, Rango ironically mirrors the canon of Hollywood blockbusters while never descending into the easy option of making the film a mere spoof.

Surrealist dream-sequences and scenes bordering on absurdity such as a series of desert creature riding what appear to be chicken would in any other animated film feel contrived and gimmicky, in Rango, however they work flawlessly, a merit which can unquestionably be attributed to the film's aesthetics.
 

The fact that Rango reminded me uncannily of True Grit came as no surprise as the end credits list Roger Deakins as visual advisor, the latter being the main photographer on the Coens' latest piece. Especially the colours, plain and brown, almost as if seen through a sepia filter give Rango an anachronistic feel, otherwise found in the gritty, dusty, down-to-earth Western of the 70's rather than the polished and often glorified grandeur of, let's say, a John Ford cinematography.

The animation of the characters is of mind-blowing quality as each hair on theses furry companions gently flutters in the wind, while details such as wind-chimes made from broken bottles not only reinforce the film's main theme, which is water shortage in the desert, essentially a not so veiled allegory of the industrialised West exploiting third world countries, but furthermore is of such convincing discernible delicacy, it makes you forget you're watching an animation, which is what good animation conclusively does,: make you forget it's there, not make you notice how well-made it is.

Even though Rango is essentially marketed as a children's film, there was not one child to be seen at my screening. It has all the qualities a good children's film should have, it's often fast paced and has certain slapstick elements while never being patronising in tone or content, but in the end I'm not sure parents will not enjoy Rango more than their offspring, as, for example, I'm not sure how a five-year-old will enjoy the Cubist dream sequence from the beginning, or react to the slightly sinister undertone that runs through the film. I, for once, will from now on keep my animation-related prejudices at bay as some marshmallows seem to have true grit.

Never Let Me Go

To write about Never Let Me Go is to be very careful not to spoil it for anyone who might still plan on seeing it.

Tommy (Andrew Garfield), Ruth (Keira Knightley) and Kathy (Carey Mulligan) grow up in an English boarding school in 1978, even though the aesthetics of the film have a distinct feel of the 1950's. Their idyllic upbringing is only disturbed by the mundane aches and pains that inevitably accompany teenage life. When a new teacher arrives, a horrible secret, which hitherto has been hidden in plain sight, is revealed to the children and will alter their life from hereon. Here the film which up until now has felt like a perfectly English countryside love story or period drama, albeit an unhappy one with a sinister undertone, develops an unexpected turn into the science fiction domain, this being as far as I will venture into discussing the plot in this review.

The rhythm of the film is clean and slow, including a few dead spaces which even though they may seem self-indulgent at first later on prove their value as the crux of the film, the secret, has time to slowly unfold its magnitude on the audience. The film itself is a plain metaphor for the inevitability of death, its omnipresence and our horrified, yet resigned acceptance of it. The characters' acquiescence to the, and yet quiet despair facing 'the fact', does  nothing but mirror man's eternal struggle to abide facing his /her own dreaded and yet strangely insignificant demise.

The film's love-triangle cleverly reinforces this awfully objective logic of a world in which subjectivity is by no means a god-given, or man-given right. On this level, the film does play on class distinction as well, even if it does so with less subtlety than one could hope for. On the other hand, Never Let Me Go manages that tightrope between sensationalistic depiction of the secret and just plain boredom remarkably well, avoiding any emotional cliches or too blunt implications. It is, however, the last scene of the film which is of such heart-breaking beauty and understatement that will convince you entirely of the film's merit. 

Never Let Me Go manages to portray that well-trodden path about the injustice and the absurdity of the human condition in a way which is at once original and aesthetically nostalgic, in depicting a world in which the surrounding is not only unbearably indifferent to the human plight, but also of a delicate beauty which might just convince you to forgive it.

'True Grit'

The Coen brothers' newest film True Grit follows the story of 14-year-old Mattie Ross, played by newcomer Haillee Steinfeld, who sets out to avenge the murder of her father in bringing to justice the culpable Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). The latter, unfortunately, has already disappeared to Indian territory. Mattie thus decides to employ the meanest and toughest gun for hire in Arkansas, former Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges). She, in turn, is herself confronted by LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), a seemingly pompous and ridiculed lawman from Texas who wants Chaney for the murder of a government official in his home state. After many indistinguishable growls from Jeff Bridges which somehow manage to translate into general displeasure at Mattie's involvement in this adventure, the three of them set out to catch Chaney.

So far, so Western, and this doesn't change one bit throughout the film. Bridges' Rooster is a far cry from John Wayne's interpretation of the same character in Hathaway's 1969 version. Where Wayne gave the character your typical rough with a heart of gold attitude whose slightly ironic stance towards Mattie bordered on the patronizing, Bridges plays Rooster with a meanness the character previously lacked. This is no weekend-boozer, this is a full-blown alcoholic whose depiction includes moments of honest and deliberate cruelty and pathetic degradation. The Coens' Rooster is no surrogate father-figure for Mattie and while the relation between the two definitely develops throughout the film, the Coens are wise enough to let their female protagonist remain the center of her own narrative rather than attaching her to a kind and older role model or lover.

Mattie's independence, however, relates not so much to her age or gender (the Coens evade political interpretation of their characters again), as it is a direct correlation to her Presbyterian upbringing which includes her Protestant work ethics, her firmness in the principles of right and wrong and her obsession with justice which she equals with the law.

LaBoeuf, on the other hand, is introduced as a buffoon with spurs, in fact he is immediately declared a clown in the first scene by Mattie. LaBoeuf's swollen manner of speaking and high-trodden values seem to make him an ideal target for the Coenian irony, here, however, lies the most surprising element of the film: LaBoeuf turns out to be a genuine stand-up guy who firmly believes in all the values he so self-righteously proclaims throughout the film and which, if this was a previous Coen film would turn out to be but empty principles in a system of values which would then be shown to be but  socially constructed and as thus would inevitably collapse.  It is here that the hard-core Coen audience remains confused.

The audience is  now presented with a traditional Western whose conservative morals and plot lines even John Wayne could not fault. The only concession to originality lies in the Coens' decision to set the film in the bitter-cold rather than the sun-drenched desert surroundings favored by most Westerns. Here lies the Coens' main asset, as the audience is presented with an array of extremely beautiful shots, mostly due to Roger Deakins' photography. Deakins keeps the colors of the film subdued and plain, unadorned, much like Mattie's clothing and  her values for that matter. The lighting perfectly matches the sober tone, the pastoral, somber music and the true grit of the characters.

The by far strongest aspect of True Grit is to be found in the Coens' use of  landscape, an eerily empty, hostile, but undeniably beautiful environment. Images such as Mattie and Rooster waiting motionlessly in the snow only for what appears to be a bear riding a horse to emerge, give the film a dream-like, poetic and slightly surreal quality which culminates in the penultimate scene in which Rooster rides with snake-bitten Mattie under the night-sky. In moments like these The Night of the Hunter comes to mind as the Coens create several character or plot vacuums in which the beauty of this bare landscape is allowed to unfold its hold on the spectator. Maybe the Coenian sense of an uncaring surrounding is not lost after all as the the characters' motions and emotions come to seem insignificant set against the grand indifference of shots such as water rippling in the river or trees almost meticulously dividing the screen in unadorned lines.

The beauty of images like these save True Grit from being but an average Western. The dialogue, plot lines and character development are very enjoyable while offering nothing new to the canon of the Western. Even though one would wish for a little bit more grit in the visuals, as the film feels so polished at times, our gaze is in danger of sliding of the screen, the poetic beauty of True Grit makes it well worth seeing.