Based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, set in a snow-laden Swedish suburb in the 1980s, Let The Right One In, is not your archetypal vampire story, but rather a touching parable within a social-realist milieu that reveals the lonely emotional truths of childhood.
Oskar, the central protagonist, is a twelve-year-old boy who finds himself the victim of high school bullying. One evening, in the snow-covered courtyard of his apartment block, he encounters Eli, a young girl and neighbour who recently moved into the apartment next door with a man whom she calls father.
Alfredson is skilful in creating a visually and tactually spare and indelible film of startling beauty and intensity. The mundane becomes beautiful through the use of cinematography: The placid everyday scenes of suburbia are painted in muted tones; the composition of these scenes is simple, unsentimental. The macabre seriality of the Let The Right One In is intensified by setting this supernatural story in a very naturalistic and everyday environment. Arguably, no other director has been so successful in creating a work which undermines the vampire genre since George Romero’s 1977 film, Martin.
May 14, 2009
Let The Right One In; dir. Tomas Alfredson
May 14, 2009
Hunger; dir. Steve McQueen
On a literal level, Steve McQueen’s feature debut, Hunger, delineates the events surrounding the 1981 IRA Hunger Strike, led by Bobby Sands. It is also a meditation on the human body as political weapon, as well as an abstraction on what it means to die for a cause.
In spite of McQueen’s celebrated status as a Turner Prize winning artist who has a long experience working in the film medium, the journey to realising his creative vision with Hunger was far from problem-free. At a Q&A session I attended towards the close of 2008, the film’s producers, Laura Hastings-Smith and Robin Gutch, described the difficulty they encountered in trying to raise funds for the project. McQueen’s perceived “radical” ideas, which included exploring the possibility of making a silent film, made some potential sponsors feel jittery.
The first third of the film is almost devoid of any dialogue at all whilst it works to set the scene. Silence is contrasted against the centrepiece of the film – a twenty-two minute duologue between Bobby Sands and a Catholic priest, in which both men discuss the utility or futility of a hunger strike. This is followed by a monologue by a doctor’s detailed description to Sands’ parents about the effect of starvation on the human body. The third act observes the six-week disintegration of Sands’ body during his hunger strike, which proves to be both engrossing and almost impossible to watch. Hunger, in the end is an indelibly powerful, poetic and provocative work – both emotionally and intellectually.
May 14, 2009
The Class; dir. Laurant Cantet
The Class, set in a tough, ethnically diverse comprehensive school on the edge of Paris, follows a group of students and their teacher, whose interactions with one another are sometimes amicable and, at other times, combative. The Class is neither a documentary nor is it, strictly speaking, a docudrama. It is a drama which blurs the line between fiction and reality. Cantet achieved the film’s true-to-life feel by using real kids and their teachers from Francoise Dolto Junior High in Paris’s 20th arrondissement instead of actors – in much the same tradition as Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece, The Battle of Algiers; Ken Loach’s Poor Cow and Kes; and more recently Saul Dibb’s Bullet Boy. These directors were successful in “engineering” an understated simplicity in their works, as well as creating a heightened sense of realism, achieved by using non-actors to play the main roles, and diverging from a written script. In an interview Cantet revealed no dialogue was written, although a framework story for the students was provided. He also held weekly improv sessions for eight months with the actors, including Francois Begaudeau (who plays the teacher, and also authored the novel and co-authored the screenplay). This process created a sense of spontaneity in each of the scenes. The Class was made with the relatively low budget of 2.3 million euros: It was shot using three high definition cameras (one pointed at the teacher, another on the student at the centre of the scene, and a third camera poised to capture moments of digression).
February 7, 2008
Scott Matthew at Bush Hall
I first heard the “pathos-dripping” melodies of Scott Matthew in John Cameron Mitchell’s film, Shortbus (2006) – possibly during an orgy scene when his reassuringly warm voice cut through the starkness of the in-your-face ’slap-and-tickle’.
Last night, at the beautiful surroundings of Bush Hall, I was able to catch Scott Matthew’s debut London performance. Matthew performed well to an intimate crowd. Despite seeming nervous at times he cracked jokes in between songs and connected with the audience. As he sang his vulnerable voice acted as a beacon, guiding us through different emotions.
After releasing an album in 2005, as part of the alt-pop band, Elva Snow, which he co-founded with ex-Morrissey member, Spencer Cobrin, Matthew went on to produce a sound that was far less Morrissey-tinged and more his own – an amalgam of ballad and lo-fi folk-pop, featuring piano, strings and sometimes horns or a ukulele (see photo above).
Slightly off-topic, but for anyone interested in the filmmaking process I recommend watching the very interesting bonus material on the Shortbus DVD. The making-of documentary outlines precisely how John Cameron Mitchell set out to achieve an improvised-based process whereby the actors were able to develop the script and, penultimately, the story itself, during a series of pre-production workshops.
February 5, 2008
Le Père-Lachaise
The day was luminous and brisk as we climbed broken steps. Entering the cemetery we found ourselves in front of a map listing names of the cemetery’s “notable” deceased. We planned to visit three sites.
The tombs of Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf were unexpectedly modest in size and design, whilst Oscar Wilde’s tomb was suitably audacious. A vast modernist angel, spotted with lipstick marks from Wilde’s admirers, dominated many of the surrounding graves.
I thought I remembered seeing a photo of Morrison’s tomb desecrated with lipstick marks and messages from fans, but on this visit there were not any fan-scrawlings in sight. His grave was cordoned off with a metal barrier and a patrolling guard observed visitors suspiciously.
Piaf’s tomb, so diminutive and unassuming, also contained the bodies of Anita Maillard, her mother, Marcelle Dupont, her daughter who died during infancy, and Theo Lamboukas, her last husband who was killed in a car crash in 1970, seven years after her death.
Any feelings of foreboding I may have felt before arriving at the cemetery were replaced by a strong sense of calm. Rather than being morose, Le Père-Lachaise is a peaceful place, offering mourners and visitors alike a sanctuary for quiet reflection.
As we prepared to leave the cemetery we came across an area devoted to Holocaust memorials. Large sculptures of ravaged, emaciated figures loomed over us. The Holocaust memorials, as severe and bewitching as they are, demand more than quiet reflection, confronting our anxieties and evoking a deep sense of hopelessness. This part of the cemetery is not characterised by serenity, peacefulness, stillness, but rather it leaves you with a lump in your throat.
January 4, 2008
Craig Davidson’s “A Mean Utility” and “Life in the Flesh”
The male-centric focus of Craig Davidson’s writing, coupled with his penchant for graphically depicting scenes of violence and bodily mutilation, are factors that will either garner readers to – or repel them from – these short stories. The first, “A Mean Utility”, tells the tale of a young couple who attempt to solve their marital problems by raising prize-winning (illegal) Rottweilers who fight to the death in the brutal dog-fighting ring; the second story, “Life in the Flesh” deals pointedly with issues of guilt and responsibility and even male egoism through its central protagonist, an ex-boxer, who flees to Thailand in order to escape his demons after killing an opponent during a boxing match.
The unabashed clichés of exaggerated masculinity (the fascination with violence, the inability of Davidson’s male characters to express simple feelings, as well as the overtly “proud” natures of his protagonists who are seemingly unjust, unloving, intemperate, and at times, adolescent) are on the one hand quietly frustrating, and on the other, invigorating. Ironically, these very traits of machismo work to emphasise the pathos, humanity and underlying subtlety of both stories, rather than perturbing them.
October 14, 2007
An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar
Taryn Simon’s photographic exhibition, currently showing at The Photographers’ Gallery, exposes profound political, scientific, moral (sometimes ecological) issues by habituating us (the reader) to a strange and unfamiliar world.
A caged, albino tiger called Kenny: His thick, white fur, pink nose and ice-blue eyes, are achieved through selective interbreeding. The inevitable effects of interbreeding include mental retardation, physical deformities including mal-shaped forelegs, and a nose, so deeply set, that it is difficult for him to breathe.
The cadaver of a young boy, around ten years old, is left to perish on a body farm for scientific analysis. The corpse is dressed in an oversize t-shirt and a pair of shorts. His legs, black with decay, are offset against his toothpaste-white trainers.
Beauty and horror ally themselves in each photograph making the scenes all the more stark, upsetting, melancholic, arresting…
