Friday 24 November 2017

How did we get to this place?


120BPM
 People keep asking us how we choose the films for Borderlines.

Jan Doran, one of our regular volunteers and a trustee of Arts Alive/Flicks in the Sticks, attended the BFI London Film Festival and kindly gave us access to her report:
It takes days of eyeing up the festival programme before I can build up to tackling it and establishing a system that ensures I’m not endlessly re-reading blurb or doubling up on dates. Once I’ve cracked it I’m cramming as much as possible into my four-day extravaganza.  
Having recently been bowled over by Andrew Garfield’s fine performance in Angels in America I welcome the opportunity to see him in Breathe and to see what Andy Serkis might do as director.  
The film opened with titles in a lurid yellow, very traditional font and within the first five minutes we witnessed cliched scenes of cricket matches and afternoon tea with gorgeous young leads stealing glances followed by an open top classic car scenario driving along idyllic country lanes……much fun and laughter. Forty minutes in and I was on my way out.

This really was an unfortunate start, nothing here to recommend I’m afraid. I didn’t care about these wealthy young things, couldn’t identify with them or their plight and was irritated by the music trying to tell me what to feel.
By contrast I entered Brigsby Bear, passing a life sized version of the gross cartoon character wondering why I was taking up a recommendation to see this film. Perfectly described in The Guardian as The Truman Show meets Room it was both surprising and amusing with an utterly delightful performance by Kyle Mooney as he engages with the real world following his isolated, dysfunctional upbringing. 
A trip over to Hackney led me to my first encounter with a Picturehouse picket. Wasn’t expecting that - much dithering and off to find a drink elsewhere to think this one over. Compromises and resolutions a plenty in the following days but in I siddled to see 1%
This Australian film likened by its director, Stephen McCallum, to Romper Stomper, Animal Kingdom and Snowtown was a riveting and hard edged, brutal portrayal of biker gangs. Universal themes of succession, rivalry, and loyalty were made more compelling with strong females and untypical themes of sexuality and disability driving the plot. The performances were strong particularly Matt Nable as the brutal gang leader who also wrote the screenplay. 
Queues across Leicester Square at 8am on a Saturday heralded Battle of the Sexes - a naff title that hadn’t raised my expectations. It proved to be a shocking reminder of just how sexist attitudes could be in the 70s watching the battles women encountered constantly. Emma Stone and Steve Carrell are very good and the costumes are wonderfully nostalgic for those of us who dressed like that. Billie Jean King’s struggles with her sexuality, along side the battles with the tennis world, on and off the court, provides plenty of plot lines. 
Wonderstruck, directed by Todd Haynes, failed to deliver in the way Carol had. It was particularly ambitious with settings in the 20s, black and white, and the seventies, brown and orange, with a silent film thrown in. The plot unfolded cleverly initially intertwining parallel stories but became tedious as it continued. Not sure who what sort of audience the film targets? 
Dark River
Not sure what sort of audience Clio Barnard’s Dark River targets either. It was superbly performed with a sparse script leaving much to body language, cinematography and editing, particularly evident when a rabbit is skinned and gutted interspersed with drunken attempts at arson. The film is an utterly bleak portrayal of isolation, abuse and collusion experienced by a tenant farming family. Emotionally strangled siblings, unable to communicate and consumed with anger, struggle following the death of their father. Powerful performances. This film had everything that Breathe lacked. 
120 BPM, so gritty and gripping and claustrophobic in its intensity, followed the campaigns of Act Up, a pressure group demanding better treatment and resources for Aids/HIV sufferers in 90s Paris. Unlike the black screens with white text in Meyerowitz Stories the transitions in this film were very effective: dramatic changes of focus from club scenes to intimate sex to passionate debates and radical action with sharply contrasting rhythms, volume, colour and camera work. Music was notable and arresting.

Friday 23 June 2017

Vicarious Cannes

Palme d'Or winner The Square


Cannes is not a film festival that we Borderlines staff get to, but it's probably the biggest deal of all. Word from the press screenings about the new crop of major films reverberates throughout the year and, as a matter of course, movies that are premiered at Cannes will find their way to Borderlines, many of them as previews.

Luckily our programmers at the Independent Cinema Office and their colleagues are there in force, weaving in and out of queues and movie theatres. So to grab a shaft of light into the future, read their Festival Reports from the ICO blog  (there are 5 posts and if you only have time to read one, make it Jonny Courtney's - he works directly on Borderlines) and, like us, experience Cannes vicariously.

Sunday 30 April 2017

I Am Not Your Negro Vox Pops

The single preview screening of this eloquent and transformative documentary by Raoul Peck about the ideas and oratory of writer James Baldwin took place at Borderlines 2017 on Friday 10 March. 

Members of the black, Bristol-based collective Come the Revolution were on hand to record some vox pops of audience reaction to the film. Watch below (your browser will need Adobe Flash Player enabled - if you have problems, view on Facebook).

 

Thursday 20 April 2017

Trepass Against Us Q&A

Trespass Against Us (15) was shown at Borderlines 2017 as a preview but is now on general release and available on DVD.

Romani writer and filmmaker, Damian Le Bas introduced the screening on Wednesday 1 March, and hosted the discussion afterwards. Damian felt that the filmmakers had gone out of their way not to identify the main characters as Travellers, Gypsies or Romani, despite using real Romani language and other cultural indications such as their mannerisms and jewellery in the film. This was probably a deliberate attempt by the filmmakers to prevent people criticising the film on its depiction of Travellers. Since TV series My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and its many spin-offs, the media/film depiction of Travellers has become an uncomfortable experience for many Travellers themselves, fearing the worst excesses of stereotyping or just plain untruth.

Damian was convinced that Trespass Against Us was based on a BBC documentary from 14 years ago about a Gloucestershire Traveller family, the Johnsons, who were well known for being pretty wild. They had been severely mistreated by the authorities, which was where their mentality to strike back came from. Without this context, the behaviour of the family in Trespass Against Us didn’t really make any sense, though it did have some elements of truth about Traveller life as it was still lived 30 years ago.

Have a listen to the discussion here. There are Travellers in the audience and they talk about it with particular insight and a wry sense of humour.
Jane Jackson
Borderlines Chair


Images in slideshow ©Christopher Preece www.infinityunlimited.co.uk

Tuesday 28 March 2017

Kristen Stewart Magazine Covers

Andrew Graham
To celebrate the release of Olivier Assayas's Personal Shopper on March 17 our Media Partner Little White Lies, set a Creative Brief: to invent a fashion magazine featuring an original illustrated portrait of the film’s star, Kristen Stewart, on the cover.

Personal Shopper was shown at Borderlines 2017 as a preview.

Illustration students at Hereford College of Arts took part in the brief and Andrew Graham's illustration received an Honourable Mention and was displayed on the online version of the magazine. Congratulations to Andrew!


Other Hereford College of Arts entries:

Katie Barnett

Kedall Webb


Full gallery of entries

Thoughts on Moonlight


'Why was he so angry?' I asked myself midway through the BBC adaption of Zadie Smith's novel NW.

A slim contorted Black youth face set in permanent grimace, de rigueur hood up despite the summer heat fatally wounds another Black man on the slightest provocation. The blot of red expands along the white top as the victim recoils in shock, sinks to the pavement, bleeds out. His assailant is gone, his rage released. 

I had assumed that in a drama about seeing and illusion this act would take us on a journey into the internal world of this killer. Not so, he remains that 'menace to society' throughout. We are left with what society already accepts and what the screen has presented, a pumped up ball of Black rage without explanation or rather the axiomatic suggestion that he is a product of the 'Hood.' Fear them, pity them, but most of all fear them. 

A brief summary of Moonlight might give the impression we are in familiar territory – absent father, crack addict mother, deprived community, rare violence - but Moonlight takes you where 'hood' dramas rarely tread to provide a compelling portrait of the world of that surly, angry Black man. 

Split into three chapters, Moonlight charts main character Chiron's journey from self discovery and self acceptance. From an early age Chiron is an outcast among his young peers in the ironically titled Liberty Square district. He is just not like the other boys, he is different. It does not help that he is dark skinned, uncool and skinny. 

We first meet Chiron as he is chased by a group of youths into a boarded up house along a derelict row. He is rescued by a drug dealer Juan played by (Mahershala Ali). Juan takes this boy who does not utter a word to the home he shares with his lover Teresa (Janelle Monae). We discover that Chiron has more than just his friends to contend with – his mother is a crack addict swinging between brief glimmers of maternal affection and the chaos of her addiction. To say Chiron is dragged up is an understatement: he is the epitome of neglect.

Chiron's struggles intensify as he grows older only now his peers begin to name his difference. In a scene of timeless cinematic beauty that difference - the discovery of his sexuality - becomes a moment of shared bliss rather than a curse. All this is taken away as Chiron's ostracism reaches a violent climax. In the final chapter we find Chiron transformed into a trap-loving, gold-toothed, hyper- muscled Hercules drug dealer. Beneath the muscles, little Chiron still lives. A twist of fate offers him an alternative to his bleak present.


This three part structure paints the reality behind the performance of identity and why therefore Moonlight is a education in (Black) masculinity. Each chapter is beautifully played by three different actors, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes, and Alex R Hibbert. Remarkably each actor rehearsed their parts separately but somehow between the alchemy of script, directing and fine acting Chiron's intense wounded, brave man-boy is consistently played throughout the film.



Amongst many things, Moonlight is a commentary on father-son relationships. Juan a drug dealer is an unlikely source of unconditional love. A Cuban American, perhaps Juan sees in the abandoned boy a mirror of himself and an opportunity for redemption. But he is not a romanticised figure and his alter-ego role as drug dealer has a direct bearing on Chiron's life. Through Juan, director Barry Jenkins makes a simple statement familiar to Black audiences but rarely seen on a clichĂ©-ridden screens: that paternal love can be found in the most unlikely sources.

Juan's relationship with Chiron brings Moonlight's mythical quality to the fore in particular the scene in which Juan teaches Chiron to swim. The scene evokes Classical, Biblical and West African lore. The home provided by Juan and Teresa is a light filled place of haven while the home he shares with his mother is a stark underworld in the grip of his gorgon mother. It then must also be said that the film is a stark portrait of a mother-child relationship almost as disturbing as that between the main protagonists in Precious. Naomi Harris is darkly superb in her depiction of the highs and lows of addiction whilst also bringing a humanity to her role. She is an emotional coward, but also a child- woman ultimately unable to face the crushing responsibility of her failure.

The parent-child dynamic is one of several ways in which Moonlight closely mirrors the personal biographies of director Barry Jenkins and the writer of the original story, award-winning playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney. Both were born and raised where Moonlight is set: Liberty City, a nearly all Black poor, insular neighbourhood of Miami Florida. 

 McCraney describes Liberty City as“...the confluence of madness and urban blight/Yet, it is incredibly beautiful.” Both men had mothers who through drug addiction became HIV infected and both men were passed between or taken in by families and carers. 

Indeed echoing the mythic elements Jenkins was looked after by a woman called Minerva for a number of years during his childhood. He and McCraney attended the same High School although their paths did not cross until years later when the script was passed onto Jenkins by mutual friends. It was a combination of story, the potential to display his craft as a film maker seeped in cinema's heritage but mostly its proximity to his personal story that inspired Jenkins to make this film. Colour, texture, the Chiron's childhood rituals are all inspired by the lives of director and original writer. 

Moonlight then comes from a place of truth. It does not wave a rainbow flag nor a Black Lives Matter banner, it does not need to. At every level it beautifully but simply captures a community, a people a young man in pain and searching for a way to heal.

To discuss Moonlight in the context of #OscarssoWhite, as some commentators have done, is reductive. It risks the implying that praise for the movie is informed by a guilt-ridden response to 2016's absence of Black Academy Award nominations. This would be a gross injustice. Moonlight is a unique powerful yet understated wonder that will reverberate long after the award season. This will be a competitive year for the Oscars - for me Moonlight will be at the head of the table whatever decisions are made. It is unique. It resonated with me on so many frequencies that I was caught between whooping and tears of joy.

Returning to my starting point Moonlight differs from the back catalogue of 'Hood' films because most are based upon the mythologies which the 'Hood' tries to sell. A story told through the eyes of the Other amongst Others bears witness to a truth that many are not yet ready to reveal.

 Edson Burton (Come the Revolution)
Edson introduced the screening of Moonlight on Friday 10 March at Borderlines 2017

Saturday 25 March 2017

...To Be Rid of N...rs

Edson Burton speaking at the I Am Not Your Negro screening
A Comment on I Am Not Your Negro by Raoul Peck

This is an edited version of the introduction to the screening of the film at Borderlines on Friday 10 March by Dr Edson Burton of Come the Revolution

I want to start with a spoiler but one, which I hope will enhance rather than ruin your viewing. The title of the Raoul Peck's documentary is a softened version of a question raised by African American author James Baldwin upon whose unfinished work this film is based.

The question the White population of this country has to ask itself is why was it necessary to have a nigger in the first place? But I'm not a nigger I am a man? But if you think I'm a nigger that means you need him and you have to find out why?

The question is posed in the final third of this searing examination of race in the USA. Having pushed through the permutations of racism in the USA the question attains a climatic power found in the best works of fiction.


'Negro', 'coloured', 'Black, 'African American' these terms have been the accepted parlance among Whites and Blacks. 'Nigger' was the coarse, constant, counterpart to these terms. Nigger opened the door to a more brutal relationship, a more brutal reality which has been the subtext to race relations in America and Europe.

Peck's impeccable visual choices provide layer upon layer of our understanding of the term. At 'worst' Nigger is criminal, licentious, and deceitful, at best lazy, deceitful, cretinous, impotent and servile – the antithesis of all that is good, pure, virtuous White. 'The Nigger is a dread figure an entity that exists only in his [White society's] mind.'

Baldwin's extraordinary understanding of Black America lies at the heart of the documentary. His unfinished essay 'Remember this House' is structured around his profound connection to the civil rights leaders Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers. But beyond the great and good his work explores the lives of the preachers, the hustlers, the junkies, the intellectuals, the lovers. He knew the high and low places, the celebrities, the hustlers the civil rights leaders, the intellectuals.

His fury is directed against White ignorance of this rich and varied world. As he surmised Black Americans were intimately aware of white realities – after all survival depends on being highly sensitive to the whims of one's oppressor - the same could not be said in reverse. 'I know more about you than you know about me.' This ignorance was the child of segregation. To Baldwin ignorance and apathy were more perniciously pervasive in American society than hate. In the absence of knowledge the Black person become an object of fear and dread. But moreover this object this entity was an essential building block to a 'euphoric' construction of Whiteness. A Whiteness which however infantalized those who believed in it.

Baldwin, voiced unrecognisably, by Samuel Jackson, speaks in broad strokes - 'White', 'White America.' Subsuming all Whites within such broad strokes risks his dismissal as a wounded victim of racism with no great insight. But Baldwin the essayist must be experienced alongside his fictional works. His novels such as Another Country, Giovanni's Room, and short stories transcend race. They ooze a compassion for White and Black subjects, for men and women. While he had wished for the sake of ease, to be a racist, his formative experiences barred the door to that particular sanctuary. Peck incorporates Baldwin's TV interview to give us an insight to Baldwin.


Baldwin defends his use of race as a primary marker of social reality as empirically drawn from lived experience. As stated in the film he does not know what every White person thinks or feels about the Negro but 'we can conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions.' The evidence writ large in schools, housing, policing suggest that White society is comfortable with Black marginalization. Comfortable as it confirms the mythology of the 'Nigger.'

Baldwin's is part of the canon of American writing. His work is poured over by scholars, post and undergraduates, discovered by niche activists groups, the self educators and literary circles. But Peck does not excavate Baldwin for the sake of nostalgia but to force us to see his contemporary relevance. I Am Not Your Negro restores Baldwin to a vitality he enjoyed in life. His voice is once more that of the writer intellectual, sage orator who cuts through the social smog. Peck's flawless reaches into and beyond the meaning which Baldwin articulates in words. Peck not only offers the visual narratives and answers to Baldwin's rhetoric he supplies the continuity with current discourses through powerful juxtaposition. We are in short treated to a dialogue between film maker and writer that gives rise to a new bolder, complete work.

Baldwin did not write for his time but for those generations to come which he knew would still be grappling with this problem and it is a testament to Peck that he has visualised the prescience in Baldwin's work. It is therefore entirely apt that we consider the LA riots, the Black Lives Matter campaign both sparked by police brutality that had been legitimised by a White judicial system that failed to supply redress.

With the passing of Obama's presidency I Am Not Your Negro becomes all the more urgent. Donald Trump is not an extraordinary figure 'bully' 'manboy' 'buffon' 'narcissist' the list of descriptors for this most egregious character are almost endless. What is more alarming is why would millions vote in his favour.

Sympathetic narratives towards displaced Whites have silenced the reality that many African Americans feel – Trump's victory cannot be explained without reference to race. Loss and greatness remain the watchwords of Trump's strangely ongoing campaign but whose loss? Whose greatness will be recovered? It is clear from those who are now to be subdued that this White President for a White masculinist America feels mandated to protect a supposedly threatened White privilege. To borrow the lens used by Peck and Baldwin the new president and his supporters are united in an attempt to roll back the civil rights gains that opened the flood gates to the Women's Movement, the Gay Rights movement' and return to psychic infancy with all the ugly ignorance that entails. I Am Not Your Negro cuts to the chase when political language dog whistles and the press are hesitant if not obsequious.

This is not a safely American (his)story documentary. While the documentary notes the freedoms which Baldwin enjoyed in Europe the line 'the West has no moral authority' shows writer and film maker are under no illusions.

The 'Nigger' is an invention of the 'Euro-American imagination' exported, refined, and re-exported much like the traded goods which gave birth to the trope of the Nigger in the first place. Post slavery we have been even more circumspect in describing racism in Britain preferring the more genteel 'colour-bar' to legalized segregation. This partly in order to preserve our good standing in the world' – the counterpart rhetoric to America as the land of the free. But beneath this semantic dance are realities as stark as that which occurred on US soil.

The atrocities of slavery and Empire are too varied to be recounted in this short piece moreover they have the safety of distance and time.

But the trope of the 'Nigger' lies behind the troubled history of race inside Britain's borders. Fears of interracial relationships propelled the 1919 race riots in Liverpool and Cardiff and years later in the 1958 Notting Hill. In the wake of the latter racism swept into mainstream political discourse most crudely in the 1964 'Do you want a Nigger for a Neighbour campaign' in Smethwick Birmingham.

The Sun newspaper's hyper reporting of sexual crimes, street robbery, and scroungers during the 1970s & 80s reproduced the trope in bold.

Today of course we are reassured that Brexit has nothing to do with immigration. But on the morning after the debate the discussion hinged on controlling our 'borders.' But for who's sake and who should be kept out. Visual language during this campaign was explicit. The spike in racist attacks suggest that this was not confined to the so called 'new communities.' Black and Asian second and third generation migrants experienced a new question mark over their right to claim belonging. Our discourse creates new 'Niggers' that share the traits but not the colour of the original trope.

But moral panics and legislative moments are flashpoints played out against a general acceptance of racial inequality that mirrors that which is found in Baldwin's America. Arguably we manage inequality rather than truly attempt to transform the conditions upon which it is built. To accept such an unequal society raises the question of whether we take seriously our commitment to diversity, multiculturalism, or meritocracy. The words of Baldwin return to haunt us ' I know what you think from the state of your institutions.'

One might be tempted to avoid such a visceral portrait of racism at a time which is already bleak. But this is to miss an essential albeit understated aspect of the film. Baldwin is an optimist: 'I still believe we can do something with this country that has never been done before.'

To do so we may first have to be rid of 'Niggers.'

N.B. Quotes (and images) are from I Am Not Your Negro.


Dr Edson Burton is a member of the programming collective Come the Revolution

Thursday 16 March 2017

Café Society review





A film most at home described as a ‘visual novel’, Woody Allen’s most recent drama, CafĂ© Society, set in 1930’s Hollywood/New York, has a clean, rolling style that plays on the strengths of the writer/directors love for whimsically authentic, lavishly flowing dialogue.

The story of young, Jewish, New Yorker, Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg), who decides to leave the shackles of his fathers New York jewellery business with the hopes of pursuing some form of a career in Tinsel Town, the film follows the smirk-inducing domino of events that are instigated as a result of this decision. A meeting with his uncle, Phill Stern (Steve Carrell) - who happens to be a big shot producer in town - finds Bobby not only a job but an addictive fascination in the form of Stern’s Personal Secretary “Vonnie” (Kristen Stewart), a character with whom ‘deer in the headlights’ Bobby falls deeply infatuated. However the dynamics of this relationship and, in fact, Vonnie’s other ‘relationships’ promise to threaten the electric chemistry between these two while spurring the city-hopping story that unfolds as Bobby tries to understand what makes him truly happy.

As ever, Allen’s greatest strength in this film is his wondrous skill with character and dialogue - something that definitely makes itself heard as one would struggle to find a section of this film not commentated, either by the onscreen characters or by Woody himself. Combined with a redolent
score of intercutting, ever-present Jazz - much of which sports recognisable melodies such as the likes of Lorenz Hart’s ‘The Lady is a Tramp’ - Allen manages to capture a picture postcard cross section of the era that establishes a flowing, exotic, atmosphere that suitably accompanying the whimsy of his plot.


This atmospheric approach to his films sound, combined with Allen’s decision to play down his use of cinematography - often doing little more than introducing a scene with a push in followed by conversational intercuts - makes the film a visual vessel for what is essentially as close as one can get to a physical novel on screen. Instead of taking the classic liberties of cinema - emotion through cinematography, creation of atmosphere through soundscapes, dictation of dialogue tempo - this film instead pushes all of its content through its ever-present blanket of dialogue and simplistically elegant mise en scene (the two elements that film shares directly with writing). With this in mind, the film is heavily stylised and the atmosphere it creates is far more reminiscent of written stories than visual ones.

Working in this way, Allen asks his audience to really listen to the dialogue, much as one reads a book - you have to really engage with the language to understand the emotion because you’re always hearing words, there’s no pause to tell you when things are sad. One's memories of the film and its characters become much more like those of a fond book than of a film. It feels to watch much as Fitzgerald's Gatsby feels to read.

Chris Usher
6th Form Ambassador

Tuesday 14 March 2017

Interview with Kelly Reichardt, director of Certain Women



This interview was circulated via Film Hub SWWM and will be of interest to anyone who came to see Certain Women at Borderlines 2017.

Mia Bays: Can you talk a bit about how you came to the stories of Maile Meloy and what attracted you to their situations and characters?

Kelly Reichardt: I can't remember where I first read the stories or even which one I read first. All the characters are so good and she has a beautiful way of writing and a really relaxed way at getting at things. The characters were just people you wanted to stay with longer and they were all built into the environment they were from, and that's up my alley. I get hooked in pretty quickly and then spent a long time trying to make these stories work together. She was very generous let me have my way with her fine work.

MB: Did you work with her on the adaption?

KR: No.I didn't really know her. I had made the last four movies with John Raymond and we were very good friends, so we worked really closely together and hung out a lot but this was a much more lonely. But it was good for me,

MB: You swop the gender of the character played by Lily Gladstone.

KR: I can't remember where exactly when that happened but made the whole work better. In Maile's story it's a boy with Polio and it is set in a different time. I was trying to make the whole thing more contemporary and I thought that the lonely old rancher was something that had been done as far as cinema went.

MB: Making her a woman and then the power of the interaction with Kristen Stewart's character just frames it in a very different way.

KR: It leaves room for different interpretations. From my point of view, and I don't know if this was true from Lily's point of view, the teacher was someone you might have a crush on her or might have a crush on her life and you might wish that you had more access to the things she had access to. There's more ambiguity to it.

MB: There is a sense of people looking in some way to connect.

KR: There is also the lack of connection. I think there is a sense of this in all my work. It’s also in the writing of Raymond. I was influenced by Chantal Ackerman. I even have a book of hers with me. I really had not shot interiors, a lot and I was worried about whether I could afford to do it. I could never afford the lighting set up so I became very accustomed to shooting outside. This was especially true on Night Moves and the anticipation of shooting the scene at the dam. But I was also worried about the fact that I had a kitchen scene to shoot on Thursday with four walls and have four walls and what the fuck do you do with four walls? So, in Certain Women one of the things I wanted to conquer was, how to shoot inside. When I was leaving New York, I put this Ackerman book in my bag, in case I should I get stuck in a space . And I did, in the bedroom scene.

MB: And Chantal Ackerman guarded you?

KR: She’s a good guide. I keep being guided by Chantal...

Interview conducted by Mia Bays, Director-at-large, Birds Eye View Film. Spotlighting the best work by women to UK audiences
www.birds-eye-view.co.uk
@birdseyeviewff
@miafilms Mia Bays




Friday 10 March 2017

Certain Women, Simple Life

Certain Women (2016) is a drama which offers a glimpse into four women's lives in Montana. It features Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone who plays the role of a rather lost ranch hand - whilst Michelle Williams and Laura Dern play even more contrasting roles to Lily, they are women in control in a town which doesn't seem to have any element of rushing. 

The scenic shots of the American Northwest feel more like pictures than in motion. The film is very slow paced and offers a glimpse into people's lives - there is no ‘spectacle’ as such like most Hollywood films. To me it feels almost though someone is telling a story but emphasising the minor details of the plot. We are left waiting for more.

The characters seem quite isolated and withdrawn from Native American life except for Jamie (Lily Gladstone) who seems as though life is almost passing her by. There's almost a sense that she is blending in with her background of gentle landscapes. 


The film resonates with me because I couldn't imagine such a simplistic life. Certain Women really gives an insight into the way people live in Montana, this dedramatisation of narrative leaves us with questions that we realise we can probably answer ourselves.

Whilst watching the film we are waiting for the next thing to happen - something that is usually fulfilled in mainstream cinema. The simple dialogue allows for the images and emblems to tell the story instead of big dramatic plot points.

My final thoughts are that this film like most, certainly isn’t for everyone and to each person will mean something else, some may see it as a work of art and some depressingly dull. The film shows audiences a different life, a very simplistic and mostly lonely life. If it wasn't for the technology used by characters you may think you have been taken back to a more modest time. As a viewer you almost forget about the materialistic society in which we live because this seems so far detached.

Iona Francis
6th Form Ambassador