Every year, around about Academy Awards
time, Borderlines Film Festival offers film-goers across Herefordshire and
Shropshire the opportunity to catch up with the best movies of the past six
months. Personally, I am looking forward to The Lobster (Dir. Yorgos
Lanthimos, 2015).
45 Years (Dir. Andrew Haigh, 2015) is, in
my opinion, the best British film this century (middle class category). We join
Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff (Tom Courtenay) one week before their 45th
wedding anniversary. They’re planning a big celebration. An odd interval but
Geoff was ill when their 40th came round. News regarding an episode
from Geoff’s life, before he knew Kate, arrives in the post. We follow the
couple, day by day, as its meaning seeps into their relationship. I couldn’t
stop thinking about these characters and their story for days. They behave as
they would. Everything that’s in the script or on the screen has a purpose. It
is a very smart movie.
Jess (Drew Barrymore) and Milly (Toni
Collette) are life-long best friends. They ticked off their rites of passage together.
Now, in middle age, the big moments are much less fun. Jess wants children;
Milly has cancer. Morwenna Banks wrote the script with plenty of jokes. Banks
has been part of the Absolutely team for 25 years. British films should
feature more cameos by Frances de la Tour. Miss You Already is a far ballsier
film than the one her husband, David Baddiel, wrote: “The Infidel” (2010),
which starred Omid Djalili. In 2014, Djalili put on two gigs at The Courtyard,
Hereford to raise money for Hereford United.
Films about cancer have a limited number of
outcomes. They can’t all be The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson (2015), Julien
Temple’s documentary about the unexpected recovery of his friend. And, more
than any other genre, they exist in the shadow of one, ground-breaking movie. After
Miss You Already I watched Love Story (1970). How has the depiction of
cancer in cinema changed over 45 years? Well, it isn’t necessary to leave the
diagnosis until the final reel anymore. I enjoyed one hundred minutes in the
company of Jenny (Ali MacGraw) and Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal): the visit
to his folks – “Holy crap!”, the “verbal volleyball” he never wins, Ray Milland’s
patriarch. MacGraw’s character was the exact contemporary of Robert de Niro’s
character, Ben, in The Intern (2015): both born in 1945 and bred in The
Bronx, New York, New York. So how did Ben get to be so boring? I digress.
After watching Miss Julie (Dir. Liv
Ullman, 2015) I watched Miss Julie (1951). In Swedish. There were a few plot details
I wanted to pin down. Ullman has taken August Strindberg’s much-adapted play
and removed everything that may distract the viewer from the relationships
between Kathryn, the cook (Samantha Morton), her fiancé, John, the valet (Colin
Farrell) and Miss Julie, the count’s daughter (Jessica Chastain). So there are
no flashbacks to the childhood crush John had on Julie and the humiliation it
inflicted upon him and we are spared the insights of the other servants. All
that remains are two women, of different classes and moral codes, in one
building during one night, campaigning for their future with John. And John,
who knows the consequences if he follows his heart, must decide. It is the most
intense film mentioned here.
More intense than The Hateful Eight (Dir.
Quentin Tarantino, 2015). “The Independent” (2000) spoofs The Incredible
2-Headed Transplant (1971), if that’s possible. Bruce Dern was in that too. It
took me a while to warm to The Hateful Eight but, at 168 minutes, there was
plenty of time. There is always Ennio Morricone’s score to enjoy. Morricone
composed the soundtrack, incorporating three unused pieces from The Thing (1982). It won him his first Academy Award (after one Honorary Award and six
nominations). There have been a few Westerns lately: The Salvation (2014),
Slow West (2015), even The Dressmaker (2015) has a little High Plains
Drifter (1973) to it. Tarantino has made his epic Western with all his
favourite things: motley strangers forced together – see John Ford’s
Stagecoach (1939); the cartoon weirdness, crunching anachronisms and lens
flare of spaghetti westerns – see YouTube; and, Tarantino dropping references
to his own body of work. Good to see Tim Roth bleeding copiously from the gut
again; Michael Madsen wrinkling his brow; one character telling a filthy story
in order to rile another character. And he always includes something for the
pedants: there aren’t eight for a start. There are a few things to dislike.
Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character endures many humiliations – but they’re closer
to Tom and Jerry than ‘female lead in a Lars von Trier movie’. And the
‘n-word’ occurs as often as it would in a Blaxploitation all-nighter. However,
let’s be fair, no-one else is making films like this. 
I watched The Hateful Eight alone – the
hateful nine – at Vue, Worcester, 1:50am. I saw The Martian (Dir. Ridley
Scott, 2015) with a full house. At one point I noticed two hundred strangers,
in rapt silence, willing a fictitious character on, Matt Damon’s astronaut Mark
Watney, as he carried out his next small step to safety. It helps that the
protagonist is physics rather than some bloke. Everyone is either thinking hard
or easing the tension with wit: it’s like a propaganda movie for the human
race. The Martian is 2 hours and 21 minutes of a good time.
Despite everything that Mark Watney went
through, I worried more during Song of the Sea (Dir. Tomm Moore, 2014), an Irish
legend animated for children. Saoirse is the daughter of a lighthouse keeper
and a Selkie – a woman on land and a seal in the sea. Saoirse has a quest to
complete. She meets magical beings that are affable and helpful and more
recognisable creatures that are neither. The animation is top notch, like a
sumptuously illustrated children’s book.
Suffragette (Dir. Sarah Gavron, 2015) has
been a conspicuous absentee from the UK’s film awards season. There’s nothing
wrong with this film: it is a solid primer. The struggle for women’s suffrage
in Britain had a long history. It was first voted down in 1867. We join the
story nearly 50 years later. Gavron focusses upon one young woman, the
fictitious Maud (Carey Mulligan), a laundry worker, wife and mother. Gradually Maud
becomes involved in the campaign for Votes For Women and meets a few of the key
figures. Her involvement does not go unpunished.
Brie Larson won Best Actress, deservedly,
at the 88th Academy Awards for her role as ‘Ma’ in Room (Dir.
Lenny Abrahamson, 2015). Room is also a front-runner in Borderlines’
favourite film of the festival contest. You would think it was impossible to
make an uplifting film about kidnapping, incarceration and serial rape. Abrahamson’s
previous movie was “Frank” (2014). Emma Donoghue’s novel Room was published
in 2010. She was inspired by the story of Felix Fritzl, the five year old son
of Josef and Elizabeth Fritzl. Josef’s treatment of his daughter came to light
in Austria in 2008.
The first part of Room concerns the daily
existence of Ma and Jack (a superb performance by 8 year old Jacob Tremblay) in
their cell. The remainder covers their recovery which, in many ways, is
tougher. I was reminded of survival film The Deep (2012), the remarkable true
story of Guðlaugur Friðþórsson. He survives a North Sea ship-wreck – and finds
himself re-labelled and examined like The Elephant Man (1982). Room is an
absorbing, thought-provoking movie about resilience, the power of parenthood
and rebuilding lives. And it was good to see William H. Macy, as Ma’s father,
again
.
Going back beyond 2015 – and The Courtyard,
Hereford – you don’t need me to tell you that the work of Bill Douglas, Terence
Davies or Roman Polanski is worthy of your time. David (Dir. Paul Dickson,
1951) is a 38-minute gem. A person, place and time preserved. David was
screened as part of the Borderlines Film Festival a few years ago and stayed
with me. I cannot think of another film like it: there are few film characters
whose soul lives so close to their skin. David Rees Griffiths, who wrote as ‘Amanwy’,
was a school caretaker and published poet: pryddestau [plural of pryddest,
Welsh for ‘a long poem in free metre’], songs, sonnets and hymns. He had worked
as a coal miner from the age of 12 to 45; he survived the explosion that killed
his brother. Griffiths is Dafydd Rees, a school caretaker and father, leading a
simple life in late middle age. A community makes room for culture because,
without it, there would only be mining. The story can be summarised in three
words but I will leave that to you. This film is a great study in dignity.
Robin Clarke
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