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Distant Voices, Still Lives: (Terrence Davies, 1988): I can simply sum up my thoughts on Distant Voices, Still Lives in one word: mesmerizing. Divided into two parts (which were filmed one year apart), Terrence Davies tells the fractured story of one 1940's Liverpudlian (isn't that the best word ever!) family with your prototypical angry/drunk/abusive patriarch (Pete Postlethwaite) who destroys the dinner table one moment and cries at his children leaving him the next. After his death, we follow his family (i.e., his widow and three children) through the mistakes and occasional triumphs of their adult lives. Davies focuses on the moments they want to remember: weddings, deaths, baptisms and the big night out at the pub. These moments, interspersed with the quiet, hopeless moments at homes, lead to a portrait of heartbreaking banality and stagnation. Great performances abound in this film, but my favorite was Debi Jones as Micky (lifelong friend of Elaine, the oldest daughter), the one truly joyful character in the whole movie, whose gentle teasing, yet truly loving relationship with her husband sets the one example in the film that love doesn't always have to be disappointing. One scene melts into the next, with each celebration evolving into a night of singing: happy, melancholy, old and new songs. With little dialogue, Davies turns the film into a musical of sorts, where the act of singing together expresses more than words can. In the course of one song, we can see characters go from carefree to angry to melancholy and nostalgia. Through the songs and the hazy, beautiful sheen of memories gone by that permeates throughout the film, we are forced to examine the immense sadness in the life of the working class, bubbling beneath the facade of that English staple, a still upper lip. At times, I found the film to be closer to poetry than to cinema, expressing everything without ever saying it outright. This one is a stunner.
Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993): I have to admit that I have an affinity for certain types of performances: wordy, cocky, self destructive and potentially brilliant characters played with big, theatrical (some might even say over the top) craziness. David Thewlis' Johnny certainly fits that bill. Johnny, a late twenty something misanthrope on the dole is forced to flee Manchester after raping a woman in an alley in the opening scene, and we follow him as he infects the lives of a former girlfriend (Lesley Sharp) and her unstable flatmate. We follow Johnny as he encounters other damaged people in Thatcherian London. Thewlis is bombastic and terrifying as a psychopathic genius and the highlight of the film is certainly the scene where he meets and almost befriends a night watchman (Peter Wight). Psychological and oral warfare are clearly Johnny's greatest strengths and watching him volley with a kind and sad man is both depressing and exhilarating. Mike Leigh's writing and direction bring his kitchen sink aesthetic and fully realized characters; nearly every character seems to be living and breathing and truly exists in this world. Although not all of Johnny's adventures are compelling, there are some masterfully executed sequences in the film, including Johnny's first night in the girl's flat with synchronized blocking, and the emotional and haunting final shot (shades of Breathless come to mind) hit me in the gut when I didn't expect it to. One misstep for me is the parallel plot line of a sort of Patrick Bateman-type (Greg Crutwell, creepy and intimidating none the less) who terrorizes various women and eventually crosses paths with our main characters. Leigh was likely trying to show us Johnny's upper class doppelganger and the true terror that could be unleashed with the proper resources, but it didn't quite work for me and seemed out of sync with the rest of the film. However, the sheer power of Johnny and of Thewlis' performance make up for any other shortcomings.
TwentyFourSeven (Shane Meadows, 1997): Lads are (and I may or may not be paraphrasing the middling film The Football Factory) working class young men who only have the weekend, chips, tea, football and the pub to look forward to. They are quick to anger, less than ambitious and happy to lead the same life that their fathers miserably lead. We meet a group of such lads in TwentyFourSeven, Shane Meadow's sophomore effort. What sounds like a typical sports movie, or perhaps a coming of age tale of a group of troubled young men saved by an inspirational coach with a boxing club becomes more a portrait of a dead end town and the desperation to conquer the loneliness and lack of true connection. Filmed in gritty black and white that recalls the original Angry Young Men films of the 1950'a and 1960's, Meadows' uses various cinematic techniques including montage, snapshot editing and a wonderful soundtrack that mixes folksy, almost soul music, with traditional English fare. For example, one of our first glimpses of Darcy (Bob Hoskins), the boxing club organizer, is of him getting ready to go dancing, getting dolled up, and practicing his lines in front of the mirror; this is interspersed with Super-8 footage of a young boy, presumably Darcy, dancing and frolicking. This evocative scene adds layers not just to Darcy's character but to the themes of the film such as loneliness and nostalgia Meadows' also uses Hoskin's voice over narration sparingly and very well, expressing beautifully the character of a sweet, poetic and ultimately tragic man. Danny Nussbaum was giving me a lot of Tom Hardy (when he was skinny) realness, and I loved the sweetness and intensity he brought to his role as a young boxer with (of course!) a terrible and abusive father. I think Meadows would have done better to focus on a few of the lads (as he does in a later effort This is England), like Nussbaum's Tim, instead of giving equal billing to a too large ensemble of young actors. I sometimes found myself a bit confused and had a hard time telling the characters apart. Like so much of Meadows work, the characters change by inches, not feet and at the end, there is no grand victory. Instead we see small changes that have helped the lads grow up, even if they still live for a night at the pub. They are still English, of course.Julie
