Mud

Mud

Directed by Jeff Nichols

USA, 2012

Cornerhouse, 12 May 2013

This is a terrific film, an intelligent, rite-of-passage drama with a magnificently choreographed gunfight at the close.

There are echoes of Stand by Me and the opening scene of Great Expectations but its best described (scrabbling for a comparison) as a down-home, Americana version of The Go-Between, if you can imagine such a beast.

Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), two teenage boys, come upon Mud, a mysterious stranger (Matthew McConaughey).  He is a man of the river the like of whom they’ve never seen before, and Ellis in particular is smitten.  They decide to help Mud by bringing him food and equipment and taking messages to his girl (Reese Witherspoon), and in time the two boys find themselves embroiled in his troubles.

It is a film about boys and men, fathers and sons, and as such it is wholly satisfying, but what s especially fine – well, there are two things, the second being the luminous presence of Sam Shepard, legend – is that there is nary a hint of misogyny to be found.  You never give up on women or on love as a possibility, that’s the bottom line.

stolen leaf

winter moon

green ore

phantom ice

stolen leaf

A Hijacking

A Hijacking

Directed by Tobias Lindholm

Denmark, 2012

Cornerhouse, 10 May 2013

Apart and alone, the crew of a cargo ship await their fate as Somali pirates and company chiefs back at head office negotiate for their release.

However you turn it over in your mind, this film dazzles: it is intelligent, absorbing, quietly brilliant.  At certain moments you feel it stall ever so slightly but then there’s a revelation, a slip of the mask perhaps, a horror or trauma, a subtle terror to put you on edge again.

He comes out of it damaged, does Mikkel the ship’s cook, his exposure to the aleatory imp of evil yielding a cruel cost.  The chief negotiator Peter pays a high price as well, driving home all by his lonesome at the close.

It’s a film I’ll see again soon.

A Doll’s House @ the Royal Exchange Theatre

A Doll’s House

By Henrik Ibsen

Royal Exchange Theatre, 7 May 2013

Cush Jumbo as Nora Helmer in A DOLL’S HOUSE by Henrik Ibsen. Photo – Jonathan Keenan.

It has not been so long, a little more than two years, since the Library Theatre put on a production of Ibsen’s great play.

What strikes one now is its contrivance: the way it takes place over Christmas, the many elements of intrigue that would not be out of place in a Feydeau farce.  Such as, for example, a secret loan, a forged signature and a fatal letter that must be intercepted and retrieved.

Yet the crucial achievement of the play remains, and that’s the verve with which it reengineers marriage.  Transforming it from a Christian institution where the woman vows to honour and obey into a mature alliance of equals founded on honesty and mutual respect.  And this still seems extraordinary as well as effecting, the way these people – Nora and Torvald too, the latter with some reluctance, granted – grow up before ones eyes.

A beautifully crafted, perfectly paced play and there are some splendid performances in this production, not least from Cush Jumbo as Nora.

A Doll’s House is at the Royal Exchange Theatre until 1 June, further details can be found here.

In the Fog

In the Fog

Directed by Sergei Loznitsa

Germany, 2012

Cornerhouse, 5 May 2013

We are in Belarus during the German occupation of World War Two.

The story centres on Sushenya (Vladimir Svirski), who’s a kind of a Jesus/Judas Incognito figure.  Most men actively commit to one side or another, but Sushenya strives to keep out of it.  But he finds that in wartime it is virtually impossible not to do evil.

During the whole sorry catalogue of petty and vindictive violence, Sushenya strives only to protect others and to behave well, but it is simply not on the cards.  However he tries, he fails.

The film is beautiful but bleak; an aura of fallen hopes surrounds everything.   Redemption is nowhere to be found.

street pope

science clique

guide crow

small liar

street pope

I’m So Excited!

I’m So Excited!

Directed by Pedro Almodovar

Spain, 2012

Cornerhouse, 4 May 2013

Almodovar’s flighty, sporadically delightful comedy alludes to but is not subsumed by Spain’s precarious economic situation.

The conceit is as neat as Neurath’s, granted: Spain is a plane in mid-air, uncertain where or how to land.  When the plane to Mexico runs into trouble it circles up ahead, and the pilots must engineer a crash landing if the passengers are to survive.  Meanwhile they alternately fret and frolic to forget.

Those accustomed to Almodovar’s cinematic sorcery are likely to find this film disappointing, even though the ingredients seem to be all there.  The problem is that there’s neither a sense of jeopardy nor a satiric bite to any of it.  A film is not a tableau: stuff must happen, it must go somewhere.  Be transformative, even if in a small way.  There’s simply not enough emotional turbulence here.

What would Montesquieu do?  That’s always a question worth asking. European economies are going to the wall and all Almodovar has to offer is a fizzy performance of an old Pointer Sisters’ song.  Gwen Guthrie’s  Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ on but the Rent might have been a better choice.