It's Hard To Pretend That I'm A Beautiful Rock Star.

I've always been fascinated by Atom Egoyan, purely because I really like his name. (Note for anyone who wants me to watch their films: if you have a cool name or you give your film a really cool name the chances are high that I'll tag along. Similarly for books: re A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius or Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close. Ditto music: I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too and Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.)


However, until the other day I'd never seen one of his films. Well, not one that he directed. I believe he EPd Away From Her. Yes, he did. So I sat down and watched probably his best-known and most acclaimed film, The Sweet Hereafter.

Ian Holm plays Mitchell Stevens, a compensation lawyer who heads to a small town hoping to represent the families of a bunch of children who died in a tragic bus accident, determined that he can find that someone, somewhere was negligent either within the town council or the bus manufacture, and bring the families some money and sense of justice - and net himself a significant windfall as well, no doubt. He is both inspired and plagued somewhat by his relationship with his own daughter, a drug addict recently revealed to be HIV positive who has been in and out of rehab and seems to be constantly on the phone to him asking for help. The parallels between losing his daughter to lifestyle and the families of this town that lost almost all of their children to a patch of ice on the road is his driving motivation. He can't punish anyone for what happened to his daughter, so he is intent on exacting his revenge on behalf of other people.


In the town he is met by some initial resistance. People don't really want to keep digging away at raw wounds - they would rather try and let them heal or at least cover them up, allowing them somehow to get on with their lives. He convinces a number of them to sign on, and once he has the initial pair others follow. The bus driver Dolores (Gabrielle Rose) has been seriously injured, and appears to have loved the children like her own, is devastated by what happened. She maintains that she merely hit that patch of ice, that it was a terrible tragedy, but is persuaded that maybe, somewhere, someone negotiated a cheaper bolt resulting in something giving way that shouldn't have.


Their whole case, however, rests on two people. One of them, Billy (Bruce Greenwood) wants absolutely nothing to do with it, even threatening to beat poor Mitchell when approached. The other, Nicole (Sarah Polley - who directed Away From Her, let's not forget) is a young girl now in a wheelchair, and whom Mitchell hopes will testify that Dolores was doing 50mph exactly as she always did, driving safely, allowing for the allegation that someone else it at fault. Nicole, however, has other plans. She's not all too happy about the whole thing being dragged up, she doesn't truly believe that anyone is to blame, and she lies in her deposition, crushing the hopes for the case, in part to exact revenge on another interested party.


The film is a quiet, simple drama with some very deftly achieved moments of tension and horror. Holm and Polley stand out for their performances, though the supporting cast is equally affecting with their displays of grief and momentary glimpses of hope. Running the parallel stories of people's memories of the accident, Mitchell's story with his daughter and the present day wrangling over the lawsuit keeps each story fresh and provides for a fresh look at each story when another has its climax. Everything becomes relative. And the story also parallels the Pied Piper of Hamelin, very literally and very directly, with the notion that all of the children are led out of town, never to be seen again, with only one (in this story, Nicole) left behind, crippled and alone.


The film works beautifully and effectively. It's touching, simple and soft, not in the weight of the meaning, but in the touch applied to that meaning's extraction. A wonderful adaptation by Egoyan from the book of the same name, the film netted him two Oscar nods for Director and Adapted Screenplay. 4 stars.

Kiddie Porn.

How's that for an attention grabbing headline?

But seriously. Taylor Lautner. Being used as a major marketing hook for the most recent Twilight. Pushed out there in all his buff glory. He's a child. He's seventeen! I understand that the target market for this film may be teenage girls, but the rest of the world is watching as well. They're watching, they're perving, they're lusting, and he's seventeen. It's close to eighteen, he's almost legal, surely he's close enough, right?

It baffles me that this is all ok when people create such a do about fifteen year old models wearing clothes on catwalks. That a film like Ken Park can be banned in Australia for depicting underage sex (between actors who are, actually, of age) when, arguably, they are sexualised to a far lesser degree than Lautner is in this film. Why must he be built (he put on 30 pounds of muscle or something for the role), buff (his body is spectacular, when you move away from the fact that he is, in the eyes of the law, pretty much a child) and waxed to within an inch of his life. Why does he need to be so highly manicured and manipulated to be this idea of perfection? What does that add to the character? What does it add to the film, other than fangirl (and fanboy) hysteria pushing the film up by another $100mil? It's a bottom-line requirement, and doesn't that effectively make it akin to kiddie porn? Really? Sure, he's not 10, but there's not a great deal of room for distinction - it's a black and white world we live in.

I guess the argument could be made that the film is an allegory pertaining to abstinence, and that by making him such an attractive being in such a sexual way it is promoting quite the opposite of carnal knowledge. Yes, he's attractive, but we shouldn't fuck him because he's a werewolf and therefore we should abstain. At least until we're married (though isn't he too young to marry?) So his sexual power is just another temptation against which we must rail in order that we may create glory to... that big man in the sky.

I don't buy it. He's seventeen. End of story. Sure, craft Robert Pattinson into a sex symbol. He's at least 23, even if I don't get the attraction. But don't deliberately manufacture a symbol who is this young. It's exactly the same as walking a girl down a runway with a see-through blouse. Worse, I'd argue, because this film is going to be seen by a hell of a lot more people than snaps of the latest Prada collection, or whatever. Most people will only see that girl's photos when the news makes a big deal about it. Everyone, everyone will see Taylor Lautner with his shirt off at some stage. And everyone will feel a rustling in their loins. And everyone over the age of eighteen should be ashamed of that.

I'd post a picture to illustrate, but I think that would be the ultimate hypocrisy. If you google him you'll find the pictures in nanoseconds.

Where Am I Again?

This Is England is a very personal film, from what I have read. Writer/director Shane Meadows has stated much of what occurs is autobiographical, but you don't need to know this to feel it coming off the screen. The way he plays in flashbacks of news footage of the Falklands War (conflict, whatever) just feels personal. He obviously has a strong tie to the subject matter, like his young subject, Shaun (Thomas Turgoose.)

Shaun is a kid (literally - 12 years old) who lost his father in the War in question. Picked on at school but with a bully's spirit he joins up with some self-styled skinhead punk teenagers who take him under their wing and show him a good time. Whilst they're destructive, these kids (led by Woody (Joe Gilgun)) are pretty nice people. Their destruction is limited to abandoned homes and messing around with each other, and their life-view is to chill out, have fun, smoke some weed and drink some.

When the much-older Combo (Stephen Graham) returns from a few years in prison, where he apparently took the fall for Woody for a crime that never comes to light, the dynamic of the group completely shifts. Combo is a strident nationalist (something that resonates quite strongly with the current rise of the BNP here in Britain) who takes the younger skinhead's mischief to violent and threatening extremes. Shaun chooses staying with Combo rather than Woody and becomes involved in the racism and tragedy it brings. Woody, meanwhile, tries to continue without involvement. In the end, after a nasty confrontation between Combo and one of the original members of the pre-Combo gang, Shaun discovers in himself what England really means to him.

It is a powerful story. Turgoose is extraordinary, carrying the film. Not a bad feat for someone so young. All of the supporting cast is similarly in tune to the requirements of their characters and the mood of the film. Nothing in the film is frivolous: it's all necessary and all treated as such. Meadows (who had been making successful features for a decade before This Is England hit) deftly guides all of the younger performers through the minefields of possible over-performance and lets the older ones let loose with all of the gusto they can manage. He massages the themes of childhood, adolescence and the social and political fallout of wars such as the Falklands (playing out again now in the Middle East) into a moving and powerful narrative with economic expertise.

This Is England is a great film that has grown in my esteem over the two days since I actually watched it. I came out of it impressed but a little nonplussed, but the 48 hours in between have embedded it further in my mind. 4.5 stars, and I'll be looking for some more Meadows flicks to bolster my list.

Let The Right One In

Sweden done good with this one, making this blogger happy at two good films in two days.

Let The Right One In (I'm not going to attempt the original title) has swept up the world over the last couple of years (it's been a looong international roll-out for the film), with audiences and critics alike praising it as not only one of the best horror films of late, but quite simply one of the best films full stop. And they're not too far off the mark.

I'm not convinced it's one of the greatest films of the decade (would it make my top 100, however? Possibly) but it is damn good. Horror film? Meh. I had a couple of tense moments, but I wouldn't really say I was scared.

I think that is the beauty of the film. Ostensibly, it's a childhood love story. I'd call it a coming of age story, but I don't quite think the children are old enough for that. They don't even really lose their innocence. They're just kids, after all, doing as kids do - exploring their emotions, their limits, their feelings and each other.

The horror aspect comes from the fact that one of the 'kids' is a vampire - or, as she says when directly asked the question, she lives off blood. This doesn't make her dead, but it does make her allergic to sunlight (and she does also say she's not a girl, but I'm going with that pronoun to make life a little easier, and because I think referring to her as 'it' sounds ugly.) It does mean she will drink the blood of the first thing she sees when she's hungry. It does mean she can't really resist lapping up blood when she sees it. But it doesn't mean she can't control herself.

Set in winter in Sweden, the film starts with Eli moving in with her so-called Papa next door to Oskar. They meet in the courtyard as Papa goes hunting on Eli's behalf (it's worth noting Papa is not a vampire, but appears simply to be charged with her care) and Oskar falls in love, despite Eli informing him that they cannot be friends. After bonding over a Rubik's Cube their friendship is sealed, and they even start going steady. It is, really, a classic story of young love that cannot be, fraught with difficulty - Romeo and Juliet without the meddling parents, but instead a pesky habit of randomly killing and exsanguinating otherwise innocent people. And it's quite beautiful. It looks beautiful, with wintry exteriors and long, dark nights allowing for gorgeously textured visuals (has anyone else noticed that all indy films have started to share a similar beauty and shooting style? Not a complaint, yet, but watch for it...), the kids are beautiful in their own intriguing ways (probably their innocence), and the story is beautiful.

Speaking of the kids, much has been made of their performances, and quite rightly. Our two leads were playing twelve year olds, and must have been about twelve when the film was made. And they are pretty much the entire film. The adults are few and far between, and even most of the supporting players are kids of a similar age. For them to hold down a film like they did at that age is nothing short of extraordinary. And not even merely hold the film down - the completely owned their characters and made you feel for you. Rarely do children get an opportunity to take such dominant lead roles in significant films aimed at adults because, quite frankly, kids aren't generally the best actors when called upon for (almost) every single scene. These two do, and with style, grace, and a completely unfair amount of talent. Possibly the primary downside to the film - unless you were acting like this at twelve (ie unless you're Anna Paquin), you will feel like a desperate underachiever.

I'm going with 4 stars for this one. Maybe my expectation was too high after all that I have heard (and I have heard nothing but rave after rave after rave), but it didn't quite drag me in as deep as I was hoping. A fantastic film no doubt, but that je ne sais pas... maybe if I go back in a few years fresh it will lure me deeper. But still highly recommended.