-- a selection of short-form reviews of the films I have watched this week --
Amores Perros “Love’s a Bitch” (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000)
✭✭✭✭✭
Alejandro Iñárritu arrived on the global stage with an incredible, debut feature, Amores Perros, a firework of world cinema, pulsing between a triptych of narratives hyperlinked by the impact of a car crash. It is a contemporary equivalent of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, or, perhaps, of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, only instead following the collateral of every character who is somehow affected by the events of the play. 21 Grams and Babel, later films from the director,also look to a similar narrative apparatus – the former, and my personal favourite, held together by a truck collision; whilst the other is bridged be a single gunshot – Iñárritu here laying the foundations for his cinematic language, one that is beautifully conceptualised even before his career found Hollywood heights with Birdman or The Revenant. A young man, training a high-class dog for street fighting, plans to run away with the wife of his abusive brother; a famous model is crippled after a crash and forced to watch her beauty fade; an anonymous, ageing hitman looks to recover his abandoned family. Each thread, in subtle ways, weaves between each other, illustrating the complexities and unities of the human condition.
Holy Hell (dir. Will Allen, 2016)
✭✭✭✩✩
Will Allen – formerly of the Buddhafield cult (which he videotapes, ruthlessly and empathetically for 22 years) – concludes his remarkable feature by meeting with its former leader, Michel Rostand. It is a highly unsettling scene, almost reminiscent of the final confrontation of the documentary Catfish. One figure regards the other, now hesitant, afraid, burdened with their shared memory. Holy Hell is yet another example of modern, cult narrative – pastoral bliss converted, irrevocably, into manipulative abuse – its style adorned with Wicker Man-esque flourishes, grainy, pre-digital textures, as well as new footage of interviews with the surviving members. Uniquely, such acts of reminiscence shape what constitutes a love letter to the memory of the community itself – some kind of pleasure is found in being led, in giving to others, that Allen (a closeted, outcast homosexual in 1980s California) could not source in his life before. I wonder: is the film itself looking to recover those feelings? He does, nevertheless, survive the spell of his experiences, as do several others, and learns to recognise that the friendships he has gathered are in fact the true gift of his duration. It is not a particularly well-constructed documentary, constantly teetering on the indulgent, nor does it enlighten the cult of personality any further; it does, however, confer on its audience the timely responsibility of finding ways in which to accommodate those who lives are swept away by such communities.
The Happy Prince (dir. Rupert Everett, 2018)
✭✭✭✩✩
The final, tragic days of Oscar Wilde are humbly reflected upon by the eye of Rupert Everett – someone who is clearly familiar with the immense material he retrieves from the depths (de profundis), often verbatim, often payment to the all-encompassing legacy of his work. Wilde is without grandness, now, vulnerable to burlesque self-mockery, alcoholism, the haunts of his two-year incarceration, and kept to the shadows in the wake of his own wildness. Everett is highly convincing in his performance and it is wonderful to watch such a transformation. Despite this meticulous artfulness, the film is irritatingly aware of its own conceit: Wilde communicates in epigraphs, poignant and witty, and the facts of his life are handed to us in digestible mouthfuls throughout. (I couldn’t help but feel the heavy, homogenising hand of the BBC looming over every scene.)
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