The Party (2017)

THE PARTY              B+                  

Great Britain  (71 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  Sally Potter             Official Facebook

Director Sally Potter’s commitment to bold experimentation has always been intriguing, to say the least, while not always successful, in her daring to find something uniquely different to offer, as her films aren’t for everyone, and tend to divide filmgoers.  That said, the trailer for this film seems wacky and hilarious, so expectations for a savagely offbeat satire seemed promising.  While her previous film, 2013 Top Ten List # 10 Ginger & Rosa, was set in the early 60’s, an era of budding idealism juxtaposed against end-of-the-world Cold War scenarios, this is firmly set in the anxiety-ridden fluctuating times of today, when Britain as we know it is undergoing some kind of midlife identity crisis, on the verge of disappearing altogether, becoming a scathing satire of the post-Brexit world (though surprisingly shot prior to the Brexit vote).  Reminiscent of Mike Leigh’s ABIGAIL’S PARTY (1977) and Ozon’s take on an unpublished Fassbinder play when he was only 19, WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS (1999), both are scathing indictments of the world we live in today, where indifference and cynicism rule supreme, and while produced in different eras, they still maintain a sarcastic bite of laceratingly dark comedy mixed with a disturbing anguish.  While somewhat uneven and not nearly as successful as those earlier iconic works, they do provide a frame of reference for viewers, one of complete irreverence, becoming something of a parody of a parody, targeting the powerlessness of liberalism, suggesting the end is near, where this could just as easily be called LAST TANGO IN BRITAIN.  Every dysfunctional character seems to personify what Britain stands for today, or what it has become, like a mutant step-child, an embarrassment that is a part of us but we don’t want others to see.  Presumably a celebratory occasion, a group of old friends arrive in the London home of the newest Minister of Health, Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas), ever the idealist, appointed to a prestigious position in the opposition party and certainly a rare accomplishment from this group of educated elite.  Perhaps to set the mood, while Janet is thrilling herself on the phone in the kitchen with sweet talk from a secret lover, her husband Bill (Timothy Small) places himself directly in the center of the living room with a glass of wine, drinking heavily before any of the guests arrive, playing records while stuck in a catatonic stupor, looking disoriented while listening to the unmistakable sounds of Muddy Waters, Muddy Waters - Im a Man (Mannish Boy).mp4 - YouTube (3:55), as one by one the guests arrive.  Before the night is done, however, one of the guests will be lying on the floor like a corpse, a curious allegory for Britain’s gloomy fate, with fingers pointed and various people trying to resuscitate the seemingly lifeless body back to life, with the ultimate outcome shrouded in uncertainty and doubt. 

Promising a good time for all, this party rocks with disillusionment and open suspicion, resembling the downward spiral of Polanski’s Carnage (2011), becoming a free-for-all of resentment and accusations, like a modern day Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), cleverly written by Potter herself, with a first class cast that thrives in the theatrics of performance theater and soon turns upon each other, hurling plenty of hilarious one-liners, where the key is an effortless choreography of a world spinning out of control, perhaps responding thematically to an opening salvo, declaring “Democracy is over.”  First to arrive is her American best friend April, Patricia Clarkson, easily the best thing in the film, never more acerbic, a self-professed cynic and realist getting all the best lines (“I’m proud of you, even though I think democracy is finished!”), and new-age partner Gottfried, Bruno Ganz, an aromatherapist/healer (“Prick an aromatherapist and you’ll find a fascist,” she says), announcing they are splitting up, finding her husband indescribably boring.  Next to arrive is a constantly bickering lesbian couple, Martha (Cherry Jones), an academic professor specializing in domestic labor gender differentiation in American utopianism (perhaps spending too much time in women’s studies, suggests April), and her younger partner Jinny (Emily Mortimer), a TV Masterchef runner-up, who immediately announces she’s pregnant with three boys.  Last but not least is Tom (Cillian Murphy), a nervous financier who announces his wife Marianne, who helped run Janet’s campaign, will be arriving later, offering apologies, immediately locking himself in the bathroom to do lines of coke, a habit he repeats later, sweating profusely throughout, while also carrying a concealed gun, growing ever more nervous about it, eventually throwing it away in a garbage bin.  This weapon works its way throughout the storyline just by its mere possibility, as it takes the incendiary barbs one step further, adding a violent trace of inevitability.  When April pops the cork in the champagne bottle, it immediately shatters a window (“That almost never happens”), an ominous sign of things to come, where sinister comments about lost ideals and keeping up with post-post-feminism just keep coming, “Sisterhood is a very aging concept,” each seemingly disapproving of the other.  Among the biggest surprises is the superlative musical soundtrack heard throughout, ranging from the traditional jazz standards of Sidney Bechet, What Is This Thing Called Love? - Sidney Bechet - YouTube (3:53), to the modernism of Albert Ayler (Albert Ayler - Summertime - YouTube (8:47), including a stunningly downbeat John Coltrane, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman - My One And Only Love - YouTube (4:58), to the rousing Cuban music of Ibrahim Ferrer, Ay, Candela - Ibrahim Ferrer - YouTube (3:23), all offering differing comments on the changing mood in the room, like a poetic Greek chorus, much as Potter did in her previous film. 

Shot in stark Black and White by Russian cinematographer Aleksei Rodionov, best known for shooting Elem Klimov’s remarkable Come and See (Idi i smotri) (1985), the movie is short but nasty, where each character is caught up in their own problems, immersed to the point of paralysis, or so it seems, everyone feeling betrayed, with little energy to spare for anyone else.  Gone are the younger days of youthful idealism and democracy in action, becoming instead a chamber drama of personal failures and indiscretions, showcasing their hidden secrets and lies, fueled by “chronic insincerity,” which seems to define the mindlessness of campaign rhetoric, led by April’s accusatory tones, laying into everyone with zingers, openly declaring war on anyone complicit with the status quo, who by the end is left to reassess the situation, surprisingly discovering that she and Gottfried are actually the best adjusted couple in the room.  This comes after a visibly distraught Bill rises from his stupor to announce he has a hopelessly terminal medical illness, where he had to go outside the National Health Service to get an appointment, a defiance of everything his wife had steadfastly worked and campaigned for, before dropping an even bigger bombshell, which may explain Tom’s fidgety behavior, announcing he’s leaving Janet, wanting to spend his final time with Tom’s wife, Marianne, confessing a yearlong affair (or perhaps two), suggesting the attention paid to him only emphasizes Janet’s woeful indifference, as he now understands what he’s been missing.  Janet’s initial recourse is to slap him hard in the face, recoiling in disbelief at what she’s done before doing it again, drawing blood.  As Janet bites down on her arm in disgust, wailing “I believe in truth and reconciliation,” an Iago-like April promotes the idea of exacting revenge, actually encouraging her to take matters into her own hands, as he’s got it coming.  Gottfried immediately jumps into the role of life coach and mediator, like some cult guru, supporting Bill while catty forces conspire against him, offering the advice, “You need to protect yourself from so much negative female energy,” becoming an openly defiant battle of the sexes.  In a momentary lull, Janet discovers the gun in the trash bin, raising the stakes, with ominous Hitchcockian implications.  Tom, however, is boiling over with coke residue, more enraged than ever at Bill, and cold cocks the man who’s stealing his wife, leaving him inert on the ground, like a corpse.  Not knowing if he’s dead or alive, he has immediate regrets and concerns, trying to cajole him back to the living, with little success.  Stuck in a neverland between the living and the dead, Bill seems to personify Britain’s current crisis, brought on by a toxic spell of unbridled masculinity.  Trying to find music for the occasion, to help resuscitate Bill’s broken spirits, Tom plays the first record he finds, Purcell- Dido and Aeneas~ 'When I am laid in earth' (Dido's Lament ... (3:50), a funereal song of great dramatic magnitude that may as well be an anthem for the dead.  The irony of these absurdly poor choices is not lost on the audience, as this film hilariously probes the underbelly of insanity that lies at the root of today’s modern conflict.  With Buñuelian wit and precision, and without offering any solutions, this film metaphorically sticks a fork into what’s left of the rotting corpse formerly known as Great Britain. 

Note

Of special interest, the actors and actresses in this film all got paid equally and are using this fact to promote equal pay for women in the film industry. 

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY              A-                   

Ireland  Great Britain  Germany  Italy  Spain  (124 mi)  2006  d:  Ken Loach 

Twas hard for mournful words to frame
To break the ties that bound us,
Ah but harder still to bear the shame
Of foreign chains around us.
And so I said: the mountain glen
I’ll seek at morning early
And join the brave united men
While soft winds shake the barley.
—Robert Dwyer Joyce (1830-1883)

A film that’s bound to draw attention to itself, as it’s a film of ideas wrapped in the blood of brothers-in-arms and history, as well as a lump in your throat story by Paul Laverty that grabs the audience from the haunting opening moments and relentlessly never lets go.  Following on the trail of John Ford’s The Informer (1935) and Italian neorealists like Rossellini’s OPEN CITY (1945) or de Sica’s BICYCLE THIEF (1948), Loach is so superb at painting compassionate portraits of progressive realism, a wrenching view of ordinary people caught up in the turmoil of the times, using a fictionalized recreation of a moment in history that has profound implications on the world we live in today, creating a style of film that defines intensity.  Set in Ireland in 1920, we see the armed to the teeth British Black and Tan soldiers not only harassing Irish youth, which might have been tolerated, but the mainstream professional class as well, bloodying a few noses, using a bullying style of thuggery that eventually leads to murder.  At a local farmhouse that becomes a focal point of the film, Damien, Cillian Murphy, witnesses the murder of one of his friends for saying his name in Gaelic instead of English, and after watching the Black and Tans knock a train conductor senseless for refusing to allow soldiers to bring their weapons on the trains, he changes his plans from attending medical school in London and joins up with the Irish Republican Army where his brother Teddy (Padraic Delaney) is already active as a soldier.  The story follows Damien’s path as he and his brother undergo the painful transition from civilian to soldier, where violence becomes their trademark, which leaves more than a scar in their anguished souls.

Much like Melville’s portrait of the French resistance in ARMY OF SHADOWS (1969), these Republicans face an impossible dilemma, as they’re being rounded up, tortured and killed, all graphically realized in a few short moments of the film, they’re left with a huge burden on their shoulders, where the freedom of the country lies in the hands of a bunch of poor, working class kids, an underfunded rag tag few, or they can face the humiliating alternative of living the rest of their lives under the brutal dictates of a British occupation.  Loach has already shown us what the British can do, so what alternative do they have?  In one of the more wrenching scenes of the film, they have to decide what to do when they discover the identity of an informer, a young kid they’ve known all their lives, as well as his family, whose real sin is he couldn’t endure the kind of torture the IRA was used to.  What to do?  Through a series of raids and ambushes, Damien develops the friendship of Dan (Liam Cunningham) and Sinead (Orla Fitzgerald), whose brother was killed earlier at her grandmother’s farmhouse, which comes into play again in another unforgettable scene when it is burned down by the Black and Tans, leaving Sinead beaten and bloodied.  As we’re being drawn into this life or death intensity of an unstoppable mayhem and neverending revenge, a truce is declared.  The Treaty of 1921 is signed by both the Irish and British, which leads to the withdrawal of the Black and Tan troops, a police force in the hands of the Irish, but the country will remain under the power of the British – the terms of peace.

Suddenly the film changes from the fight for freedom set in the vast green landscapes of the cloudy outdoors, beautifully captured by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, to the cramped back rooms of a dingy building where a progressive political discussion ensues, the heart and soul of the picture, guys in caps and vests arguing vehemently with one another over the terms of the agreement, exploring questions of history and political experiences of the working class as if their lives depended on it, as some feel they are so close to driving the British out that they’d never forgive themselves if they stopped now, while others, overwhelmed by the rising body count, welcome the prospects of peace, believing there are no circumstances under which the British would actually leave, so withdrawing their troops is a good compromise.  Damien and Teddy end up on opposite sides of the argument and both end up pursuing their goals in their own way, which only leads to disastrous results.  The final shot at that same farmhouse, the setting where so much of the pain and violence occurs and a fitting metaphor for Ireland itself, is an extraordinary picture of hurt and sorrow, as one wonders how much more anguish that farmhouse can endure?  The language of the film is in a thick Irish brogue, a good third of which is incomprehensible, and unlike a few other working class British films, there are no subtitles, which makes for a frustrating viewing, as what we can decipher is bold, brash, and at times poetic, so it might have helped, but this is one of Loach’s most powerful films, where the initial intensity never lags due to such a strong undercurrent of staggering realism.

In Time

IN TIME                      C+                  

USA  (109 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Andrew Niccol

This is an oddly conceived futuristic thriller that loves to play games with itself, adding a few strange twists along the way, but mostly it’s caught up in a badly conceived idea of the future that never really comes to life, that occasionally has its drama, but is ultimately undone by a lack of artistic conceptual design that holds any interest with the viewer, as the world looks pretty much like the same place divided into rich and poor neighborhoods.  This plays out like a film noir set in Los Angeles, seen as a seedy ghetto world of down and outs, many of whom die on the streets as they simply run out of time.  In this world, money is not the currency, but a programmed clock that clicks in upon reaching the age of 25, where no one physically ages past that point but everyone is given one additional year, where you can’t tell mothers and daughters from grandmothers, but a digital clock is imprinted on each arm with a ticking clock showing how much time is left in each person’s life, where goods and services as well as income are all paid in increments of time added or subtracted to the time clock on the arm.  One other problem, anyone can simply steal someone else’s time simply through brute force, creating a crime infested world where many are desperately near the end, or live from day to day, receiving handouts from the local mission, while armed gangs roam the streets known as Minutemen, intimidating the population, taking whatever they want, as there’s no visual presence of a police force.  Unlike John Carpenter’s ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981), which has a highly effective dark and uniquely menacing visual and sound design of a criminal world off limits, lurking out of reach from the rest of the world, a gang infested society run on power and greed, Niccol has created neighborhoods similar to New York City boroughs distinctly based on accumulation of time, where the most wealthy live in a pristine world accumulating so much time that they can conceivably never die, where the motto is “Many must die for the few to be immortal.”

While this system of wealth does imitate the world of monetary currency, where the top 1 % of Americans own nearly half the nation’s wealth, Justin Timberlake as Will Salas is accustomed to living day by day, seeing people die and disappear without a trace, where he’s one of the few who develops an opportunistic sense about the world around him, as few are willing to think of others when they are fully consumed with the idea of saving themselves, where they inevitably spend the rest of their lives watching their own time disappear.  The film gets a jump start when Will happens upon a dying man with shitloads of time who transfers it all to Will, raising the ire of a secret police force known as Timekeepers, led by Cillian Murphy, a sinister organization that keeps track of large chunks of time mysteriously changing hands, where they all but assume murder or some other criminal enterprise, naturally assuming the party is guilty without ever accumulating all the facts.  In this sense, it’s a police state where only the rich have access to lawyers.  However, this accumulation of time allows Will to quickly enter the wealthiest time zone, where at a poker table he meets Amanda Seyfried as Sylvia, the daughter of one of the wealthiest industrialists.  In this Nirvana like world, they have an initial encounter that opens each other’s eyes, but only for a minute, as the Timekeeper is quickly on Will’s tail assuming the worst, where Will and Sylvia make a quick getaway, becoming fugitives on the run.  Seyfried especially has that Anna Karina look from the 60’s, where the film quickly turns into a campish, slightly ridiculous road movie resembling the fashionable revolutionary outlaws in Godard’s PIERROT LE FOU (1965), a stylishly extravagant world of lavish excess, mostly shot in the exotic locale of the French Riviera in the South of France, but here they quickly return to the anonymous protection of Will’s squalid world where they can blend into the overpopulated city streets.

Blending fiction with real life, the kidnapped daughter of one of the world’s wealthiest men comes to resemble what actually happened with Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of millionaire publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst who was kidnapped in 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a Robin Hood organization that robbed banks (including an armed Ms. Hearst) and distributed free food to the poor until they were eventually hunted down and killed by the FBI as a terrorist organization.  Similarly, Will and Sylvia turn into a Bonnie and Clyde team of bank robbers, time bandits on the run, stealing huge amounts of time from her own father and redistributing it to the poorest of the poor in the ghettos, effectively altering the inequitable social status of the entire world, perhaps inadvertently creating an idyllic portrait of equality through socialism.  This is something of a far-fetched and grossly idealized futuristic fantasia, complete with Amanda Seyfried in sexy, glamorous outfits, high heels, and plenty of makeup, but never breaking a sweat despite literally being on the run throughout most of the picture, much of which feels like a nonstop chase sequence, with Timberlake at the controls of what attempts to be an accelerated mind bender of a movie, but is horribly oversimplified.  Perhaps if the world of the super rich wasn’t so visually similar to what we’ve seen before in the suited men in sunglasses from MEN IN BLACK (1997) or THE MATRIX (1999), and actually developed an original visual design on its own, this might have been something more than it turns out to be, literally wasting the talents of heralded cinematographer Roger Deakins shooting in ‘Scope, as this fails to resemble anything futuristic at all.  You’d think a futuristic rumble between the haves and have nots, the 1% versus the 99%, might jolt the audience awake with concerns that stream out of the headlines of today, but this strangely turns into a fatalistic theater of emptiness and existentialist dread, where the future continues to be portrayed as an inevitable sense of impending doom.