Young Adam

YOUNG ADAM               A-            

Great Britain  France  (98 mi)  2002  ‘Scope  d:  David Mackenzie

If ever anyone says to you, “You can put that where the sun don’t shine,” think of this film, a deeply probing, excessively gloomy adaptation of Scottish beat author Alexander Trocchi’s novel.  Ambiguously set in postwar Scotland, this is a tense, sexually explicit lower class version of Polanski’s KNIFE IN THE WATER (1962) with a brilliant cast, the ménage à trois, Les and Ella, played by Peter Mullan and Tilda Swinton, an unhappy couple with a young son onboard who transport post-WWII fuel rations on a barge up and down the narrow canals from Glasgow to Edinburgh, who take on hired help in the form of Ewan McGregor who plays Joe, a chain-smoking, handsome lothario, a self-absorbed character largely based on the author himself, who was a heroin addict with squandered talent.  Filled with an attention to detail, few words, and an endlessly gray mood, the film opens on the docks as they sweep a woman out of the harbor dressed only in a flimsy petticoat.  Shortly afterwards, Joe is staring at Tilda Swinton’s every move, sharing close quarters underneath the decks of the barge, concealing little from her husband.  In this film, no words are needed, and after a brief sexual escapade outdoors on the grassy slopes, when Joe tries to say something, Ella cuts him off quickly, “You’ve said enough for one evening.”  In a series of well-placed flashbacks, Joe is seen meeting and romancing the drowned woman found in the water, Cathie (Emily Mortimer), picking her up on the beach, moving away onto the concealment of rocks where they have sex, learning more about their deteriorating relationship but only as the film progresses, where it seems to be moving in slow motion backwards and forwards, all at the same time.  The style is absorbing, moody, incredibly detached, but extraordinarily focused on each single moment at hand, which when gone, seems to have never meant very much to anyone at all, as if all is lost in a deep abyss of an existential void.  Easily comparable to the most famous barge movie of all time, Jean Vigo’s L'Atalante (1934), which also happens to be the name of the barge (The Atlantic Eve), this lacks the surging romanticism and optimistic feel and instead embarks upon a more somber and fatalistic mood that is diametrically opposed to Vigo, a downbeat depiction of working class social realism that accentuates physical intimacy, where Joe screws every woman he meets, with the audience sympathies and overall view of his character slowly deteriorating over time.  The story moves to the murder trial of the drowned girl, becoming a morality tale, as the police seem to be accusing the wrong man, which sparks the interest of Joe, who slowly, but surely, falls farther and farther from grace.  With an intriguing soundtrack by Talking Head’s David Byrne, the title, one assumes, refers to original sin.  To quote Michael Wilmington, “This is an unvarnished, pitiless look at real life by a man who knows his character is deeply flawed and does nothing to disguise or excuse it.” 

Interesting parallels exist between Vigo, whose life was cut short by tuberculosis, actually directing part of L'Atalante from a stretcher, and the author Alexander Trocchi who wrote his novel from the drugged stupor of a lifelong heroin addiction.  Instead of believing in love, the underlying power of Vigo’s film, this is all about sex, viewed as a short-term substitute where there is no possibility of love.  One main difference in the film is the lack of an inner narration, which is provided by Joe in the book, instead the film wordlessly sees the world through his eyes.  A gritty depiction of working class life, this parallels the poetic realism of Vigo’s film, both offering sumptuously beautiful cinematography (in this case Giles Nuttgen), but this film couldn’t feel more claustrophobic, as the cramped quarters inside the boat are squeezed right next to each other, with paper thin walls offering no privacy to speak of, with Joe using reading a book as an excuse not to go into town with Les, or cuts his visits to the pub short, as his real purpose is to have moments alone with Ella, growing used to each other after a while, even bored, as is suggested when he watches a fly sitting atop her naked breast, which holds little interest anymore.  Simultaneously, Joe is seen staying at home attempting to write on a typewriter while Cathie works all day, but he fails miserably, a writer with no inspiration, usually in a sour mood when she gets home, or drunk, treating her terribly, at times like a sexual predator.  This picture of domesticated bliss is always soiled and stained, a picture of opportunities wasted, yet she yearns for the stability while that most of all is what feels like its breathing down his neck, suffocating him, offering him no relief, eventually making a quick exit.  This failed relationship is what leads him to Les, seeing him throw his typewriter away into the river, offering him a job on the barge, where Joe is viewed as just another drifter.  There’s another scene in the film that’s not in the book, a moment when Ella’s young son falls into the canal, with Joe jumping in headfirst to save him, perhaps offering a bit of sympathy to this otherwise wayward character, suggesting he’s capable of moral decisions even as he openly flaunts behavior that suggests otherwise, having regular sex with Ella right under the nose of Les, thinking only of himself, taking advantage of every opportunity, showing no regard for others.  Pretending to express little interest in the ongoing investigation surrounding the drowned girl, the seemingly unflappable Joe is fooling no one, least of all the audience, while Les just wants to see his name in the papers.  Their closeness is revealed, however, in a scene scrubbing each other’s backs, wiping the coal dust off their bodies, which is done without an ounce of pretense, where it’s simply viewed as a necessity.  Along with trips together into town to visit pubs, this friendly male bonding on the one hand and willful sexual promiscuity with his wife on the other reveal the moral divide that actually defines this picture.    

Moody and extremely atmospheric throughout, while there is an idealized freedom that comes with the barge, with no set hours, no punching the clock, living on the river away from the noise and traffic of the city, the film does an excellent job revealing a near-documentary view of ordinary life traversing the narrow bridges and locks along the river, loading and hauling a variety of commodities.  None of the other characters have much character development, though Swinton makes Ella proud and self-aware while Cathie completely surrenders her dignity and self-respect, instead focusing upon Joe’s sexual exploits, showing little affection and even less responsibility.  Through a series of flashbacks Joe’s despicable inner character comes more prominently into view, in particular a defining scene that reunites Joe with Cathie, accidentally running into one another sometime after they split up, where they strip naked and have sex in the dirt and grime under a truck, hardly a romanticized view, as instead it’s just another depiction of loveless sex.  When she announces she’s pregnant, Joe grows alarmed and immediately defensive, angrily suggesting he may not be the father.  And while she acknowledges having another lover, a likeable plumber named Daniel, there is no question in her mind who the father is.  Gathering his things to walk away, she chases after him and slips along the riverbank falling into the darkness of the river with no sign of her afterwards.  Seemingly paralyzed into inaction, Joe gathers all her clothes and throws them into the river as well, wiping his fingerprints from anything he can recall touching.  Taking an avid interest in the trial afterwards, as Daniel is being charged with murder for the death of Cathie, the film takes a turn into social injustice, as a wronged man is condemned to die, yet it’s just another day in the ordinary lives of a working underclass, making their positions clear in the crowded pubs where gossip takes center stage, eager to equate sex with criminal intent, becoming morbidly intriguing to Joe who listens transfixed to what is being said without ever uttering a solitary word, witnessing a developing lynch mob mentality ready to convict this innocent man.  Joe on the other hand conveniently runs away, away from himself and his conscience, like he’s always done.  And while the book may be an existential critique of a disconnected bourgeois society that is no longer in touch with its own moral values, the film is more of a psychological study of Joe’s own moral failings, expressing a near pathological indifference inherent with his own failure to adjust to the constantly changing world around him.  Far from innocent himself, his crimes are those of narcissistic indulgence, apathy, and self-disgust.  Joe’s connection to the corpse is intentionally withheld until the latter stages of the film, allowing viewers some clue into the kind of man he is, a morally irredeemable character, where any Dostoyevskian guilt or anguish are simply beyond his grasp. 

Hell or High Water

HELL OR HIGH WATER                B+            
USA  (112 mi)  2016 ‘Scope  d:  David Mackenzie               Official site 

Three tours in Iraq but no bailout for people like us. 

—graffiti written on a wall near the bank in the opening scene 

Mysteriously premiering at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section, this film flew under the radar in the bright lights and glamor of the Cannes Film Festival.  Finally receiving its American release during the height of the summer doldrums, it comes as a pleasant surprise from a Scottish director borrowing heavily from the Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy, Inside Job (2010), pointing out the ivory tower sanctuary of those privileged and protected few whose actions led to the crisis and then remained insulated from any of the consequences, Andrew Dominick’s Killing Them Softly (2012), a gritty working man’s portrait describing how the American Dream for ordinary citizens came to an abrupt halt when the economic meltdown forced the government to bail out the banks, Wall Street brokerage houses, and the auto industry, leaving them flailing on their own, satirically contrasting that approach with the way the mob handles its own debt relief crisis, to Martin Scorsese’s exaggerated and wildly outlandish fever dream The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), few have captured the human cost and economic devastation quite so skillfully as this film.  Coming on the heels of the mortgage crisis, adding a uniquely American historical perspective that goes back to the land grab from Indians during the Manifest Destiny era of the mid-19th century, the film exposes the predatory lending policies of local banks across the country that seemingly have the best interests of customers in mind, while behind the scenes making legal maneuvers offering loans to financially starved and desperate people who have no conceivable way of paying it back, allowing banks to foreclose while taking their property and land, where one person’s misfortune is another person’s economic opportunity.  It’s a sickening display of how the system works, designed to allow powerful interests to prey on the most vulnerable among us, revealing how the banks stockpile their financial reserves at their own customer’s expense.  While this is a nasty business practice, it happens with an almost invisible presence, where the only signs are foreclosure notices left on the locked doors and shuttered windows of abandoned businesses and homes, along with giant “for sale” signs or a series of highway billboards offering quick “debt relief” that dot the landscape, while longstanding family-owned businesses quietly disappear.  
 

With elegiac music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, along with the downbeat road music of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Townes Van Zandt, not to mention Blakwall - Knockin' On Heaven's Door (Hell or High Water ... - YouTube (4:03), the film is set in the blisteringly raw and aching loneliness of smalltown Texas, a world depicted so brilliantly in Martin Ritt’s Hud (1963) and Peter Bogdanovich’s  The Last Picture Show (1971), both based upon the literary works of Larry McMurtry, with the latter starring Jeff Bridges 45 years ago, where the common denominator is the vast emptiness of long, dusty roads that stretch across a desolate West Texas landscape that is flat as far as the eye can see, showing a land the economic recovery has never reached, revealing instead an economically collapsed world crumbling in decay, a desert wasteland with no signs of life from grazing animals or even human habitation.  That is the blank canvas from which this film emerges, poetically shot by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens with a regional focus, with particular attention paid to authenticity and detail, becoming one of the surprise films of the year.  A character study told through subtlety and dramatic understatement, where the range of the actors is captivating throughout, the driving force behind the film is the extraordinary screenplay written by Taylor Sheridan, a television actor who also wrote Sicario (2015), whose colorful dialogue allows plenty of regional personality to develop between characters, becoming intimately familiar to the audience over time.   Wasting little time, following a car creeping through the back alleys, the film opens with a bank robbery in a small Texas Midland branch location, but because they got there so early the money’s not even out of the safe yet, where only the bank manager has the key, and they have to wait for him to arrive.  This adds a kind of folksy touch to an otherwise awkward situation, where it’s actually more humorous than suspenseful.  Getting away free and clear, the two brothers are ecstatic afterwards driving out into the endless expanse of the countryside to their isolated ranch in the middle of nowhere.  Meet Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster), seen sipping beers on their front porch after burying their getaway vehicle, a couple of small timers not looking to make a name for themselves, content to take small bills so as not to draw attention to themselves.  In this way, they avoid detection by the FBI who are only called in on the big scores. This leaves them in the hands of local law enforcement, with Jeff Bridges as U.S. Marshall Marcus Hamilton, so relaxed and comfortable in this role, getting into the very soul of the character just days before his retirement, leaving him one last crime to unravel, along with his faithful partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) as two Texas Rangers, where this has the feel of an extended The Andy Griffith Show (1960 – 68) episode, especially the back and forth banter between the sheriff and his deputy, as Marcus incessantly needles his partner about his Mexican-Comanche heritage, where racist jokes are more of a clue to the closeness of their friendship, with Alberto teasing him right back about his eminent demise after retirement. Even as Alberto detests every snide remark, his willingness to take it speaks volumes, as he’s a man with extraordinary pride, but always keeps it to himself, reminiscent of the classic battle of wits between white sheriff Rod Steiger and black police detective Sidney Poitier in Norman Jewison’s IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967). 

Behind the scenes there’s more than meets the eye, as the brothers recently lost their mother, who was forced to sell all their livestock, as the family ranch is one the verge of foreclosure by the end of the week, where they suspect some back-handed legal maneuvering by the bank took advantage of her position, a situation they mean to rectify, and what better way than to do it than with the bank’s own money?  As a result, they make a series of bank runs, where the impulsive, always out-of-control Tanner can’t help himself, even robbing one branch by himself during lunchtime while his brother is sipping coffee in a diner next door.  As they haul ass out of there, it’s clear the division of labor needs some work, where Toby asks his brother, a career criminal known for his outlandish recklessness just how the hell he’s managed to stay out of prison for the past year, to which he replies, “It’s been difficult.”  Like Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), robbing the rich to feed the poor during the height of the Depression, part of the intrigue is the likeability of these two characters, who keep a low profile, though one’s high strung and the other’s low key, coming across as just ordinary folks, never hiding from the fact they have problems like everybody else.  Like mirror images of the two brothers, the older, more mature lawmen trying to hunt them down have their own quiet appeal, where the more loquacious Marcus has some great dialogue while his Lone Ranger sidekick, Alberto as Tonto, always remains stoic, the picture of dignity.  Once inside the bank, Marcus looks for the bank manager for questioning, whose apt response once tracking him down, “Now that looks like a man who would foreclose on a house!”  As the string of bank robberies continues, this duo tries to anticipate the robbers’ next move, staking out a bank in a dying town where literally nothing happens, where they just sit and wait, veering into Sergio Leone territory.  In this lingering pause, Alberto reminds Marcus that land was stolen by force from the Indians, while nowadays hard times and poverty have only increased the unrestrained greed of the banks, allowing them an excuse to go after everyone, including whites, “This was my ancestor’s land, the lease folks took it, and now it’s been taken from them, except it ain’t no army did it, just those sons of bitches right there.”  One of the best scenes of the film happens when the lawmen enter a small town diner called the T-Bone.  When considering their options, the bossy, world-weary waitress, Margaret Bowman, described as a “rattlesnake of a waitress,” who played a motel clerk in the Coen brothers’ NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007), who has seemingly lived in this rotgut town all her life and seen it all, instructs them that they’ll be getting T-bone steaks, as that’s what everybody who walks in the door gets, where all she needs to know is what NOT to get for a side dish.  Succinctly put in their place, their authority stripped from the outset like schoolkids getting a scolding, both men readily accept her conditions.  As the lawmen wait for a robbery, the outlaws make a run across the border to Oklahoma to visit an Indian casino to launder their money, making sure there are no traces left behind.  Toby has two kids from an ex-wife, and though he barely sees them, he makes sure they will be taken care of, depending on what happens in the final reckoning, leaving the deed to the property in their names, claiming “I been poor my whole life.  My parents and their parents before them.  It’s like a disease.  Infects everyone you know.  But not my boys.”  Of course it’s always the final score that goes haywire, with unexpected circumstances including bank customers carrying guns, where it literally becomes every man for himself, with vigilante justice chasing the men out of town with a caravan of heavily armed pick-up trucks on their tail.  As they head out into the open expanse of the wilderness, this one leads to a typical western showdown with tragic consequences, where taming the lawlessness of the Wild West is viewed as a work in progress, where the success, or lack thereof, completely depends on your point of view. 

Starred Up

STARRED UP             B-                   

Great Britain  (106 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  David Mackenzie         Official site

A highly acclaimed British prison drama shot by an independent minded Scottish film director, the maker of YOUNG ADAM (2002) and HALLAM FOE (2007), one that uses a grim, ultra realistic style featuring ferocious acting, but at the same time stretches credulity, seemingly in contrast with one another, where many viewers will be scratching their heads wondering why violent criminals are contained in such a seemingly lax prison environment, as so much of the depiction of endless violence inside the prison is simply never contained, where there never seems to be appropriate consequences for obvious violations.  As the film is actually shot in the unused correctional center of HM Prison Maze in Belfast, Northern Ireland, closed since September 29, 2000, the irony is not lost on the viewers, as this was the site of the notorious 1981 Irish hunger strike when ten Irish political prisoners starved themselves to death, including Bobby Sands, who was a Member of Parliament at the time  The reason for his imprisonment was the possession of a handgun, for which he was sentenced to fourteen years in maximum security prison, some of which was spent naked while in solitary confinement, whose life was depicted with stunning clarity by British director Steve McQueen in HUNGER (2008).  This film initially has the feel of authenticity, adapted from a screenplay by Jonathan Asser who worked as a voluntary prison therapist at HM Prison Wandsworth in London, home of some of the country’s most violent criminals.  The title of the film represents the prison terminology used when they transfer a youth offender to an adult prison unit, in this case teenage Eric Love (Jack O’Connell), a troubled kid from working class London with a violently abusive past.  However, nothing is known about him in the opening except he is a new prisoner, where the attention to detail is meticulously accurate, where he is forced to strip, his body inspected for contraband, and given a prison uniform to wear.  This begins a long, extended walk in real time that couldn’t be more precisely choreographed, wordlessly unlocking one set of doors while closing and locking the door behind, perhaps asking him to step forward, repeating the process again and again as a guard leads him through an elaborate maze of endless locked doors and empty walkways before finally arriving to his solitary cell.  The degree of locked down order and professionalism maintained in this sequence quickly erodes, where the conditions inside eventually descend into chaos and madness.  While it never reaches the heights of Jacques Audiard’s unflinching, near documentary realism in 2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #10 A Prophet (Un Prophète), and is near unintelligible (no subtitles) due to the non-stop use of profanity and heavily accented slang, MacKenzie nonetheless creates a bleak portrait of conflicting prison interests. 

This kid doesn’t waste any time and immediately gets to work melting the handle of his toothbrush where he’s smuggled a razor blade, molding the blade into the handle as a makeshift knife, immediately hiding it in the florescent lighting fixture on the ceiling.  This sequence has a Bressonian feel to it that’s told in a worldless rhythm defined by this particular environmental space, where he calmly measures each move even as internally he is emotionally rocked by this major change in his life.  By morning, he’s already verbally sparring with another large black inmate, where a bit of name calling will likely lead to predictable results, where it appears he intentionally picked this fight, publically, and in front of all the other inmates.  Taking his food to his cell, he lies in wait afterwards, pretending he is sleeping.  When another black prisoner from across the hall walks into his open cell, Eric springs from the bed and viciously attacks him, knocking him out with a single blow, dragging the man to the end of the hallway where the guards can provide medical treatment.  It’s little more than profanity being spewed back and forth between the prisoner and the guards, where no one simply talks, instead they shout and intimidate, where every act is a threat, using unintelligible slang that seems to define an unbalanced prison state of belligerence, where being a little mental can be used to one’s advantage.  By the time the guards enter his cell with riot gear, he fends them off with the broken legs of a wooden desk, using them as clubs, waving them in the air like a maniac.  Even after he’s apparently subdued, he chomps down on a guard’s testicles like a pitbull, eventually leading to a standoff, but only after a prison counselor Oliver (Rupert Friend) insists that he attend group therapy, “I can reach him,” he pleads, seemingly locking heads over the issue with Deputy Warden Hayes (Sam Spruell) who gives his permission.  Unlike Destin Cretton’s equally gut-wrenching Short Term 12 (2013), where there is a clear line between administrators and supervisory staff, not always in agreement but the film adequately explains the differing perspectives, this film makes no attempt whatsoever to provide any rational view of the administrators in charge of the prison, and instead turns them into bigger monsters than the prisoners themselves, modeled apparently after Cruella De Vil, as their criminally heinous acts throughout are nothing less than villainous.  It is surprising, however, to see female guards in an all-male prison facility that is this violent, where the head administrator is a big-bosomed, cruel-intentioned blond woman (Sian Breckin), using Hayes to run interference in the trenches for her. 

It’s a half-hour into the film before we discover a major revelation, curiously revealed by Eric’s improbable exploration into another inmate’s cell on the same wing where he finds a drawing he made as a child crudely showing a young child standing alongside his mother and father, all holding hands, with the inscription, “I Love you daddy.”  Meet Eric’s father, Neville Love, Ben Mendelsohn, an Australian actor from David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom (2010), separated from Eric at the age of 5, who adds something of a psychotic presence to an already hysterical prison environment, as his hair-trigger temper and propensity for violence makes him one of the lifers, his sentence extended as he apparently killed another prisoner, where he represents the hardened view of an inmate that will never see the light of day.  Eric, on the other hand, has only five years to serve and he’s free, his Dad reminds him, so he needs to cooperate and keep his hands clean, urging him to listen and follow instructions in therapy, which is little more than anger management sessions, though Eric does eventually acknowledge he was abused by a pedophile at the age of 10, where prisoners may become unhinged and subject to making vicious assaults when verbally provoked, where standing up for yourself isn’t so much a choice but a mandatory prerequisite to staying alive.  Eric, however, has little regard for the rules and remains out of control throughout, trashing his own cell as well as others, assaulting multiple guards, cutting up another inmate’s face, yet has free reign to wander the place at will with little, if any, consequences for his actions.  This defies belief, where the film is not without its flaws and has a clear ideological agenda, pitting the idealistic motives of the “volunteer” unpaid prison therapist, whose unconventional motives suggest his own dark past, against the more corrupt aims of the embattled administration that holds no hope whatsoever in the idea of prisoner rehabilitation, and instead routinely covers up their own treacherous crimes of targeting certain incorrigibles with murder faked to look like suicides.  When Hayes decides to implement such a plan against Eric, his father Neville goes ballistic, forced to fight through a battle royale of prison guards standing in his way to finally get to his son, which despite the authentic tone throughout adamantly strains belief, turning this into a kind of superhero prison drama, where the prisoners continually exert their moral and physical superiority over the continually outmanned and overwhelmed prison system that is crushed by the weight of its own ineptitude.  While the performances throughout are stellar, this grim and tightly edited drama literally makes the audience choke on the suffocating conditions, graphically raw and intense, never allowing the transcendent release of Bresson’s A Man Escaped (Un Condamné à Mort s'est échappé) (1956), continually tightening the screws, allowing no space to breathe in this taut prison thriller.