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. 

The Edge of the World

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD             A                

Great Britain  (81 mi)  1937  d:  Michael Powell

The seabirds were its first owners, and now the seabirds have it for their own again.

―Andrew Gray (Niall MacGinnis)

Among the truly rare and exceptional film experiences that are most memorable would have to include this film, a poignant elegy to the death of a community, featuring some of the most stunning black and white photography ever seen of life on an island off the coast of Scotland, accented by dramatic cliffs and treacherous seas, with humans, like mountain goats, daring to scale these rocky vistas with ease, turning this into a beautiful mix of naturalism and documentary, with utterly surreal moments that elevate what little story there is to a landscape accentuated tone poem.  Framed nearly entirely in flashback, it depicts the last of the island survivors, having to choose between the harsh and often barren soil that can’t sustain itself and returning to an easier life on the mainland.  To that end it’s similar to the choices being made in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991), absent the historical slave connections.  Due to an often ferocious ocean, mail delivery travel between the mainland and the island is reduced to just once a year, in effect cutting them off from the rest of the world, having to go it alone, dependent upon their own hard work and self-reliance.  Inspired by the story of the evacuation of St. Kilda in 1930, the most remote island group in Britain, a place of seemingly inaccessible rocky crags rising up from the sea, but for thousands of years it was a thriving community.  Powell kept a newspaper clipping of the story in his pocket for six years, determined to turn the story into a film.  Working as a still photographer for Alfred Hitchcock in early British silent films Champagne (1928) and Blackmail (1929), Powell claims he suggested the climactic ending of the latter film, where he and Hitchcock remained lifelong friends.  Between 1931 and 1936, Powell directed 23 films, up to seven per year, basically mastering his craft, though according to the director all are forgettable, described as quota quickies, hour-long films that satisfied Britain’s legal requirement to screen a minimum quota of British films.  So this is truly his first personal project, gathering together a cast and crew, like the director at the beginning of King Kong (1933), utilizing only those willing to spend months on an expedition to one of the most remote and isolated parts of the United Kingdom, filming on the island of Foula in the Shetland Isles (the northernmost inhabited site in the British Isles, as St. Kilda was considered too dangerous, where the Gaelic language had to be abandoned), where what was most essential was capturing the raw natural beauty of the location. 

Style wise, achieving exceptionally high production values using low budget methods, the film resembles the social realism of Dovzhenko’s EARTH (1930), especially the depiction of a working class drama, accentuating the harsh and barren conditions of working the land in such a remote region, showing the tilling of the soil, the work in the fields, the herding of sheep over rocky plateaus, and the hardscrabble life on the island, showing plenty of closeups of faces, all set in a world of cold austere beauty, almost like a Dreyer film, viewed as a working collective, eternally anguished by existential questions, with the men convening from time to time in a democratic parliament to voice their views about what to do, as food was shared throughout the community, taking care of the sick and old.  On St. Kilda, fishing was considered too dangerous, as many were drowned with their boats overturning just a few hundred feet from shore, instead they captured seabirds, which the island had in abundance, with the men lowering themselves on ropes from the clifftops, or climbing up the rocks from boats.  Islanders became expert climbers, something they learned in their youth.  The wind on the island was so strong that sheep and cattle were routinely blown off the cliffs, while the sounds of the waves beating against the cliffs was so loud it left villagers deaf for a week.  Trees could not grow there, and what few crops were planted often became polluted with salt water.  In the Roman era, believing the world was flat, St. Kilda was considered the last place on earth, with sailors viewing a giant wall rising from the sea, a reminder to explorers that this was as far as they could go.  This image opens the film, with massive cliffs appearing just above the waves, as a man (Michael Powell himself) and woman (Frankie Reidy, Powell’s future wife of forty years) are on a yacht sailing to the island, intent on staying overnight, against the advice of the sea captain, Andrew Gray (Niall MacGinnis), visiting a shoreline grave marker, with the captain recounting the story of the island in flashback.  How this begins is interesting, however, as Andrew is haunted by a flood of ghosts, the former inhabitants of the island, who stream across his line of vision, adding a touch of the surreal.  Additionally, there is an extremely dramatic orchestral score that includes an all woman’s choir (The Women of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir) conducted by Hugh Robertson that is not only operatic, but often feels otherworldly, along with a dire opening intertitle sequence that precedes the opening credits:

The slow shadow of Death is falling on the outer isles of Scotland. [scrolls up] This is the story of one of them ― and all of them.  When the Roman Fleet first sailed round Britain they saw from the Orkneys a distant island, like a blue haze across a hundred miles of sea.  They called it ― “ULTIMA THULE” [main title] THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

Using three cameramen, Monty Berman (fired early on), Skeets Kelly, and Ernest Palmer, where men are seen as tiny specks climbing over the tops of cliffs, dwarfed by the immensity of their surroundings, a community setting is introduced in the tiny, claustrophobic confines of a church, with people arriving from all across the island, a scene beautifully recreated by Terence Davies in 2016 Top Ten List #7 Sunset Song, with a pastor (Grant Sutherland) speaking a common theme of brotherhood.  With only three dozen people left, surviving on sheep and fish, the story concerns two families, the Mansons and the Grays, where Peter Manson (John Laurie) is the overly stern island patriarch, with a gruff exterior to match the hardness of the island, while his daughter Ruth (Belle Chrystall) is apparently the catch of the island, devoted to her father yet sensuous, exerting a feminine allure, though she behaves more like a movie star, hair always in place, wearing plenty of makeup.  Her twin brother is Robbie (Eric Berry), whose best friend Andrew Gray is his sister’s boyfriend.  The threesome enjoys laying on the grass on the bluffs overlooking the sea, arguing the eternal question, whether to go (to the mainland) or stay.  Peter and his son Robbie are staunchly in favor of staying, while Andrew and his father, always playing second fiddle to Peter, the easier to get along with James Gray (Finlay Currie), constantly seen smoking a pipe, are more inclined to move to the mainland.  The boys get in heated battle where the only way to settle the matter is retreating to the old ways, in a run up the rocky cliffs with no ropes, and may the better man win.  Despite the danger, the fathers agree, and the entire community comes out to watch an exciting duel between two of the strongest lads on the island, set at the bottom by boat, having to claw their way up to the top.  Despite explicit instructions at the outset describing the routes they would take, Robbie makes a dangerous life-altering change, getting stuck under the thunderous streams of a waterfall, hanging on for dear life, and then falling before help can arrive. This tragedy only intensifies the island’s divisions, as Andrew has literally no chance with Ruth, as her father refuses to speak to him, where his silence literally drives Andrew off the island, returning to the mainland.  In his absence, Ruth learns she’s pregnant and delivers a newborn without Andrew’s knowledge.  Due to the scarcity of mail deliveries, she resorts to placing messages in a bottle, helped by her father, particularly when the baby contracts diphtheria and could die without a doctor’s intervention.  Unbelievably, one of the messages gets through, with Andrew sailing through an epic storm to rescue Ruth and their baby, which remains to this day one of the better ocean storm scenes ever filmed, filled with dramatic intensity, creating a life or death urgency.  Finally forced to capitulate, even Peter agrees to be moved off the island, petitioning the government for aid in a monumental Noah’s ark style transport, where everybody and everything is moved off the island, leaving it deserted and undisturbed.  Even how that is depicted is a moving finale and a fitting climax.