Month: June 2018

Dr Strangelove: or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

10/06/18

I first viewed this film at an RAF cinema shortly after its initial release in 1964. I was around fourteen years old at the time, and I can still remember how amazed I was by it, how disorientated. I had literally never seen anything quite like it, this weird blend of cartoonish hilarity and overwhelming terror. In those days of ‘Protect and Survive’ leaflets, we spent much of our time worrying about impending nuclear Armageddon. Wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to claim that now, more than fifty years’ later, such fears are firmly behind us?

On Burpelson Air Force Base, the extremely paranoid Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) has become convinced of a communist plot to poison the American water supply and, with this in mind, promptly orders a nuclear missile strike on Russia (as you do). General ‘Buck’ Turgidson (George C. Scott) is the man charged with the tricky task of breaking the news to President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellars in one of three roles he plays in the film), whilst also pointing out that, because of the clandestine nature of the protocol that surrounds such events, it’s going to be nigh on impossible to call the whole thing off. Meanwhile, Major ‘King’ Kong (Slim Pickens) and his crew of airmen are determined to carry out their orders, no matter what stands in their way.

Co-written by director Stanley Kubrick, with Terry Southern and Peter George, Dr Strangelove is a ground-breaking satire with a bizarre, cartoonish storyline that really ought to be totally beyond belief, but sadly, given recent world events, feels all too prescient. There are some extraordinary performances here. George C. Scott is a particular delight, gurning masterfully through his scenes, while in the role of the American president, Sellars’ telephone conversation with the unseen Russian premier is a masterclass in comic understatement. ‘Well, Dimitri, how do you think I feel about it?’

Showing as part of the Cameo Cinema’s Kubrick retrospective, it’s great to have a chance to reappraise this little gem on the big screen. Shot in super crisp black and white, it now clearly displays the shortcomings of its low budget combined with ‘still in their infancy’ effects – the many shots of the Flying Fortress en route to deliver its fifty megaton payload do occasionally look rather shonky and it’s hard to believe that, only three years later, Kubrick would deliver the technical milestone of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film that pretty much set the bar for all special effect movies thereafter. Also, viewed through contemporary eyes, Sellars’ climactic grandstanding in the titular role of a crippled former Nazi scientist brushes a little too close to a whole host of -isms and -phobias for comfort, even if it does tickle the funny bone.

But, as I’ve said before, all films are a product of the times in which they were made and should be viewed accordingly – the parts that really work here are so luminous, so utterly compelling, they tend to outshine those bits that are starting to show their age. It’s an important film in Kubrick’s pantheon – the one that first showed that he was more than just a capable director, the one that hinted at the darkly disturbing wonders to come. Returning to it after so long away proved to be a singular delight.

4.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Love From a Stranger

05/06/08

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

Agatha Christie is often paid a huge disservice in stage adaptations of her work. More often than not, directors decide to spoof the content, playing up the high camp aspects of her stories for laughs and, in the process, sacrificing the suspense. Luckily this production by Fiery Angel and Royal & Derngate, directed by Lucy Bailey, opts to play things reassuringly straight, transposing the original setting to the late 1950s and basing its look around Michael Powell’s infamous murder mystery film, Peeping Tom. This results in a sprightly, sure-footed version of the story that plays to Christie’s narrative strengths.

Incidentally, originally adapted by Frank Vosper in the 1930s from a Christie short story, Philomel Cottage, the play was a hit both in the UK and in New York, but had it’s own Christie-like twist, when Vosper managed to fall off a cruise ship on his way back from the states and drown. An open verdict was returned.

Cecily Harrington (Helen Bradbury) is arranging the sale of her Wimbledon flat while she awaits the arrival of nice-but-dull fiancé, Michael (Justin Avoth), from the Sudan, where he’s been working for the past few years. The general idea is for the couple to marry on his return, but a recent sizeable win on a sweepstake has kindled in her a desire for a little adventure. So when handsome American Bruce Lovell (Sam French) turns up to view the flat, she’s quickly swept off her feet by his tales of reckless adventure around the world and his alluring invitation to join her for lunch.

Almost before she knows what’s happening, she’s married Bruce and the two of them have moved to Philomel Cottage, deep in the heart of the country, where he sets about dissuading Cecily from seeing any of her friends from London. He spends a lot of his time in the cellar, which he’s converted into a dark room, in which he pursues his passion for photography. But there are mysteries that seem to lack any rational explanation. Why, for instance, does the gardener, Hodgson (Gareth Williams), keep finding empty bottles of hydrogen peroxide buried in the herbaceous border? Why does he seem to think that the asking price for the cottage was hundreds of pounds lower than the sum Cecily actually ended up paying of it? And why has Bruce torn a page from one of those true life crime magazines he’s so fond of studying?

Bradbury and French deliver convincing performances in the lead roles and the ingenious sliding set design, that puts me in mind of a set of Chinese puzzle boxes, keeps giving the audience a slightly different view of the stage, revealing areas we have previously had to imagine. If the play’s great revelation doesn’t turn out to be that much of a surprise, nevertheless, this is an assured production that holds my interest from start to finish – and its worth seeing this just for Nicola Sanderson’s priceless turn as the snobby ‘Auntie Lulu’.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

My Friend Dahmer

04/06/18

My Friend Dahmer is a serial killer movie with a difference: there’s no killing in it. In fact, there’s barely any violence at all. Instead, this is a study of the boy who made the man. Based on the autobiographical graphic novel by John ‘Derf’ Backderf, the film depicts Jeffrey Dahmer’s final year in high school. The young Dahmer (Ross Lynch) is troubled: his parents’ volatile marriage ends in an acrimonious divorce, his mother and father fighting for custody of his younger brother and ownership of the family home, without seeming to care what happens to him.

At school, he’s a bit of an outsider, but Derf (Alex Wolff) is intrigued when Dahmer ‘spazzes out’ in the hallway, pretending to have an epileptic fit. The audacity and impropriety are enough to make Dahmer a bit of a legend; in response, Derf and his friends Neill (Tommy Nelson) and Mike (Harrison Holzer) form ‘The Dahmer Fan Club’. At first, Dahmer is flattered: he has friends to hang out with and is no longer ignored, but he soon realises that the trio are laughing at him as much as with him, that he’s a kind of sideshow novelty who just amuses them.

Meanwhile, his fascination with ‘the inside of things’ is thriving, even after his concerned father tears down the shed where he has been dissolving roadkill in acid (‘I like bones,’ he says, like that explains something). Neighbourhood pets are found dissected; a local doctor (Vincent Kartheiser) becomes an object of malign fantasy as he jogs past Dahmer’s house each day. Dahmer starts drinking, knocking back bottles of vodka in the schoolyard. The future is beckoning; they’re all supposed to know what they want. But he just mumbles, ‘biology’ when he’s asked about his interests, and clearly has no real idea what path he wants to take. He tries to fit in; he even asks a girl to prom, but it’s all too much. He can’t.

This is a compelling film with an unusual perspective, demonstrating as it does that Dahmer is not that different from any other reluctant outsider, his quirks and perversions not so very peculiar. There’s a real attempt here to understand rather than monster him, to examine the distinct set of circumstances that inform his later crimes.

Ross Lynch’s performance is remarkable: the utter, unrelenting misery of the ignored, invisible child is conveyed in his shambling gait, his closed-off expression. Occasionally, Lynch shows us who else Dahmer might have become: the way his face lights up as Derf invites him to sit with him at lunch; the fumbling charm with which he asks Bridget to the prom. But these fleeting moments of belonging are dwarfed by isolation, and ultimately we are left with a sense of someone who’ll do anything to make sure people notice him.

It’s fascinating – definitely one to watch.

4.4 stars

Susan Singfield

Cargo

04/06/18

Just when you think you’ve seen quite enough zombie movies for one lifetime, along comes A Quiet Place. And no sooner have you said, ‘okay, great stuff, but that really is enough now,’ than this film appears ready-to-stream on Netflix and you find yourself thinking, ‘You know what? Maybe there is room for just one more.’

Despite a depressingly over-familiar premise, Cargo succeeds largely by putting a new twist on the old ‘Apocalyptic epidemic of the undead’ scenario and by casting Tim from The Office in the lead role. He’s frankly nobody’s idea of an action hero and, somehow, that really works in the film’s favour. We care about him before he’s said so much as a word.

We are in the Australian outback and ex-pat Andy (Martin Freeman) and his Aussie wife, Kay (Susie Porter), are puttering along a river in their spacious houseboat, with their baby daughter, Rosie, at their side. But this is no holiday cruise. The couple are staying well away from the river banks which are now infested with cannibalistic zombies (yes, I know, but bear with me).  Of course, the constant search for food means that they do have to take some chances occasionally and, when Andy spots a wrecked yacht up ahead, he knows they’ll have to row across to it and investigate. The yacht provides some much-needed rations, but also something rather less welcome – a bite from one of the ‘infected.’ In this world, people in such a predicament are provided with a special medical kit which includes a handy sort of ‘illness tracker.’ This gives the victim a 48 hour countdown to their own doom – and, for those who can’t handle it, the manufacturers have thoughtfully included a lethal injection. The problem is that Andy and Kay’s main priority is Rosie and they soon realise that they need to get her to safety before they succumb to their own impending bloodlust.

Meanwhile, on shore, eleven-year-old aboriginal girl, Thoomy (Simone Landers), is trying to come to terms with the fact that her father, Willie (Bruce R. Carter), is himself rapidly succumbing to the same infection. She has come up with her own unusual methods of keeping him under control…

Writer/directors Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke have fleshed out their 2013 short of the same title and have managed to create something which, against all the odds, feels fresh and gripping. I love the fact that the zombies themselves are not given centre stage in this film. Indeed, for the first half of it we barely glimpse them; they remain a terrifying offscreen presence – but we are aware at all times of the possibility of their imminent arrival. (Zombie purists might like to know that these creatures are of the George Romero persuasion – i.e. slow and shambling, rather than their more recent fleet-footed iterations).

What Cargo has in abundance is suspense, which ramps steadily up from the opening scenes and at various points has me shouting ‘don’t go in there!’ at the screen. But of course, people do go in there, repeatedly, which works brilliantly. I love the fact that the film incorporates aboriginal mythology and shows the native Australians to be the ones who clearly know how best to handle the zombie situation (there’s a clear colonial allegory here). Also, the ‘48 hours to doom’ scenario lends the proceedings a breathless, race against time quality that keeps me hooked throughout.

You’d think, that with such a doomed and downbeat premise, it would be impossible to pull a feelgood ending out of the bag and yet, somehow, they’ve kind of managed that too.

So, yes, good stuff… but… that really is enough zombie movies now.

Isn’t it?

4.3 stars

Philip Caveney

 

The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other

01/06/18

The Lyceum, Edinburgh

The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other by Peter Handke is a highly unusual production. Created and performed by a ‘Community Chorus of Edinburgh Residents,’ it features a cast of eighty-six non-professional actors and, watching it, I am filled with admiration for the way in which this complex piece has been so meticulously choreographed, the many costume changes serving to make me believe I am actually watching more than a hundred performers.

The play begins with the curtain rising to show a narrow band, wherein we become aware of feet passing restlessly to and fro – then the curtain opens upwards to show streams of people passing back and forth across a steeply raked stage, sometimes just a few at once, other times a veritable torrent of them, all racing to fulfil their imaginary deadlines. These are characters from – if you’ll forgive the pun – all walks of life. Office workers, business people, street cleaners and ramblers… waiters and prisoners, decorators and soldiers – indeed, the multiplicity of urban existence is written large and restlessly plays out as music and sound effects provide a stirring accompaniment.

Occasionally, something surreal moves across the stage – people struggle to push a gigantic stone sculpture on a wooden trolley, a mystic leads a magical floating contraption from one side to the other. There are elements of slapstick humour too: a hapless street cleaner attempts to brush a barrage of newspapers blowing in the wind; a paint-spattered decorator performs a strange wistful ballet with a ladder – and in one scene, an unmistakably Chaplinesque figure swings a familiar walking stick. There are more forbidding moments too. A highlight for me is the extended sequence, where groups of older actors shuffle inexorably into the wings – and the that ultimately waits for everyone…

There are virtually no words spoken in the entire production and much of what we’re shown here is open to personal interpretation. Why is one character trying to impersonate everyone he encounters? Is he intended to personify an actor at work? Why do characters from Greek mythology occasionally put in an appearance? I’m not really sure, but hey, I’m glad they’re there!  At the play’s conclusion, the huge cast troop out and take their much-deserved bows – and we’re allowed a glimpse of the racks and racks of costumes ranged along the back of the stage, which they have utilised to create their various personae.

I emerge from the Lyceum feeling that I have just viewed something complex , exciting and pretty unique. Directors Wils Wilson and Janice Parker deserve huge plaudits for this. It’s a truly monumental undertaking and, as I can’t help remarking afterwards, something the like of which I’ve never seen in the theatre before. Which surely must be one of the strongest reasons for seeing it.

4 stars

Philip Caveney