Left Bank

Belgian cinema has never been considered a key player in the horror genre, but director Pieter Van Hees’ slow-burning, yet wholly terrifying contribution should be enough to draw considerable attention. Left Bank is an atmospheric psychological horror, in the vein of Roman Polanski, in the way it captures the natural sinisterness of contemporary urban living and its ancient and diabolical connections with the past.

The film, Linkeroever in its Belgium title, revolves around Marie, an introverted athlete consumed with qualifying for an upcoming championship. Struck down with a mysterious illness that forces her to abandon her dream, Marie meets a handsome archer Bobby and it is not long before the two have embarked on a passionate love affair and Marie has moved into his sinister apartment complex , on the hidden left bank of the river. It soon becomes worryingly apparent that all is not as it seems in left bank, as Marie’s condition begins to worsen and she stumbles upon some worrying information regarding an ancient tradition that is definitely not as innocent as it sounds. As her relationship with Bobby takes a turn for the worse, the sense of unease that permeates the apartment gradually becomes stronger and Marie is left to consider the possibility that the past is not as dead as she or the audience would like to believe. 

 Stunningly shot and compelling even in its quieter moments, the film is devoid of typical horror clichés and an overuse of violence and gore that has recently become tiresome in the genre. Instead Pieter Van Hees offers us a film that is intriguing, subtlety terrifying and one which is always steeped in a surreal atmosphere of doom and hidden danger.

It could be suggested that the director sacrifices typical horror scares in the beginning for close and steady character development, but it is this development that keeps the audience with Marie at all times, and allows her to be such a familiar and identifiable character. It is this identification that makes her eventual fate all the more visceral and troubling as we share in her frustration, confusion and finally her terror in the films final moments. In the same way Left Bank succeeds in being so unsettling because it is very much grounded in reality despite its supernatural undertones. It plays upon the reality of our bodies failing us, of our lives spiralling out of our control and the slow realisation that the presence of those around us is becoming a force of evil rather than support.

Despite being extremely slow paced at times, the films final ten minutes are some of the most intense and utterly terrifying that I have ever seen and result in an unnerving pay off that justifies any original scares that the film lacks in the beginning. Left bank is also one of the only horror films to truly unsettle me and one which led me to have a succession of troubling dreams after watching it. The mood and overwhelming sense of unease is so distinctive and so strange, that it is hard to forget about once the film is over and you are again safe in reality. It is this quality that makes Left Bank far superior to many of its contemporaries, that seem to deal so heavily in meaningless scares, and makes it a horror film that deserves to be seen.

The Ice Storm

Ang Lee’s 1997 film The Ice Storm is a rare gem of a film. It is a film that never quite reached a mainstream audience yet received critical acclaim at the time of its release and still remains largely unknown today, except by those who might consider themselves film ‘enthusiasts.’ Still the film remains an extremely accomplished and compelling piece of cinema, and probably the most distinctive example of director Ang Lee’s cinematic style.

  Based on the book of the same name by author Rick Moody (who was reportedly so happy with the adaptation of his novel that he sobbed through the credits), the film takes place in Connecticut in 1973.As the innocence and idealism of the sixties melts into quiet desperation, two middle class families prepare for thanksgiving weekend within affluent suburbia. Both families have suffered an almost complete break down in communication, the parents have become distant from each other, their children are unresponsive and the sons from one family don’t even notice when their father has been away on business.  The adults indulge in affairs and drug taking, activities that offer some form of escape from their seemingly successful lives that now feel poisonous. Their children are already experimenting with drink and casual sex, missing a vital understanding of the true ramifications of adulthood but struck with the same urge to alleviate boredom and fear as their parents.  There is an atmosphere of impending doom that permeates the films earlier scenes, excellently created through a musical score that is both simplistic yet haunting.  This overwhelming sense of danger, which acts as a prolepsis to the films tragic outcome, is emphasised through the children’s actions-one child balances precariously on the edge of a frozen diving board, another is blowing up toy planes with dynamite, much to the exasperation of his mother. 

Then an ice storm hits, the worst for a century, and our sense of dread is justified. As the storm envelopes their small town with dwarfing power, the parents of both families attend a ‘key swapping’ party, in an attempt to vanquish mutual feelings of doom with some adulterous frivolity. The children are once again left alone, isolated and vulnerable, eventual victims of a society that is asking them to grow up too fast. The people within this film are by no means extraordinary, and neither are the events that befall them. In fact they could be seen as extremely flawed and perhaps even unlikable in some cases. Yet where The Ice Storm becomes truly brilliant is in the way it deconstructs these characters, stripping away the layers until we are left not with caricatures or stereotypes but with characters that are genuinely real, their veneer fast fading leaving the hurt, disillusion and disappointment as clear to see as sunlight.

The most stirring and heart rending scene belongs to the ending  sequence, where a title character weeps helplessly into his steering wheel like a child, the tragic accumulation of events finally catching up with him. A sudden realisation that he has allowed everyday life to tilt dangerously out of balance.

Oldboy

With  moments including the ingestion of a live octopus, tongue dismemberment and a scene involving a claw hammer that would make even the bravest of us think twice before going to the dentist, Korean director Park Chanwook’s Oldboy is definitely not for the faint hearted. However it is not the films often graphic scenes of violence that make it such an intense and disturbing viewing experience but the extent of human emotion that it reveals in all its nakedness. Even after several viewings, the film still remains one of the most disturbing, and emotionally raw that I have ever watched and never fails to devastate even once the ending is known. The film starts with Dae Su, a drunken man and neglectful father who has ended up at the police station on his daughter’s birthday for disorderly behaviour. Soon after, before he or the audience has time to react he has been kidnapped and imprisoned for reasons that appear to be inexplicable. This seemingly arbitrary imprisonment lasts for 15 years during which his wife is murdered and his daughter put up for adoption. After Dae Su manages to escape by tunnelling through a wall ten stories up, he is told that he has 5 days to find the man responsible for his captivity and satisfy his desire for revenge that has been building for over a decade. Although this seems to play out as the beginning of a standard revenge story, the discovery of his captor, Woo Jin’s, motivations takes the film to an entirely different level as we begin to understand that this desire for revenge is no longer exclusive and that both men have grievances that they believe justify what they inflict upon each other. To reveal anymore about these motivations would spoil the story but it is safe to say that what follows is in turns disturbing, heart wrenching and involves a great deal of violence. Yet these events are not  simply  devices to further the plot but are  attacks on our perceptions of justice and are unrelenting in the way they force us to identify with the unidentifiable and to feel in a way that is sometimes helpless in its intensity. 

Eventually these events lead us to a series of revelations that are undoubtedly diabolical but also extremely sad, regardless of whose point of view we choose to share. In this way Oldboy is superb, as it challenges our pre existing notions of victims and villains through several uncomfortable moments where we are no longer certain of whose side we are supposed to be on.  The film is not only superb in its narrative but is visually and sonically very impressive, with several incredibly well choreographed fight scenes and an effective and beautiful musical score that is near perfect in its reflection of the films themes of impossible love and perpetual inner pain. One scene that epitomizes Oldboy’s brilliance occurs after the murder of Dae Su’s brother, as a shot of Dae Su screaming obscenities, his anger spilling over in primal urgency, is combined with a shot of Woo-Jin alone, a silent tear rolling down his cheek. It is at points like this where the films paramount message, that suffering is never one sided, is made clear and makes claims of Oldboy being a masterpiece seem entirely justifiable.

Withnail and I

It is sometimes unclear exactly what a film like Withnail and I is trying to achieve or trying to extract from its audience. Usually we regard films as being in certain categories, such as those that make us laugh, devastate us with tragedy or allow us to lose ourselves in unfolding plots or special effects. In this way Withnail and I is largely a different animal, because it seems to transcend any of our collective ideas about what should make an enjoyable film. It is a film that some would say is too depressing, the humour too random and off kilter, yet Withnail and I has gone on to become one of the most adored cult films of all time. The reason being that it is brilliant in the way it is able to perfectly capture a moment in time and the eccentric yet unextraordinary character s that share in its gloom.

The exact moment in time is 1969, the end of the sixties fast approaching, as two out of work actors share in an existence of becoming horrendously drunk, and then stumbling through the squalor of their Camden flat until the local pub opens and they are able to get similarly drunk all over again. The Withnail of the title (played to perfection by Richard E Grant) is an over theatrical, drunken, gloomy character, utterly hilarious in his child like petulance. ‘I’ or Marwood, as has been discovered through a glimpse of a letter, is perhaps the more sober and dependable of the two, often acting as that little voice that exists in all of our heads letting us know when we’ve become ridiculous in our excess. The plot of director Bruce Robinson’s debut film is deceptively simple as our two unconventional heroes decide they’ve had enough of London and want to get out into the country to ‘revitalise.’ In doing so they haul up in the dilapidated cottage of Withnail’s uncle and everything seems to go wrong, to hilarious effect. The trouble they encounter involves wild bulls, a disagreeable poacher and an unnerving run in with said uncle, the homosexual  Monty, a likeable character who completely misjudges  Marwood’s own intentions.

Withnail and I is utterly brilliant for reasons that are probably too long to list. For one, Bruce Robinson’s dialogue is some of the wittiest and most inventive that I have ever come across. He is the only director outside Tarantino to make a conversation between two people, no matter how mundane, completely gripping and fascinating. A strength that is a massive gift the film has seeing as it is mainly preoccupied with funny and idiosyncratic conversations between characters.  The often inebriated Danny, who serves as drug dealer and confidante to the characters of the title gives us some of the best moments in dialogue, one such gem being when he advises Withnail not to get a haircut because ‘hair are your aerials, they pick up signals from the cosmos and transmit them directly into the brain’ the sort of drunken declaration we are all familiar with making which is exactly why lines like this seem to resonate much more than they should.

This film is able to avoid the realm of the farcical, despite how bizarre the humour can be, because the characters are created in such a way that they are utterly human, truthful and unpretentious as they are flawed. Even characters such as Uncle Monty are saved from being ludicrous because they never lose their fragility and we never forget how vulnerable they are to being hurt. 

Despite how funny the film is, I never fail to be moved by its melancholic ending and the atmosphere of gloom and uncertainty that permeate its quieter moments. It is at these points, and after Danny’s last speech at the end, that we realise the film deals in death. The death of the sixties, emphasised in a soundtrack comprised mainly Of Jimi Hendrix- who would of course die the next year-including the classic ‘All along the watch tower’. A song which, to me, serves as the biggest atmosphere builder the film pocesses. It is also about the death of a friendship, an era in every sense, as the ending of the film sees Marwood leaving to pursue a part in a play, leaving Withnail alone in the rain to give the greatest performance of his uneventful career that only the wolves will witness.  Because Withnail has been portrayed with an abundance of humanity, we feel for him and worry about his eventual fate.  The ending gains extra poignancy in the fact that Bruce Robinson based Withnail on his own dear friend Vivian Mackerrell, who eventually died prematurely of throat cancer after years of hardened drinking.  However, like most of us who have chosen to take an opportunity that may improve our lives and expand our prospects for the future, we don’t judge Marwood for leaving his friend to his chosen fate because, as Danny says ‘the greatest era in the history of man kind is over.’ The balloon is rising, and you can either let go before it’s too late, or cling on to the rope for as long as you can. As the credits roll, we find ourselves questioning how much longer Withnail can cling on to his own safe darkness before he becomes his own casualty.

It is this unflinching portrayal of undesirable normality that has made this film speak to so many people and transcends it to extraordinary, cult viewing.

Let the Right one In

Let the right one in or in its original Swedish title Let den Ratte Komma in has been described in purest terms as a story about ‘the loneliest little boy in the world’  by both director Tomas Alfredson and author  of the book it was based on.  The little boy in question is Oskar, bullied mercilessly by his peers and largely ignored by his divorced parents who pass him from one to the other as if forgetting this is a fragile child on the very brink of adolescence. Oskar spends most of his time day dreaming about finally getting revenge on his tormentors, looking out of his window into desolate suburbia, willing something-anything, to happen. Only one day something does happen. A pretty, mysterious girl his own age moves into the flat opposite, her name is Eli and soon she and Oskar begin meeting  in the frozen play area outside their apartment complex and Oskar believes he has finally met a kindred spirit. Yet there are sinister undertones to what appears to be a sweet yet naive romance between the two youngsters. For one, there is a killer on the loose in the town of Blackberge, Sweden and, as several bodies begin to turn up, Oskar must ask himself some questions about his new friend. Why are the windows to her apartment blacked out with cardboard? Why does she sometimes have a funny smell of decay? And why does she panic so much when Oskar cuts his hand, in a clumsy attempt of solidifying their friendship, allowing his blood to drip to the floor?

Based on the book of the same name by Swedish author, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the right one in is artful in the way it manages to summon up an atmosphere of dread and disorientation, that manages  not only to unsettle but amaze with its dark beauty. This is helped enormously by its setting in a wintry suburb of Stockholm, a claustrophobic town surrounded by a landscape that is beautiful on the surface but ultimately threatening and hostile in its unrelenting stretches of snow and ice. The same can be applied to the character of Eli, as we come to realise there is definitely more to her than meets the eye, a gruesome and horrible reality that we may wish we’d never learnt.  

Heavily marketed as a horror film, the film has deservedly garnered much critical acclaim as a film from this genre. Of course being a film about vampires, we would expect the film to play upon certain horror conventions. To some extent this is not an illogical conclusion as the film does indeed have moments that are genuinely frightening and is certainly not for those averse to occasional blood splatter and other intense moments designed to elicit a reaction of dread and terror. Yet to consider Let the right one in as merely a horror film, is to do it a disservice, as it is so much more than this. It is a film that manages to give us some sort of reality about the pain of adolescence and is therefore able to convey a story. One of a desperate friendship between two ostracized and isolated children and one that allows us to gain some insight into the characters it presents in all their, sometimes unpleasant, nakedness.

 Brutal but brilliant, and intense with feeling without ever becoming sentimental, Let the right one in is truly a remarkable piece of film making. A Hollywood remake is to arrive in cinemas very shortly but I can say without hesitation that it is wholly unnecessary. The reason being that Let the right one in is one of those rare films that does not come along very often. It has an unparalleled cinematic style and a disturbing yet fascinating atmosphere that could not have been derived to the same extent if the film were set anywhere else than in its native Sweden.With extremely strong performances from its two young stars, haunting and almost poetically beautiful cinematography and many superb moments, including an ending scene in a pool which I count among some of the most masterful scenes ever created in cinema, Let the right one in is a stunning film in every sense of the word.  The characters are treated with sympathy yet they are never allowed to become wholly innocent figures. Even the tormented Oskar eventually learns to stand up to his aggressors, with Elis help, and in doing so loses the last remnants of his childhood and is left at the end of the film world weary- no longer shielded from horror, on his way to becoming an adult. It is in this uniqueness and inventiveness that Let the right one in stands alone as a dark, yet ultimately tender parable of adolescence that will be talked about for years to come.

My Own Private Idaho

A film about two male hustlers working the desolate streets of Portland, Oregon seems proof that director Gus Van Sant was not afraid of alienating an average middle American audience. The fact that the film was loosely based on the Shakespearean play Henry IV also adds to its unconventional, art house appeal. The film shares some similarities with Gus Van Sant’s previous 1989 film Drugstore Cowboy which was also set in Portland and dealt with the similar theme of troubled, non directional youth.

The story of My Own Private Idaho follows two young men Mike and Scott who live and sleep on the streets of Portland, selling their bodies to men and women alike. Scott, Keanu Reeves, has adopted this lifestyle mainly as a way of degrading his father who is the wealthy mayor of Portland. Mike however River Pheonix, in an incredibly natural and gentle performance which would turn out to be one of the best of his short career, is hustling purely to survive as he searches the empty roads of Idaho for the mother who abandoned him as a child. Mike also suffers from narcolepsy which gives his character a child-like vulnerability and forces us to invest our emotions in him even more. Mike’s eternal struggle to belong and his endless search for the myth of maternal love is beautifully reflected in shots of desolate landscapes and rolling clouds, a world in which the concept of home is only a faded memory. These memories are replayed in stunted motion like undeveloped photos, haunting Mike in the brief moments before he passes out.  Scott initially accompanies Mike from Oregon to Seattle, to Idaho and eventually to Italy in search of the elusive mother Mike has never known. In one of the films most poignant scenes, Mike proclaims his love for Scott as the two sit around a campfire by the side of the road. This scene, which River rewrote himself, is heartbreakingly honest and affecting as we realise what a tender story of unrequited love this is. Although it is never made clear if Mike is even gay, we can see just how desperate he is for love and care- almost as if he is seeing beyond gender and circumstance all together. This is epitomised beautifully as Mike tells Scott that he could love someone even if he wasn’t paid for it because ‘I love you, and you don’t pay me.’

1991, dir. by Gus Van Sant

The fact that these characters are flawed makes us identify and empathise with them even more, up to the point where all we want is for them to end up in a happier place than where they started. Eventually Scott receives his inheritance and returns to Portland, once again leaving Mike alone to continue his solitary journey. For Mike, there is no way out as this is truly a boy with no background, no clear future and no where to turn except back to the streets with other disaffected young men like himself, or the empty roads of Idaho searching for what so many of us take for granted-home. He even says himself that for him the road will never end...’it probably goes all around the world.’ My Own Private Idaho is a truly profound film, with an immense yet quiet beauty that is as tragic as it is deliciously quirky, disarmingly funny and wonderfully alive with colour and dialogue. So much can be taken from each viewing and for those who are willing to watch the film with an open mind and allow themselves to be captured by its unique style and effortless portrait of one persons search for belonging; this is a film that will stay with them long after the credits roll. It also gave the late River Phoenix (who would die from a drug overdose at age 23) a chance to truly immerse himself in a role and show off his innate and incredibly versatile acting ability. A truly amazing film that breaks my heart every time I watch it, but in the greatest possible way.

Les 400 coups

‘Unbearably beautiful’ are the opening lines of Francois Truffaut’s short autobiographical film ‘Les Mistons’ which often accompanies screenings of The 400 Blows. After watching the latter film, I realised that this is the exact way I would describe it. It is beautiful beyond belief. Not just the stunning black and white photography and shots of 1950’s Paris, but through the acting, the poignancy of the story and mainly the characterization of Antoine Doinel.Here is a boy who is neither mean-spirited, delinquent nor criminal, yet he spends most of his days at school banned from spending recess with the other boys, chastised by his teachers who always seem to catch him at the moment he does something he shouldn’t, regardless of whether he is truly to blame. At home things are fairly dysfunctional yet stable-his mother is distant and vain and his father is well-meaning but ill-equipped when it comes to acting as a paternal role model, yet Antoine’s home life is not one that could often be considered ‘broken.’ He is simply a fourteen year old boy, who wants desperately to break free of the constraints of mundane academic routine and make his own way in the world. As is the truth of being a teenager, he is unable to fulfil whatever potential he holds as he is still young, un- educated about the world and still under rule from his frustrating, flighty parents and bitter professors. All he can do as some form of rebellion is to misbehave at school, play truant with his best friend Rene and indulge in petty theft- one such occurrence results in a final punishment as he is sent away to a correctional facility. 

Although not strictly an autobiographical story, there are many elements of the film that rang as true for Truffaut as well as both a contemporary and present day audience. In the same way Truffaut once suggested that we would all be gladly punished if being an adolescent were a crime, Antoine has so much build up around him and so much he is punished for without having anyone who will listen, that it is not difficult to feel as if he is being victimised slightly, that it all seems too easy. There is so much beauty, intelligence and internal angst in his character that is completely overlooked by characters in the film, due mainly to the brilliant acting of young Jean-Pierre Leaud. The film is now rightly considered a key player in French New Wave cinema and is still considered an important piece of film making since its release in 1957, doubly impressive since it marked Truffaut’s directorial debut.

The last events of the film accumulate in a pivotal breaking point where Antoine escapes the facility, moving as if he was born to run, until he reaches the sea, adulthood and an uncertain future in front of him and a life he can no longer go back to behind him. He looks into the camera, his face naive yet wise beyond its years, in an ultimate moment of adolescent disenchantment and turmoil.  Perfect.