LFF 2019 Day 2 – The Lighthouse | Monsoon | Wounds

Day 2 saw one of the festival’s big draws match high expectations and completely surprise, a sedate internal drama nearly lull me to sleep, and a Netflix horror fully live up to its reputation.

The Lighthouse

Like a vintage episode of Round the Twist, The Lighthouse follows bizarre events in a remote lighthouse. After creeping the world out with his debut The VVitch Robert Eggers returns with another distinct cinematic vision and an experience like no other.

That’s how The Lighthouse feels; more experience than film. An art-house roller coaster that is exhilarating to watch but lacks the emotional depth that made its predecessor so compelling.

From the beginning the audience is met with the jarring combination of a form that suggests an austere auteur and content that feels closer to a fever dream. Shot on black and white film with an almost square frame and a long opening act with almost no dialogue; The Lighthouse presents itself as the sort of film the casual cinema-goer would assume film snobs watch at film festivals. Beyond this however one of the first utterances we hear is a fart, some of the most beautiful shots involve piss and shit (no other words will do), and by the end the images veer towards the deranged.

Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe take ownership of their roles as assistant and lighthouse keeper respectively. Through admirable facial hair they chew on their dialogue and both bring an intense physicality. As storms lash the tiny island they inhabit, waves of distrust, madness, and seagulls flare up between the two men. What unfolds has to be seen to be believed, and even then it is up to you what you take from it.

At the end of almost two hours of constant escalation I was left with numerous indelible images and the aftershocks of a score that literally vibrated my whole body. There’s a reason this film is being raved about; it is an experience I won’t forget any time soon.

Not since Annihilation have a music and a lighthouse combined to such exhilarating ends.

Monsoon

Hong Khaou’s debut Lilting was a deeply personal story told in a beautifully restrained film. He returns with another deeply personal story told in such a restrained tone that after The Lighthouse it felt almost static.

The recently ubiquitous Henry Golding stars as Kit; an Englishman returning to his birthplace of Vietnam to scatter his parents ashes and try to find himself in a land he can barely remember. With his parents now both deceased Kit is looking for a connection to some kind of heritage but finds Vietnam a remote and changed place. What few memories he has no longer relate to the county he finds himself in.

Despite forging new relationships (romantic, platonic, and familial) the film is mostly about Kit as an individual. We are forced to read his face to access an internal monologue we cannot hear as no narration is offered for easy understanding. Kit is often seen contemplating his surroundings and the film does not dispense much in the way of exposition; all dialogue is minimal and naturalistic. The film as a result is almost meditative; something to be gently absorbed rather than assaulted by.

At times Monsoon felt impenetrable and verged on lulling me to sleep. Somehow is skirts just past inertia to be a beautiful poetic experience about one man’s open ended quest to find a place in the world.

Wounds

Well now… what to say about Wounds? Armie Hammer stars as Will; a bartender who seemingly stumbles into someone else’s horror film. After picking up a stranger’s phone in a bar he finds himself, and the 2-dimensional characters around, pulled into some kind of demonic summoning that leads to a smattering of body horror, bugs crawling all over, and a Ring inspired video.

The majority of characters in Wounds are so disposable they aren’t even disposed of properly. Instead they reach the edge of the narrative and simply fall off. The only character with any form of arc is Will who doesn’t so much slowly descend into madness as suddenly trip over into insanity. Armie Hammer does his best with what little he has to work with while Dakota Johnson and Zazie Beetz both suffer severe character neglect.

Relying mostly on jump scares and the occasional gross-out moment Wounds approaches horror tropes from a different angle but doesn’t know where to take them. The dialogue is bizarre and the plot meandering. The audience had a few good laughs however.

Best line of dialogue? “He looked murdered.”

LFF 2018 Day 2 – Wildlife | Sorry to Bother You | Happy New Year, Colin Burstead.

For my second day at the London Film Festival I saw a pair of debut features from Paul Dano and Boots Riley before finishing up with Ben Wheatley’s latest film about which I had previously known nothing. The theme of the day was probably slight disappointment but will I ever learn to not raise my expectations too high?

Wildlife

Jeanette, Jerry, and their son Joe (Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Ed Oxenbould) live an idyllic family life in 1960s suburban America. Adapted from Richard Ford’s novel by Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano, and directed by Dano, Wildlife placidly observes this family as it slowly unravels while wildfires rage in the nearby forest.

Wildlife is a gorgeously shot and meticulously acted portrait of a family in turmoil. When Jerry loses his job and Jeanette becomes the breadwinner their traditional family dynamic is disrupted and poor Joe is, like us, forced to simply stand by while the grownups in his life fail to act responsibly. The wildfires that are frequently referenced become an obvious reference for not just the unstoppable destruction heading for this nuclear family but also the slow burning pace of the film as a whole.

Wildlife is an impressively restrained debut. Dano has created an aesthetically pleasing picture and clearly knows when to give his actors space to do what they do best. Mulligan in particular shines here; showing roughly three conflicting emotions with each expression. Somehow the resulting film is slightly less than the sum of its parts however. While formally impressive and a pleasant watch Wildlife is unlikely to stick around once it has been seen; there’s something in the film’s restraint that stopped me getting fully involved.

Wildlife screens at the festival on 13th, 14th, and 15th October before being released in the UK on 9th November.

Sorry to Bother You

If Dano’s debut is defined by his restraint then Boots Riley is sprinting in the opposite direction. Acting as both writer and director Riley brings us a world almost like our own but dialled up to eleven. The volume of ideas that fill most films are churned through each minute as Riley satirises capitalism, race relations, and anything else that comes into view.

The plot centers on Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield), a newly employed telemarketer who discovers he can outsell his co-workers by applying his “white voice” (David Cross) when on the phone. As Cassius moves up in his company he finds himself in conflict with his activist and performance artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson) and entangled in a company that offers a worry free existence to those willing to sign away their human rights. This is a film willing to show how modern capitalism could justify the reinvention of slavery but does so with the visual flair of a restrained Michel Gondry.

Sorry to Bother You exists in a world one step away from our own; Riley makes liberal use of magical realism elements that allow his imagination to run wild and not be constrained by the laws of human nature, physics, or decency. This is a defiant and confident debut from a writer-director with a lot to say. Riley deals with themes that carry a lot of weight but handles then with such irreverence that you can’t help but have fun. Please go see this because if I type any more I will spoil the plot.

Sorry to Bother You screens at the festival on 11th, 12th, and 14th October before being released in the UK on 7th December.

Happy New Year, Colin Burstead.

Flying solo from his regular collaborator Amy Jump, Ben Wheatley has set out on his own to make a part-improvised family drama shot in under two weeks. The titular Colin (Neil Maskell) has hired a large stately home to bring his disparate and dysfunctional family together for New Year’s Eve. While his aim is to peacock in front of his family the evening quickly becomes overshadowed by his father’s financial troubles, his mother’s imbalance, and the fact that his sister has invited estranged brother David (Sam Riley) along to reconcile a miriad of differences.

With a feel closest to Wheatley’s oldest film, Down Terrace, Colin Burstead has a loose, handheld aesthetic. The cameras follow the action as best they can as the ever growing list of characters interact in seemingly infinite combinations. This is a film filled with conflict and tension; a tone that starts from the very beginning and doesn’t relent or fluctuate until the credits roll over an exuberant disco.

This unrelenting flow of talk and tension makes the film exhausting to watch. And while the dialogue is incredible funny and relatable the film keeps promising to implode in a way it never fulfils. A neat addition to the Wheatley canon but not my personal favourite.

Happy New Year, Colin Burstead. screens at the festival on 11th, 12th, 13th, and 21st October before being released on BBC Two this winter.

Free Fire – LFF Review

It is 1978 and in a Boston warehouse four members of the IRA are meeting a flamboyant South African arms dealer to buy cases full of automatic weapons. Americans there to facilitate the deal and keep the two parties under control fail at their jobs when a previous fight between minor players in each team flares up and the warehouse becomes the setting for a full on shoot out. As the cast scramble on the dusty and dirty ground bullets fly around striking concrete, ricocheting off metal, and thudding into flesh. For the next ninety minutes Free Fire is relentless fun.

Writer/director Ben Wheatley, again teaming up with writer Amy Jump, has made a film wildly different from his existing excellent oeuvre and yet distinctively his own. There have been comparisons made between Free Fire and Tarantino but I would argue that Wheatley and Jump’s film is a purer film than the likes of Reservoir Dogs. A Tarantino film feels as though it is trying to impress you while Wheatley’s are honest cinematic expressions. The violence in Free Fire is brutally authentic; each bullet wound suitably incapacitating its recipient and nobody leaving the warehouse either unscathed or with impeccable attire. Jump and Wheatley’s dialogue is similarly authentic, if more hilarious that your average trade negotiation, but the laughs come from incongruity and character beats rather than clever pop culture references.

The warehouse in question is filled with an eclectic bunch of actors clearly chosen for their skill and suitability rather than their box office appeal. From the sole female actor in the form of Oscar darling Brie Larson we have the mainstream talents of Cillian Murphy and Armie Hammer through Sharlto Copley to the less known but equally talent likes of Noah Taylor and Michael Smiley. The entire cast gives it their all; nobody giving into vanity or shying away from an unlikeable character. As they sweat and bleed the characters all end up filthy and caked in a cocktail of dirt and bodily fluids and nobody is allowed the opportunity to play the noble hero. It is also a true ensemble cast as there is no lead role or hero to root for; we have a rag tag bunch of criminals all out to screw over one another.

Wheatley directs a film of nearly endless action with aplomb despite it being a departure from his previous work. You always know where each character each and who is aligned with who; at least as much as Wheatley wants you to. The sound design too deserves praise as the gunshots are given the deafening burst of sound they deserve hammering home the film’s dedication to authenticity. A gun fight is never going to be a pretty sight and not everyone will walk away unharmed or at all. The audience feels every shot fired and, while some shots miss, when a bullet finds a human home you can really feel it.

Free Fire is a simple and precise film; it does not exist to deliver a message or make a political statement but is here to entertain and delight, something it does with ease. Free Fire is 90 minutes of pure joy and I cannot wait to watch it again in March when it hits cinemas.