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Great cinematography in not-so-great films ("Prisoners" & "Rush") and one of the year’s best comedies ("Enough Said"): what to see in cinemas now

Prisoners cinematography
Still from “Prisoners,” which features great cinematography from master Roger Deakins. Courtesy of The Toronto International Film Festival.

“Prisoners”
While his previous film, “Incendies”, was about how people silently deal with the damage from atrocities committed against them, Denis Villeneuve’s latest film, “Prisoners,” is a study in what pushes people over the edge to commit evil acts. Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) is not one to suffer in silence, so when his daughter goes missing, he kidnaps and tortures the man he believes is responsible. We are never really sure he’s right, and neither is he. The local detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the only one detached enough to think rationally and follow the breadcrumbs, though we never get to know him well; his twitchy eye stands in for a personality. Shot by the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, this is a film you experience viscerally: the violence is palpable, it’s always cold and rainy – the water on the lens blurs the image -, and you empathize with Keller while watching him become the thing he hates most. But it is heavy-handed — Keller is not-so-coincidentally a carpenter, and the constant presence of crosses reminds us he is meant as something of a Christ figure. Unfortunately, the film takes too many seemingly unrelated tangents that you can put the pieces together almost too easily.

Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl in "Rush". Courtesy of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Rush. Great cinematography (Prisoners, Rush) & a great comedy (Enough Said). Courtesy of the Toronto International Film Festival.

“Rush”
Much like “Prisoners”, the reason to see “Rush” is the exquisite cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle, which ensures that the high stakes car racing has the same invigorating effect on the audience as it does on the two drivers. We watch the pistons fire as the cars ready to race and the sweat on the drivers’ tightly shot faces when it gets intense; you’ve never seen car racing like this before. Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl, in his first major English-speaking part) and James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) start out hating each other in the early 1970s — Niki is abrasive and arrogant while James is too irresponsible and overtly charming – but as the rivalry fuels their ambition, it slowly deepens into a great respect. What drives these two men to risk their lives day after day to be the fastest drivers? It’s a mixture of ambition, daring, and self-absorption: it’s fitting if frustrating that their marriages are more about arm candy than a mature relationship. As complicated as these two men are, they are still archetypes stuck in the 1970s, uttering aphorisms, which keeps the film from being a truly great one.

Still from "Enough Said". Courtesy of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Still from “Enough Said”. Courtesy of the Toronto International Film Festival.

“Enough Said”
Writer-director Nicole Holofcener has made her name with dialogue-driven female-centric films, like “Walking and Talking” and “Please Give”, that are by no means chick flicks. Over the years, the characters in her films have aged and matured, at pace with her own aging, and that of the frequent star of her films, Catherine Keener. In Holofcener’s very funny and moving “Enough Said”, Keener plays Marianne, a sophisticated, divorced, and self-centered poetess; she lives in a the sort of dream home you see in magazines and pals around with Joni Mitchell. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as Eva, another divorced woman and mother, whose daughter, like Marianne’s, is about to leave the nest for university, and she’s feeling lonely. Marianne desperately needs to cling to someone and Eva needs to feel needed, so when Eva starts working as her massage therapist, they become friends, if somewhat toxic and adolescent ones. Eva also starts dating Albert (James Gandolfini), whom she starts to fall in love with, in spite of his gut, until Marianne starts poisoning the well: Eva learns he’s the ex-husband Marianne has been bad-mouthing, and Eva’s insecurities and desire for Marianne’s approval threaten to jeopardize her budding relationship.The film starts out with a non-stop succession of realistic yet funny encounters or witty one-liners — the characters are intelligent but not hyper-intellectuals — but as they slowly fall into their own traps, the film becomes equally moving and heartbreaking. Holofcener strikes the perfect balance of finding the comedy in mid-life troubles without exploiting or making light of them, or being too bleak, and in so doing creates a very realistic portrait of a group of adults on the brink of major changes.

Read more great film criticism about cinematography.

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The Hollow Crown: ‘Henry V’ — Measuring what use the King made of his wilder days

Thea Sharrock offers a radical reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” for The Hollow Crown, featuring a great lead performance from Tom Hiddleston. Listen to us discuss Sharrock’s “Henry V” on episode 2 of the 21st Folio podcast.

Read our reviews of the previous installments: Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, and Henry IV Part 2

[Read more…] about The Hollow Crown: ‘Henry V’ — Measuring what use the King made of his wilder days

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The Hollow Crown: ‘Henry IV Part 2’ Review

Richard Eyre’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 2, part of the Hollow Crown series, is a triumph.

Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 2
Tom Hiddleston as Henry V at the end of The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 2 directed by Richard Eyre. Courtesy of Joss Barratt © Neal Street Productions.

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The Henry IV plays are Shakespeare’s only plays to focus on friendships, and what causes people to betray their friends is a driving force of all the Henriad plays. In any friendship, someone always holds the balance of power, and it’s usually when he feels threatened that he uses this privilege destructively. Rupert Goold’s adaptation of Richard II followed Richard rob Bolingbroke of his inheritance out of desperation, only to be deposed by Bolingbroke as a last resort to maintain his honour. Eyre’s adaptation of Henry IV Part 1 followed Henry IV (Jeremy Irons) carelessly disregarding the wishes of the very friends who helped him to the throne, out of fear that their desires could get him deposed: they then betray him just as he feared. 

The second installment of Henry IV is less of a standalone piece than The Hollow Crown: “Henry IV Part 1”, but it does what good television should do: it builds on “Part 1”, and it lays the groundwork for the final installment in the series, The Hollow Crown: “Henry V”. “Henry IV Part 1” ended just as Hal and others were seeing glory, and “Henry IV Part 2” picks up shortly thereafter, in a sort of hellish limbo: everyone must deal with the aftermath of the rebellion and the changing tides of leadership.

At the beginning of “Henry IV Part 1”, we heard Hal’s (Tom Hiddleston) internal monologue, acknowledging he will eventually have to sever ties with his friends at the Boar’s Head. Now that Henry IV (Jeremy Irons) is deathly ill from the wars, Hal knows the end is near and so do his friends though they all pretend it isn’t: it’s why in “Part 1” the play extempore, where the jest was too close to reality, turned chilling, as Poins (David Dawson) and Falstaff (Simon Russell Beale), especially, saw where their friendships were headed. 

If you watch Richard Eyre’s adaptation of “Henry IV Part 1” on its own, you could choose to ignore the dark foreshadowing that becomes present reality in “Henry IV Part 2”: that Hal will eventually cast off his friends and break their hearts, that Hotspur’s battle cry “Die all, Die merrily!” was prophecy, and that Henry IV will die and Hal will succeed him at the throne.

It’s not that the darker underbelly wasn’t present – it was – but the genius of Richard Eyre’s “The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 1” is that it was so buoyant because the characters were opting to live in a fantasy world where the good times would never end. Even though at the end of “The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 1”, Hal plays along with Falstaff’s lie that Falstaff killed Hotspur, he does so reluctantly, as though it’s a final favour to a friend; Falstaff recognizes it yet is so invested in pretending he doesn’t.

Hollow Crown Henry IV Part 2
Julie Walters as Mistress Quickly and Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff. Courtesy of Joss Barratt © Neal Street Productions.

“Henry IV Part 1” established the affection between the friends: the sweet companionship between Hal and Poins and the tenderness between Hal and Falstaff. But it never glossed over the fact that they’re all also using each other. Hal wants a sidekick as much as he wants a friend, and Poins hopes to gain something — in “Henry IV Part 2” we discover it’s a royal marriage for his sister — from winning the Prince’s affection. Likewise, though Falstaff and Hal enjoy trading witticisms, Hal just as much wants a sanctuary away from his father, and Falstaff wants advancement.

Yet in “Henry IV Part 2”, Eyre constantly reminds us that power is merely a construct, and a lonely one. Late at night, alone with his thoughts, Henry IV is just a troubled, mortal old man. He wanders the halls of his palace where he’s surrounded by guards but not by equals, and there’s nothing to disguise his loneliness. When he posits,“uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”, he is speaking to himself at his throne, now just a chair sitting in an empty room, and he’s just a babbling old man. It’s the reverence of the people at court who give the throne its meaning, and his kingliness is nothing but a performance.

He delivers part of this speech while we follow him from behind as he walks through his palace, just a small man in a lofty building, a mere mortal. Similarly, Falstaff may be able to bewitch with his words to entertain the Prince, or scheme his way into money, but Eyre reminds us of his own frailties: there’s a tender scene between him and Doll Tearsheet as he bemoans his old age, unable to keep up with the able-bodied Prince. 

Nevertheless, we are constantly reminded that exercising power is still a very real action with real effects. The chief rebels are tricked into an arrest; Falstaff conscripts only those who can’t buy their way out;  and Hal’s attempt to divorce himself from his former life leads to the arrest of Falstaff and his other former friends. In a bout of fatherly advice, Henry IV counsels Hal to focus his reign on foreign wars to distract the country from its civil unrest: it’s tender advice from a dying man worrying about his son, but the utterance of it also foretells thousands of deaths. In different situations, everyone is a victim and everyone is a perpetrator.

Even the atmosphere in the Boar’s Head changed to please the powerful Prince: “Henry IV Part 2” marks the first time we see the tavern without Hal, and it’s a scarier, drearier place. Doll Tearsheet (Maxine Peake), the prostitute, is sick, and Falstaff is sicker still, while Mistress Quickly (Julie Walters) struggles with poverty, and the other knights fear for what’s to come in the wars.  Gone is the constant merriment that characterized Hal’s sojourn here, a performance they all put on for his benefit. So when Hal overhears Falstaff talking ill of him in an intimate moment with Doll, he misses the larger context: Falstaff’s dismissal of Hal is an attempt to mask his own fear of losing this surrogate son, and it’s a mood that can only be expressed in privacy.

We see Hal growing into himself and can anticipate the great leader he will become, but we also see his nastier side more clearly: his snobbishness is even less concealed when dismissing Poins, there’s no tenderness on display with Falstaff, and we see the brutal end of their friendship. Yet even when Hal, now Henry V, famously tells Falstaff “I know you not, old man”, definitively ending their friendship, it’s only done so coldly because Falstaff insists on claiming acquaintance with Hal in the middle of Hal’s coronation: it’s wildly inappropriate, and with such a large audience, Hal has no choice but to put his old companion in his place.

The “Henry IV” adaptations are Eyre’s masterpiece: the visuals are stunning and visceral; the interpretation of the text is solid; the performances are all rich, nuanced, and as close to perfection as possible; and it all feels very modern. There’s not much difference between the woes of Henry IV hundreds of years ago and those of Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg on Danish television’s “Borgen”, and Eyre reminds us why Shakespeare’s history plays haven’t lost any of their relevance.

MORE from The Hollow Crown: Read our reviews of the previous installments Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, and Henry IV Part 2.

MORE on the Henriad tetralogy: Read our review of the RSC productions of Henry IV Part 1 and 2 and Henry V

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The Hollow Crown: “Richard II” is a great beginning to a near perfect screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henriad tetralogy

Ben Whishaw gives an unparalleled performance as Richard II in the first episode of the Hollow Crown, directed by Rupert Goold.

Read our review of Rupert Goold’s Richard III on stage, and our interview with Goold on directing film vs. theatre. You can also read our reviews of the next installments: Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, and Henry V.

The Hollow Crown Richard II
Ben Whishaw as Richard II in The Hollow Crown: Richard II directed by Rupert Goold. Credit: Courtesy of Nick Briggs © Neal Street Productions

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
..let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;
All murder’d.

Rupert Goold’s screen adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Richard II opens with Richard II (Ben Whishaw) speaking this abridged monologue in voiceover, which augurs the tumultuous events to come in this four-part BBC miniseries, The Hollow Crown, about monarchs, leadership, and fathers and sons. Executive Producer Sam Mendes had the idea to make a new television adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henriad plays shot on location. The series brings together Shakespeare’s history tetralogy – “Richard II”,  “Henry IV Part 1”, “Henry IV Part 2”, and “Henry V” – which chart the changes in leadership of three English Kings: the rightful heir but weak King Richard II (Ben Whishaw), his usurper Henry Bolingbroke or Henry IV (Rory Kinnear and Jeremy Irons), and the usurper’s rightful heir, Prince Harry (Tom Hiddleston), who would become Henry V.

The Hollow Crown series is phenomenal, with beautiful photography and unparalleled acting: it wouldn’t be possible to assemble such an impressive cast on stage all at once. And for plays that are so much about playing parts and keeping up appearances, close-ups are invaluable for showing us the characters’ innermost thoughts, which are not on full display to their audience at court or in public. In the first episode, there’s a great, if heavy-handed, scene where Richard stands on a rampart to speak to Bolingbroke and his supporters. He seems strong and authoritative, except when we cut to close-up and see the sweat and fear on his face.

Hollow Crown: Richard II
Rory Kinnear as Henry Bolingbroke

It’s unfortunate that the cast of “Richard II” differs from that of the latter three plays in the Hollow Crown series, which makes “Richard II” seem more like an enjoyable and important but not critical prequel, like The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings. If you missed “Richard II” last week, you can still jump into “Henry IV Part 1” tonight, but it’s worth revisiting “Richard II” later, both to clear up the backstory and get a better sense of the themes. All four plays deal with the burden of wearing the hollow crown and what it means to be a monarch and a politician; watching “Richard II”, the story of the rightful but thoughtless king, helps give perspective on the stronger leadership styles of his usurper Henry IV and the usurper’s son, Henry V.

As Richard II, Ben Whishaw is commanding, if effeminate, and working constantly to construct a complex performance, which deservedly won him the BAFTA for Best Actor on a television series. Whishaw also has an impressive ease with the language, which both emphasizes the poetry of it while seeming perfectly natural and even modern. Born into royalty, Richard II starts off the play at ease, convinced of his divine right to govern. Whishaw’s Richard has some of the camp of Michael Jackson, complete with pet monkey, but sees himself as a Christ figure, chosen by God to rule, and done an injustice when he is usurped.

When the play begins, Thomas Mowbray and Henry Bolingbroke (Kinnear) come to the King accusing each other of treason. To settle this, the King first proposes a duel, but grows scared and banishes them both just before the battle begins. It is the first of a series of rash decisions made in a desperate attempt to protect his power without seriously considering the threats to it, which will lead to his downfall.

Richard starts to lose the favour of his people when he creates outrageous taxes to support his lavish lifestyle and his wars in Ireland. Yet he is utterly oblivious, even after Bolingbroke’s dying father, John of Gaunt (Patrick Stewart, in a great turn in this supporting role), warns him, “Landlord of England art thou now, not king”. But Richard is so self-absorbed that he ignores this proclamation, and proceeds, without even a beat for contemplation, to seize all of Gaunt’s property for himself, which should have rightfully gone to the exiled Bolingbroke. We watch as the other nobles watch Richard exercise this gross abuse of power, which looks like thievery: it’s the final catalyst for Richard’s downfall.

Richard’s haughtiness is part of what makes him incapable of being a good politician. Yet he does seem to understand what Bolingbroke only later will: “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”. Richard rightly anticipates his own fate and the future troubles that Henry IV will face in the wake of deposing the rightful king. Kinnear’s Bolingbroke is a naive, devoted son and valiant warrior who can easily earn the respect of others. But we see little of the cunning politicking that Henry IV will later brag to his son about, and the position seems more thrust on him than campaigned for.

Goold takes his time with the film, which sometimes feels slow, especially at the beginning, but does so in order to let the visuals help with the storytelling. Richard’s inflated ego and heightened sense of self is mimicked by the heightened visuals: the greens of the English countryside rich, the clothes that Richard wears sumptuous, and the prison Richard eventually finds himself in is as dark and dank as can be. Most importantly, the film will whet your appetite for the three episodes to come, with Richard prophesying the unrest that will undoubtedly follow in Bolingbroke’s reign.

More reviews of The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, and Henry V.

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TIFF 2013 Review: The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her tells both subjective sides of the dissolution of a relationship

Still from The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. Courtesy of the Toronto International Film Festival.

The modern relationship movie has more and more become an attempt to acknowledge that any relationship story has two subjective sides, which must be told. In Hans Canosa’s Conversations with Other Women, the film finds objectivity through a split screen that ensures a camera is on both its characters at all times: it’s a different movie if you watch only Helena Bonham Carter throughout than if you keep your eyes fixed on Aaron Eckhart. Richard Linklater’s brilliant Before Midnight keeps its objectivity by ensuring both Jesse and Celine are always in frame at the same time, which produces a similar effect as Canosa’s film, while keeping the characters more connected. Writer-director Ned Benson’s two-part feature film debut, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, aims not for objectivity but to tell the very subjective story of the unraveling of a relationship in two separate films, one from his perspective and one from hers.

Him follows Conor (James McAvoy) as he watches in bewilderment when his wife, Eleanor (Jessica Chastain), attempts suicide and leaves him. He spends the film trying to find her, to talk things out, and get closure, completely oblivious to why she has left and where she has gone. Eleanor appears as somewhat of a mystery because Conor is clueless: her depression seems to him to come out of nowhere, as does her departure, and whenever she returns to him, he can’t quite pinpoint her motivations.

Although Him and Her are quite stylistically different, the stories they each tell are similar. The scenes when both characters are present are not told entirely differently, though Conor and Eleanor may have highlighted different parts of the scenes. The films open with the couple dining and dashing, running into Central Park, and collapsing in a moment of passion. Conor’s memory focusses on the excitement of the chase and the eroticism of their exchange, while Eleanor’s account skips over much of this and stays with the sweet and tender exchanges they have, in conversation and cuddling. In a later scene, Conor’s infidelity comes out, and in “Him” he confesses and takes responsibility, while in Her, she figures it out herself and states it with no objections from him. It is in these scenes that the two versions seen together are strongest, because when watching Him, an attempt at sex post-breakup may seem like a farewell gesture on Eleanor’s part, but in Her, we see the context of what she’s been going through and how it is actually an attempt to rekindle their lost romance.

Our understanding of the couple’s interactions is helped by being privy to what each of them experiences separately. In Him, he spends time with his father and friends, and at his failing restaurant, and we watch him flail. In Her, we see the bits of Eleanor’s life that Conor missed: getting picked up from the hospital post suicide attempt, moving back in with her parents, interacting with her sister and nephew, and trying to start fresh by taking classes at the university where she meets an important mentor (Viola Davis). Part of Conor’s bewilderment at Eleanor’s motivations is because he simply wasn’t present during pivotal events in her life.

In the Q&A after the film, Benson explained that he wrote Her first, specifically for Jessica Chastain, a long-time friend, and then decided to write the other half, afterwards, and it shows. Her is smart and nuanced, rich in character and emotion, and with fewer self-conscious references that feel stilted and unreal: more is shown rather than told. In some ways, Him feels like an add-on, the characters less fully realised in script, though the acting is irreproachable. Him is often clunky with characters over-explaining or scenes going on too long. Her would work as a standalone film, but “Him” is mostly interesting for how it connects to Her.

Benson intended for the films to be viewed in either order, and at TIFF they were screened together in both orders. I saw The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him first, which is part of what made “Her” a richer experience — just filling in the gaps. Had the two films not been screened together, I’m not sure I would have been willing to go back to the cinema again to see The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her, and relationship movies are my genre. Seeing them together is essential, but they are three hours combined, which may be longer than was really necessary, as Him especially could have been significantly trimmed.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her attributes the breakdown of their relationship to the different ways in which they deal with their two-month-old’s death: he wants to forget and move on, but she wants to start over again as someone else. While this motivation is believable, there is little in the films to explain why these characters would deal with tragedy in such different ways, which makes the child’s death feel more like a plot device to break them up than an inevitable cause of their breakup. It’s also why the endings of both films are ambiguous, suggesting seemingly different possible futures, without having necessarily earned this ambiguity.  But as a concept, these retellings of the same story from two perspectives is a brilliant idea, and it’s executed thoughtfully. While these films were flawed, Benson’s next film could be a revision to reach perfection.