Seventh Row

A place to think deeply about movies

FYC 2020

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Riz Ahmed’s tour de force performance in Sound of Metal

Riz Ahmed’s Oscar-nominated performance in Sound of Metal, as a heavy metal drummer going deaf, is a tour de force.

Riz Ahmed sits at a drum kit in Sound of Metal.
Riz Ahmed’s tour de force performance in Sound of Metal.

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From Shakespeare to noir, surfer dude to reluctant fundamentalist, at this point, it seems like there’s nothing Riz Ahmed can’t do. He’s also that rare actor that can play a very smart character (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and a very stupid one (Girls) with equal aplomb. He’s one of the most versatile and compulsively watchable actors working today to the point that he makes any film he’s in a must see just for his performance.

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Sound of Metal is one such film, and director Darius Marder is completely attuned to Ahmed’s performance so that we are, too. Ahmed stars as Ruben, a heavy metal drummer and recovering addict whose sudden hearing loss nearly leads him off the wagon, which precipitates a sojourn at a rehab centre for the deaf.

The film opens on a medium shot of Ahmed’s Ruben at a drum kit, listening for his cue, before starting to rigorously play the drums. It makes for a stark contrast once he loses his hearing and instead of watching him listen, we watch him watch, his eyes flicking from side to side as he tries to keep up with what’s going on around him, especially when he’s suddenly immersed in sign language without understanding it. Ahmed makes watching Ruben think exciting, even as he also portrays Ruben as not the brightest bulb. 

Riz Ahmed sits at a diner table next to Olivia Cooke, who plays his character's girlfriend. She is frantically speaking on the phone.
Riz Ahmed (left) and Olivia Cooke (right) in Sound of Metal.

Because Ruben spends much of the film unable to communicate, Ahmed has to convey his complex journey — accepting the changes to his body, dealing with his anger, and avoiding a relapse — almost entirely physically. When we meet him, he’s relaxed, his movements fluid, and he has incredible tenderness with his girlfriend (Olivia Cooke) whom he wakes up one morning with the gentle caress of a drumstick. Once he starts to lose his hearing, Ahmed will become stock still, trying to make out the sounds around him to no avail, and trying not to panic. The worse it gets, the stiffer he becomes and the more jittery, unable to sit still or remain calm. He also turns inward, huddling into himself, his arms crossed in front of himself, a far cry from his open space-filling posture from the beginning of the film. He looks like an addict in need of a hit even before the film provides that backstory. 

At the rehab centre, Ruben is a fish out of water, unable to understand what’s going on around him since everyone is using sign language. Ahmed becomes hunched over, fidgeting with uncertainty though less severely than earlier. There are also long scenes in which it’s just Ahmed acting against Ahmed, as we watch Ruben cope with sitting in a room alone, managing (or failing to manage) his anger. As Ruben gains more confidence, learning sign language and integrating into the community, Ahmed’s movements become smoother and less jagged, though he never quite recaptures the ease we see in the early moments of the film. It’s a tour de force performance.

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Listen to our podcast episode on Sound of Metal

We compared portrayals of disability in Sound of Metal and Blind.

Listen to the episode

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FYC: Matt Dillon’s and Lars Eidinger’s complex portraits of men in Proxima

In Proxima, Matt Dillon and Lars Eidinger play the rare male characters who are flawed, privileged, and yet still empathetic.

Read more about Proxima.

Stills of Matt Dillon and Lars Eidinger in Proxima side by side.
FYC: Matt Dillon’s and Lars Eidinger’s complex portraits of men in Proxima.

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Alice Winocour’s portraits of men in Proxima are the rare case that acknowledge the men’s privilege and entitlement, and how that affects their interactions, while still presenting them as well-meaning, kind-hearted grown-ups. Lars Eidinger plays Thomas, Sarah’s (Eva Green) ex-husband with whom she co-parents, and Matt Dillon plays Mike, the astronaut team leader that she will be going to space with. Both men make not great first impressions, but Dillon and Eidinger layer nuance into their performances to show these men as flawed people with empathy, whose flaws are highly connected to their privilege.

We first meet Thomas when Sarah pulls him out of a meeting at work to talk to him about the logistics of caring for their daughter while Sarah is in space. He reluctantly excuses himself, frustrated, as he quietly asks her why she’s there, sighing repeatedly. Before she even gets a word in edgewise, he’s decided she’s there to harass him about canceling on their daughter at the last minute, his back to her at first, and then continues to make excuses for his past behaviour by avoiding eye contact with her. When he finally looks at her, there’s a terrific exchange: she beams, and you see it dawning on him what’s happened, that she’s going to space, and he smiles, excited for her before giving her a hug, a marked change from his previously unwelcoming body language. As they negotiate, he once again makes declarative statements, only occasionally looking at her. He’s soft-spoken but passive-aggressive, if reasonable. 

Matt Dillon speaks to Eva Green over a meeting table in Proxima.
Matt Dillon (left) and Eva Green (right) in Proxima.

The next scene introduces us to Mike, making a speech at a party celebrating the impending launch. He comes off as incredibly entitled as he reduces Sarah to a woman who cooks in his speech. After knocking on the window to encourage Sarah to join him at the barbecue, he introduces her to his wife, then looks away, before moving away to let them talk; he clearly means well, but it’s an awkward thing to leave his new colleague with his wife just because they’re both women. Later, when Sarah first meets him at training, he tries to offer her some friendly advice, indicated by his softer, lower voice. When he’s interrupted by their colleagues, he’s visibly uncomfortable that they have company, and keeps a low voice for a semblance of privacy. But he comes off as arrogant by never explaining how he feels. He doesn’t realise this until after the fact though, and his coaxing voice suggests there’s a kindness behind his sentiment. 

Both Thomas and Mike deepen, though, when we get to see them in more private settings, where their charisma and generosity really shine. When Sarah drops off her daughter with Thomas, he’s grinning when they arrive. He cares about his daughter even if he still needs a pat on the back for it from his ex. When he and Sarah talk in the kitchen, with hushed voices, we get a sense of the relationship that once was — both why they were together and why they broke up. He’s charismatic, making jokes, offering her tea, and leaning in as he acknowledges their similarities. There’s affection in his conspiratorial tone. 

Later in the film, Sarah calls Thomas after a particularly rough day. We only hear Eidinger’s voice here, but we can hear in his pauses and soft voice that he’s trying to be there for her but doesn’t quite know how. He answers and listens to her like a partner, giving her a loving pep talk in just a few well-chosen words. He doesn’t explain or hesitate, letting their shared intimacy show through how little he needs to say. When she’s still weeping afterward, he pauses to offer her slightly more cliched comfort, sensing it’s what she needs. We also see him with their daughter, often half-distracted, but just like he did with Sarah on the phone, seriously listening to her, answering her questions, providing her comfort. 

Lars Eidinger gazes in awe at the sky, his young daughter on his shoulders, in Proxima.
Lars Eidinger in Proxima.

Eidinger regularly shows us Thomas’s emotional intelligence. When he and their daughter visit Sarah in quarantine and their daughter is uncharacteristically quiet, he looks back and forth between them, before concluding his presence is interfering with their relationship. And when Sarah goes into space, he bursts into tears, holding his daughter’s hand as they both experience this incredible moment in her mother’s life. It’s a small, quiet moment that reveals the sensitive man who is so proud of Sarah — something he showed us in his first scene, too — that could be overplayed by a lesser actor.

As the film progresses, Dillon strikes the perfect balance between Mike’s public persona — competitive, eager to be the centre of attention, always certain in his movements and speech — and his more private persona, which is a more thoughtful, kind, soft-spoken version of himself. Dillon tends to shift modes with tone of voice and posture: in public, he’s louder, straight-backed, and takes up more space; in private, he drops his voice to almost a raspy whisper and slouches, leans in, and sometimes even moves physically closer without crossing boundaries. Dillon shows us Mike the lover of poetry, Mike the team player, and Mike who is completely oblivious to the privilege he holds as someone with a wife to care for the children as a full-time job when he’s gone.

Proxima is available on VOD in Canada and the US, and on Netflix in the UK.

You could be missing out on opportunities to watch great films and performances (like Matt Dillon’s and Lars Eidinger’s in Proxima) at virtual cinemas, VOD, and festivals.

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Read more about the best performances of 2020…

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Vanessa Kirby beautifully underplays a showy role in Pieces of a Woman

Thirty minutes into Pieces of a Woman, I was ready to declare Vanessa Kirby a future Oscar nominee for the film. The film is now on Netflix in most territories around the world.

We named Vanessa Kirby in Pieces of a Woman one of our best lead performances of 2020. Read the full list here.

A still of Vanessa Kirby in Pieces of a Woman in front of a swirling orange background.
Vanessa Kirby beautifully underplays a showy role in Pieces of a Woman.

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Thirty minutes into Pieces of a Woman, I was ready to declare Vanessa Kirby a future Oscar nominee for the film. She has already picked up the Best Actress Award at Venice for her performance, the same award that launched Emma Stone’s road to her Oscar. In the film’s early 20-minute single-take birthing scene, Kirby’s Martha goes into labour and gives birth. What could be overly dramatic is, in Kirby’s hands, surprisingly underplayed but no less real: from burping, to unexpected pangs, to her repeated understatement that “This is really awful.” It’s the kind of performance that’s physically showy enough to garner awards attention and yet subtle enough to actually be good.

A two shot of Molly Parker and Vanessa Kirby, with Parker playing a midwife helping Kirby through a painful childbirth.
Molly Parker (left) and Vanessa Kirby (right) in the birthing scene of Pieces of a Woman.

What’s most remarkable about that birthing scene is how it establishes the way in which Martha responds to stress and pressure, by turning in on herself. Momentarily alone in the bathtub, we understand that Martha is in sudden pain by the way Kirby unexpectedly tenses her hand in the air. Martha only occasionally swears, and usually quietly. She doesn’t want to be any trouble. Once Martha loses her child and must cope with the grief, Kirby turns further inward, in the way she taught us to expect in that first birthing scene. Staring off into space to avoid confrontation and arguments is her general modus operandus.

Kirby got her start in the theatre, and that full-body expression and commitment is evident throughout Pieces of a Woman. It’s in the way she stretches out her fingers with tension when her husband tries to force himself on her, telling us she’s clearly annoyed, but not willing to protest. It’s also in the way that her quietness should never be understood as meekness, as she can become commanding — even terrifying — at a moment’s notice. It’s in how she kicks an employee out of her office by glaring at him. 

An extreme wide shot of Vanessa Kirby in a bright red coat walking along the pavement in Boston.
Martha returns to work for the first time after the death of her child.

Despite having an extremely underwritten character, Kirby infuses Martha with intelligence and emotion. In the otherwise ridiculous courtroom scenes, medium shots on Kirby reveal a woman thinking, remembering, and questioning her own choices during her childbirth. At times, she’ll respond too slowly, like it’s just dawning on her the extent of what’s happened. When she feels like her intelligence is being insulted, she’ll jump on answering a question too quickly, speaking firmly. At every moment in the film, Kirby keeps us completely involved in Martha’s journey, even when the script fails to keep up with her.

Pieces of a Woman is now available on Netflix around the world.

You could be missing out on opportunities to watch great films and performances (like Vanessa Kirby’s in Pieces of a Woman) at virtual cinemas, VOD, and festivals.

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FYC: Adam Beach shines in Monkey Beach as a troubled father figure

Adam Beach appears in only a handful of scenes of Monkey Beach, but he leaves such an impression, you’re convinced he was on screen longer.

Read our interview with Loretta Todd on Monkey Beach.

A still of Adam Beach in Monkey Beach, in front of a bright orange background.
FYC: Adam Beach shines in Monkey Beach as a troubled father figure.

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Adam Beach only appears in only a handful of scenes of Monkey Beach as protagonist Lisa’s (Grace Dove) Uncle Mick, but he leaves such a lasting impression, you’re convinced he must have been on screen longer. Uncle Mick is a residential school survivor, world traveler, rebel, and doting uncle, and Beach constantly layers Mick’s anger, trauma, kindness, and political awareness into his performance. Beach has so much natural charisma that you wonder how he hasn’t been cast in absolutely everything. That charisma is so perfect here because Mick looms larger than life in Lisa’s memory, and in Beach’s hands, you feel that larger than life charisma, his warmth, as well as how broken he is.

We first meet Mick in a flashback to Lisa’s childhood. They’re in Lisa’s principal’s office, where he’s been called in as her temporary guardian because she’s in trouble. We learn quickly that Mick doesn’t take settler colonial authority seriously when he turns a disciplinary meeting into a bonding moment with Lisa, almost entirely ignoring the principal. Seated opposite the principal, he turns to Lisa in mock outrage, parsing out his words, to ask, “Lisa, have you been beating up boys again?” On learning that she used ‘The F word’ while repeating lyrics from “Fuck the opressors,” he laughs, pulls down his fist in victory as he look at her with a proud grin, before turning back to the principal to explain, “I taught her that song.” He then turns to give her five. Every time the principal says something, he turns to Lisa conspiratorially, taking up more space, grinning at her, letting her know he’s on her side.

Though “fuck the oppressors” is one of the scenes of the year, it’s the scene from Lisa’s childhood by the campfire on Monkey Beach, her whole family gathered, where Beach is at his best. He’s arguing with one of Lisa’s aunts about the trauma and legacy of residential schools, brusque but quiet, his face full of pain and tension, and his eyes shining. Remembering the horrors he faced, he enunciates, speaks slowly enough that the children can understand without looking at them, head tilted with frustration that the other adults won’t acknowledge what he’s talking about and keep trying to stop the conversation. His unwillingness to drop it for some time, looking each of the adults he talks to in the eye, belies just how emotionally affected he is, while keeping his voice relatively controlled. But as soon as his brother, Lisa’s dad, tells him, “Now is not the time,” to wait until the children are older, he immediately silences. His anger and frustration can be seen in how he stares intently at the fire, fidgeting with his fingers, tense with anger as he closes his body, when he’s usually so open and laid back. 

Tensions run high between the adults, and the children are visibly concerned so he looks at them with care, worried he’s scared them. When his nephew, Jimmy, points out that he’s burnt his marshmallow, he replies, “I like it like that,” almost like a teenager sulking. But he turns it around in a second, biting into it with a smile, looking briefly at Jimmy to reassure him. He then tries to recover, bringing the mood back up and changing topics to how nice it is where they are. When Lisa rests her head on his shoulder, and he welcomes her, we feel the strength of their bond.

Monkey Beach played theatrically in Canada earlier this year, and will be available to stream on Crave in 2021. It is still seeking distribution in the Us and UK.

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FYC: Captivating costumes tie Shirley‘s female characters together

Amela Baksic’s costumes aid in setting the various moving parts of Shirley, especially its female characters, in rotation around one another.

Listen to our podcast episode about Shirley and portraits of female artists.

Two stills of Odessa Young in Shirley and two stills of Elisabeth Moss in Shirley, set against a blue background. The stills display the costume work by Amela Baksic.
FYC: Captivating costumes tie Shirley’s female characters together.

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Amela Baksic’s costume design aids Josephine Decker in setting the various moving parts of Shirley, especially its female characters, in rotation around one another. The sun in the centre is Rose (Odessa Young), the protagonist, and the planets that dance around her include Shirley (Elisabeth Moss), Paula (a missing college girl, who is so amorphous, we never even see her face) and the present college girls, who intrude on both Rose and Shirley’s lives (by having affairs with their husbands). 

At times, Rose is more aligned with Shirley (who is much older than her) and at other times, with the college girls, who are technically her contemporaries. Rose enters the film in the exact shade of yellow that people tend to paint nurseries when they’re trying to avoid ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ colours. It’s an insipid, bland and entirely non-threatening colour — fitting for Rose seeming like a “good little wifey, good little Rosie” at this early stage. Rose is pregnant and no one knows, except Shirley, who intuits this fact with her “witchy” powers immediately. 

Odessa Young wears a yellow shirt in Shirley.
Odessa Young wearing a yellow costume in Shirley, chosen by costume designer Amela Baksic.

Despite Rose being only nineteen, the same age as the college girls, her costuming is more what you would expect from a middle-aged housewife. Ironically, Shirley, who in fact is a middle-aged housewife, does not dress like one. When Rose visits the campus where her husband, Fred (Logan Lerman), works, she passes a tree full of “nymphs” — young, beautiful college girls in bright jewel-tones. They are probably doing something fairly innocuous, like practicing a dance or drama piece, but the way they are shot by Sturla Brandth Grovlen and costumed by Baksic makes them seem much more mysterious and threatening. They are like a coven performing a sacrifice or conjuring curses against Rose. These young women are already a thorn in Shirley’s side and will soon be for Rose, too. 

In one of the most significant scenes of the film, Shirley sends Rose on a mission to find out more information about the missing Paula, who has inspired Shirley’s latest novel. When Rose arrives on campus, the “’nymphs”’ pour out of one of the buildings, wearing mostly bright primary colours, contrasted with Rose’s dowdy brown. Their youth and vitality are juxtaposed with the fact that Rose has just been scrubbing stairs and is doing the bidding of a strange older woman. 

Shirley may be agoraphobic, and therefore, tied to her house, but this does not mean she conforms to dressing like a conventional house wife (she’s a Captive Queen, as one of Tamar-Kali’s tracks is named, the Queen of her Gothic castle) and her playful costuming reflects this. She appears in a variety of brightly coloured and excellent blouses — from a black one covered in pink and purple ticker-tape to a much-coveted mallard shirt — which hint at her mischievous and eccentric side. Her motivation in dressing like this is not to appear younger or to align herself with the college girls, whom we also see in bright colours. 

But when she does summon up the courage to attend a party, Rose helps her pick out an outfit. Shirley has a panic attack in the dressing room, suggesting that perhaps there is a small part of her that may be insecure about how she will be viewed and judged by others. Once at the party, she clearly decides, “screw it,” and behaves especially naughtily, while wearing her new outfit of a lemon-yellow skirt and a blouse with primary-coloured exotic flowers. She sticks out like a sore thumb, compared to the other ladies in their elegant cocktail dresses. Shirley sits on a hideous yellow-and-blue striped couch (which clashes with her outfit, suggesting that she does not belong there) and deliberately pours red wine onto it, as an act of protest. Shirley is rebellious to the last.

Elisabeth Moss (left) wears a white costume and Odessa Young (right) wears a white costume in the mushroom scene in Shirley.
The mushroom scene in Shirley sees Elisabeth Moss (left) and Odessa Young (right) wearing white and red costumes respectively. The costumes were designed by Amela Baksic.

The most well-known scene from the film has Shirley in a white nightgown and Rose in a red cardigan, with a blanket of bright green moss behind them, as she tells Rose to eat a death cap mushroom. They look like Snow-White and Rose-Red from the Grimm Fairytale, adding to the sense that something ancient and mysterious is passing between them. Poor Rose arrives at Shirley’s home looking like the prim-and-proper housewife but changes drastically by the end: her edges become less defined, like the missing girl, Paula. In Shirley’s visions of Paula, she has a red coat and red hair, standing out in the forest as if she doesn’t belong there; she should not be there. When Rose enters the same trail where Paula disappeared at the end, she is wearing green and blue, perhaps suggesting that this is the ending she was destined for. Rose spends the film fixated on two other women, and in the process, loses herself.

You could be missing out on opportunities to watch great films like Shirley at virtual cinemas, VOD, and festivals.

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FYC: David Thewlis’s feat of physical comedy in I’m Thinking of Ending Things

In I’m Thinking of Ending Things, David Thewlis hilariously twists and contorts his body like rubber in a feat of physical comedy.

Read our essay on David Thewlis in Guest of Honour and Naked.

A still of David Thewlis in I'm Thinking of Ending Things, in front of a blue background.
FYC: David Thewlis performs a feat of physical comedy in I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

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The great David Thewlis has quietly had a very good year in 2020, from his movie-saving lead turn in Guest of Honour to his supporting comedic turn in I’m Thinking of Ending Things. While he’s only in about a third of the film, his section works by itself as a funny and unsettling short film about a woman visiting her boyfriend’s parents for the first time. As the aging and slightly clueless father, Thewlis twists and contorts his body like rubber in a hilarious feat of physical comedy (and bonus: he gets to use his actual Lancashire accent in both this and Guest of Honour, despite both being North American productions).

He enters the film by tottering downstairs, playing a man a few decades his senior and emphasising the hunched over posture of an aging man for comedic effect, without ever overdoing it. He looks at our nameless protagonist, played by Jessie Buckley, with a permanently confused expression, his mouth slightly agape. Then, he delivers what is probably the line of the movie, in a raspy voice: “Well, let’s eat, or the food will be as cold as a witch’s tit in a brass brassiere.” It would be a funny line anyway, but it’s made all the more hilarious by Thewlis’s staccato attack of “tit” and his drawing out of “brassiere” followed by an odd, alien smirk.

An odd reaction shot close up of David Thewlis in I'm Thinking of Ending Things.
David Thewlis in I’m Thinking of Ending Things gives one of the best supporting performances of 2020.

Thewlis is constantly moving when he’s on screen, whether he’s reaching up to tweak his ear or flopping his head from side to side as if it’s not screwed onto his neck properly. When the family sits around a dinner table, you could watch Thewlis’s reaction shots and laugh even when he’s not the centre of attention: he hangs onto every word, leaning forward as if straining to hear and keep up, often creasing his forehead in confusion. When he gets the chance to speak, he’ll happily blather on, taking pauses in weird places as he tries to remember words like “canvas”. Thewlis plays the character as a man who’s incredibly difficult to have a conversation with, which only heightens Buckley’s character’s anxiety and desire to impress. She’s an artist, but she’s barely had the chance to talk about her work in landscapes before Thewlis interrupts her to ask what a landscape is: “Like, outside paintings?” he blathers, brow furrowed, and then promptly ignores her in favour of his food when she attempts to give him an explanation.

After this dinner scene, the film tilts into the surreal, with Thewlis’s character suddenly aging and de-aging before our eyes, and his performance becomes even more impressive and even unexpectedly moving. In one scene, he appears before us as even older, possibly in his ‘80s or ‘90s, and deteriorating from dementia. The same mannerisms that were previously hilarious are now deeply sad, because Thewlis performs them slower, his movements laboured, his pauses longer as he desperately stutters to remember words. Just a few scenes later, he enters the room as a much younger man, closer to Thewlis’s actual age of 57, and he’s suddenly lucid and assured.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is available on Netflix worldwide.

You could be missing out on opportunities to watch great films and performances (like David Thewlis’s in I’m Thinking of Ending Things) at virtual cinemas, VOD, and festivals.

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Read more Best of 2020 content…