Movie Review: Silence

Writers: Martin Scorsese

Director: Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese, Shûsaku Endô

Stars: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson

Verdict: … Eh?

Y’know, for a film that tries so hard to be though provoking, that tries so hard to talk about weighty issues, the thing that’s most surprising about Silence is that having seen A Monster Calls and La La Land the same day, (AMC review here, LLL review here), I remember the two of those films, especially La La Land which some idiot might call frivolous, a whole lot more than Silence. Silence being a movie that aims for great things.

Silence follows two jesuit priests who hear that their tutor has denounced the faith in public so they go on search for him to find out the truth. This is in the days in which Christians were facing massive pursecution in Japan by the Buddhists there. The trailer makes it look like an exciting thriller that delves into what it means to be Christian. It has exciting music, (seriously could someone tell me what that song is?), it has religios themes and symbolism, it’s quickly cut and features hints of extreme torture. What’s not to love? It’s a shame then that what we’ve gotten is a pretty turgid religious debate. 

I have seen some pretty stinky reviews of Silence, not least from my own stable at The Gryphon which really read like a one star review, and it’s also recieved some glowing ones. For me it’s more like a low three star, entertaining as that The Gryphon review is. When it ended I left feeling pretty good but on reflection that might just be because it’s punishing 2 hour and 39 minute running time had finished. I have a policy that no film needs to be 3 hours long – Magnolia always being the film that made me thing twice about that but it still doesn’t really need to be that length. Films like Fight Club and Pulp Fiction are long films but what they do is they fill their running time with stuff, with new things, with new acts and plot points and things happening. Silence on the other hand, seems to stay for a really long time in it’s most uninteresting scenarios, go over the same conversations again and again, and could really do with being produced by Roger Corman, (The Little Shop of Horrors, The Fall of the House of Usher). Matin Scorcese, incedentally, started out under Roger Corman making those quick, cheap, exploitation films like Boxcar Bertha, but my God he’s lost his way making incredibly bloated films like this. The Wolf of Wall Street, Scorcese’s last film is actually three hours long but that film has a bit more of an excuse to be that long, there’s stuff you can cut out, but if you cut it out you’d probably end up with a film about the length of Silence which is already too long, because there’s a lot of stuff and plot in The Wolf of Wall Street. There really, really isn’t in Silence. 

Now that doesn’t mean that there isn’t good stuff in Silence. The cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto, (The Wolf of Wall Street, Argo, Brokeback Mountain), is maybe Scorcese’s best. The performances are almost universally really good; Liam Neeson, (Schindler’s List, Taken), for one, this came out the same day as A Monster Calls and he is really spectacular in both of them. His character is somewhat reminiscent of the Kurtz character in Apocalypse Now, (more on that later), and his performance has something of the Brandos in Apocalypse Now in Silence. Adam Driver, (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Paterson, Girls) is quickly becoming a household name and quite right too because he is a very, very good actor with a lot of range. If Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote gets off the ground with Driver that’s something I want to see. Andrew Garfield, (The Social Network, Hacksaw Ridge, The Amazing Spider-Man), on the other hand does what he can bless him, and he’s a great actor, he just can’t do the Portugese accent, (which really isn’t that necessary anyway, Liam Neeson doesn’t do it), and he’s just incredibly hammy. The real stars of the show though are the Japanese actors. Issei Ogata, (Tony Takitani), Tadanobu Asano, (Thor, Ichi the Killer), Shin’ya Tsukamoto, (Tetsuo, the Iron Man), (I’m so glad this is a written blog because don’t ask me to pronounce their names I’ll make a right fool of myself), are all really, really good. A film about them would have been top notch. In terms of other good stuff in the film, the scenes of torture are horrible, and viceral, and deeply troubling, as they should be, and they work within the emotional arcs of the film really, really well. 

In the end Silence has a deeper trouble than length and repetativeness. The film plays out like a religious debate, and Martin Scorcese is just not an independant adjudicator, so it feels like all the best points are either being lost, blown over, or just not brought up at all. Scorcese being the devout Catholic he is; he reportedly came across this book just after he’d made The Last Temptation of Christ, which famously strips away the divinity of Jesus, and you can’t help but feel like Scorcese felt he owed a debt, like he had to atone for his sins but couldn’t, like the oppressed Japanese villagers. Also, it has problems with casting American and Irish actors to play portugese people. There are good Portugese or at least Hispanic actors out there give them a chance y’know. Also, you can’t help but feel like Mance Rayder has sent out Spiderman and Kylo Ren to track down the guy from Taken. It’s all a bit silly to be honest.

Also, the film is essentially Heart of Darkness again, just in Japan with Christians, and I’m sorry but that’s never a good sign. I could have been proved wrong on that point; Apocalypse Now is a great film, but like Silence, it’s a bit long. There’s a perfectly good 100 minute, religiously themed thriller in here I’d be perfectly happy to watch. I mean christ, The Witch is nearly half the length, and it touches on so many of the same points and themes a whole lot better, and with a really compelling narrative to boot. Silence is not bad, but it’s not a whole lot of good either. The headline of the aformentioned The Gryphon article, scathing as the review is, “3 hours of listening to Martin Scorcese’s ego”, isn’t as far wrong as some might think. 

Movie Review: The Dark Knight

Director: Christopher Nolan

Writers: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer, Bob Kane

Stars: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart

Verdict: Really, really solid

So, the 4th best film on IMDb is it? Hmm, we’ll see. Better than Fight Club and The Empire Strikes Back hmm? Strangely enough if you ask most people they won’t list this as their favourite Christopher Nolan film I think. Or at least most Nolan fans, or film fans, just people who know about Nolan as a director. For Nolan’s most famous movie, it’s probably the one that’s the least… I don’t know, Nolany..? Nolanesque..? In the style of soon-to-be-sir-if-we-still-made-sirs Christopher Nolan?

In this grim crime drama that transplants the idological battle of Batman: The Killing Joke for a modern age. The Joker, instead of a conflicted, tragic villain that fit distincly into the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate mallaise that Alan Moore actively contributed to with works like Watchmen, is now a Nitzien, overbearing force of evil and terrorism to match post 9/11 anxieties. In Batman, he finds an opponent to match his wit, skill, and sheer craziness. This isn’t the only ideological battle represented in The Dark Knight as Batman and several other characters question whether a city as corrupt as Gotham needs the threat of Batman or an inspiration to keep them in order, the inspiration coming in the form of ‘white knight’ Harvey Dent. 

These anxities are never really settled upon to the detriment of the film, because the film thinks it provides an answer but is conflicted within itself. This lack of thematic resolution would be fine if the film itself was playing towards that. In it’s absence, the film becomes more about the characters or Batman and the Joker themselves. In a more realistic world like the one Nolan creates, these characters need to be crafted from scratch and it then becomes a character study of the two of them. 

I am a big fan of Christopher Nolan. In an age when big, blockbuster entertainment is playing increasingly to the dumb strain in viewers, Nolan flies the Union Jack and makes films big budget fair that treats it’s general cinema going audience as if they have a brain in their heads, with works like Inception, and proves that audiences are much more intelligent than studios give them credit for. When it comes to British Cinema Nolan shows you what can be done. My favourite film of his may be The Prestige because it marries perfectly his duel strain of intelligent narrative constructions and emotion story arcs. The Dark Knight is maybe not quite as impressive as The Prestige but it actually has a suprising amount of both, which I only really noticed this time of watching, on my 3rd viewing of this film. There were moments that I felt really emotionally engaged in the story in a way I didn’t really either other time I watched it. On previous watches I found it a very cynical, workman like film. It was something Nolan made as a career choice more than an artistic peice which I still think might be true but doesn’t come out so much to the detreiment of the film. I also thought that in this world they worked so hard to make the characters of Batman and The Joker seem really realistic and grounded that they forgot about all the other characters. Which I still think, but again, it didn’t come through quite so much. 

There are certain aspects of The Dark Knight that have passed into the public concioussness to the extent that I almost feel like I don’t have to talk about them because it just goes without saying. However, it’s a review, I have to otherwise I’m missing the point of a review, so; Heath Ledger, (Brokeback Mountain, 10 Things I Hate About You) is really, really incredible. He should have won his Oscar, I don’t know if he would have done if he hadn’t died but my god he deserved it. Jared Leto’s Joker in Suicide Squad constantly describes himself as this kind of force of nature, ‘a state of mind’, but he’s so not. Heath Ledger, is. He might have become a true acting legend if he’d stayed alive. Wally Pfister’s, (Moneyball, Inception), cinematography is also fantastic; bot him and composers James Newon Howard (Michael Clayton, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) and Hanz Zimmer, (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, The Lion King) craft that typical Nolanesque, (not this again), sense of surging forward, the film constantly driving forward, and like it’s envoy of Dent carrying cars, stops for no one. 

I love that it’s a proper movie. The way to make a good comic book movie, and those strugging to resurrect video game movies from what Uwe Boll, (House of the Dead, BloodRayne, Far Cry), has done should also apply this, is to just make a proper movie. This is why this works, and why the MCU movies work, it’s because the character motivations are plotted out properly. It’s why the Batman stuff is the best stuff in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, because we understand exactly his character, who he is, and where he’s at. It’s why I think despite these sniffy reviews, if you detatch yourself from the game, the upcoming Assassin’s Creed might actually be fun, because it’s made by a proper filmmaker. 

In terms of the supporting performances, they’re all really really functional, in a good way. Christian Bale is perfectly fine, even if he sometimes verges a bit too far into his iconic Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, but maybe that’s intentional. Gary Oldman, (Léon: The Professional, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), one of my favourite actors working, plays Gordon exactly as one should, never takes centre stage but is exactly as he is meant to be, and is played note perfect. Morgan Freeman, (The Shawshank Redemption, Se7en) just does that Morgan Freeman thing of having a wonderful voice and being slightly better than you. Aaron Eckhart, (Thank You for Smoking, Olympus Has Fallen, Frasier) is actually much, much better in the second half of the film, when his character takes on new dimentions, quite literally. 

The Dark Knight is more a crime drama than a superhero films. More Peckinpah, (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia), than Burton, (Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Batman). Although it’s not perfect there is very little that’s actively bad about it, and a proud addition to both the linneage of comic book films and the filmography of the Nolan borthers, Chris and his borther Jonathan, (Memento, Westworld, Person of Interest), who co-wrote it. I just wish they’re been there when they were making Watchmen. 

Movie Review: Brokeback Mountain

Director: Ang Lee

Writers: Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger

Verdict: Worth your time, if flawed.

Well if there isn’t a more diverse director than Ang Lee, maybe the only director who’s films vary more would be Richard Linklater, (A Scanner Darkly, Boyhood, Dazed and Confused, School of Rock) or the late great Stanley Kubrick, (The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Full Metal Jacket). After the overblown, over serious mess of Hulk, Ang Lee has a go at another incredibly serious and incredibly worthy effort in Brokeback Mountain, just on a much lower budget. This time instead of subverting the action comic book movie Ang Lee has a go at subverting the equally serious and bravado filled genre of the western. Y’know I want Ang Lee to go off and make a stoner comedy. See how he likes that. 

Based on the eponymous short story by Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain follows the forbidden love of two gay cowboys and how they have to suppress their love in order to live. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal, (Donnie Darko, Nightcrawler, Zodiac) and Heath Leger, (The Dark Knight, 10 Things I Hate About You) as the gay cowboys amid a fine supporting cast that includes Anne Hathaway, Kate Mara, and David Harbour. It was actually quite entertaining to see people who have since gone on to bigger and better roles and think ‘oh that went on to do that thing, like House of Cards,  Stranger Things, and um… Fantastic Four‘. 

The real star of this film though is Ang Lee. His auterial fingers are all over this one. It’s got the same trade mark sort of natural beauty and landscape poetry that we saw in things like Life of Pi and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and it’s got the kind of worthy, sedentary pace we’ve come to expect from him, as well as the sort of outsider’s eye to american genres that he’s shown in other works. Aside from that it’s clearly a very technically minded and stylish film, and technically it is very well made. Ang Lee wanted to show off and he did, but in a way that’s also the problem. There is a degree of detachment to this film that stops you getting really emotionally involved. Watching it, I feel one removed from what’s happening on screen in front of me. Now, to take a film like Drive, that’s a film with a plot that wouldn’t necessarily have you emotionally involved, but the high professionals sheen and style serves to get you involved. Whereas I feel in this film the high style of it only served to detach me from a story that I would otherwise naturally be emotionally involved in. It is a very involving story, and I did feel for the characters, (Heath Leger in the leading role truly shines in a very understated performance, died too young), but at the same time I felt like an outsider looking in, very much like Ang Lee himself is, instead of being truly into the story. There’s something about how wiggy is is, something about the performances in some roles that doesn’t quite gel. I would have preferred Ang Lee to focus on the essentials that convince you of the world instead of how to capture a nice shot, or the hair and make up for the period setting. 

I feel like now I need to talk about Jake Gyllenhaal. His has this underlying creepiness, this sort of gaunt visage that he played perfectly in Nightcrawler, but here, he’s kind of miscast as the live wire romantic of the couple. He comes across as disingenuous and his liveliness is honestly more irritating because he just doesn’t make it seem natural.

In the end Brokeback Mountain is a very solid film, but it lacks the emotional involvement to elevate it to something great.