The Revenant is about much more than an individual's survival.

So Leonardo finally got his Oscar (and wisely used his acceptance speech to push his eco-concerns).     Did he deserve it for this film?  Well he certainly deserves an Oscar,  and Hollywood has a history of over looking talent for too long and then making an award that is right in general if not in particular.   

Jeff Bridges got his Oscar for Crazy Heart,  but he gave many previous superior performances that went Oscar-less.    Leonardo was terrific (in my own view) in  What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,  Romeo and Juliette,  The Gangs of New York,  Catch Me If you Can and The Great Gatsby.      He certainly worked very hard making The Revenant, and maybe should be rewarded for crawling, grunting and getting very cold and uncomfortable.

And what about the film itself?   Here he plays Hugh Glass, part of a North American fur hunting/trading party, who is abandoned by his colleagues when badly mauled by a bear.   They do not think he could survive his wounds, and their attempt to carry him to safety is abandoned when they believe it will  jeopardize their own safety.   

I am a fan of the (4 time Oscar winning) writer/director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, even if I thought Babel was over-rated, and an even greater fan of Emmanuel Lubezki, his photographer of choice.   I love their joint work on Gravity and Birdman, Lubezki’s and Terrence Malik’s Tree of Life,  and all the way back to Like Chocolate for Water, Sleepy Hollow and  Y Tu Mamá También.  

There are dream/mystical episodes in The Revenant that reminded my of Tree of Life,  and I like the way they are presented realistically, not mystically.   Both films explores themes around life and death, or living and dying, and both refuse to come to a conclusion.    I will come back to these questions. 

The sound design in The Revenant is remarkable, as the crunch and snap of underfoot leaves,  twigs and snow, the breath of living or dying creatures, be they men, horses or bears,  are part of the narrative.    The CGI is horrifically convincing. 

I was also glad to see four actors from these islands in major roles;  the ubiquitous Tom Hardy and Domhnal Gleeson,  plus William Poulter (Son of Rambow, Chronicles of Narnia and We’re The Millers)  and  Paul Anderson (Sherlock Holmes; Game of Shadows, Peaky Blinders,  and ’71) .   

The Revenant is a serious movie and raises serious questions, some of them just below the surface.      

There are obvious similarities with the Sydney Pollack/Robert Redford movie Jeremiah Johnson.  Both are concerned with survival in the most difficult times and places, and each has a motif and motive of vengeance.    I will not reveal The Revenant’s out-working of the revenge theme, but will say that I found it satisfactory, and it is connected with the wisdom of the Pawnee nation members who are also on a quest.

There are other moral/theological questions here.  Tom Hardy plays John Fitzgerald, the film’s antagonist, and his character seems to believe in the God of Necessity.   He justifies his actions by saying   ‘You do what you think you have to survive and God will be the judge.’     

But is personal survival the ultimate necessity and moral justification?    Of course we see and admire many instances of ultimate self-sacrifice,  ‘no greater love…’ and Christianity offers the most famous sacrificial figure of all.      It could to be said, however, that the self-sacrifice of Jesus has been devalued by the subsequent doctrine that he did not in fact die – or at least not stay dead.   But many other women and men have given up their lives for the sake of others, to save other’s lives rather than their souls,  and we do not have accounts of their physical resurrections.    We count them as heroic, but do we not also applaud the action heroes and heroines who kill in order to live?  

The body count in popular movies and TV shows can be very high, and simply making these deaths anonymous does not take away the value – sanctity – of these lives.     There also seems to be a general acceptance of ‘collateral damage’ in modern warfare,  the deaths of innocent people as a consequence of military actions deemed necessary ‘for the greater good’.      In many governments and military establishments this now seems to be the norm.    

As one of my favourite fictional characters (Joe Spork In Nick Harkaway’s novel Angelmaker) says “Don’t tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn’t.  We never reach the end.  All we ever get is means.  That’s what we live with.”    

I think we have a moral ambivalence here.    Villains are condemned for taking lives, heroes and governments are applauded – or at least excused.  

In this  film we have trappers working in a dangerous and unforgiving environment, among hostile tribes.   This raises the question ‘why do we put ourselves in situations where survival might be very difficult?’   For the financial rewards of course, but is it really worth risking lives for money?   I know that may sound like a stupid question, but is that because we have got so used to people doing it?      And admiring them for it?  

Surely one of the lessons that is being slowly learnt, or relearnt, is that more money than we need does not give us happiness.    In fact the love of money can so often lead us into frustration.    We really cannot love God (or whatever source we identify as ultimate Goodness) and mammon.   Many of those who pursue it never seem to have quite enough.  They get used to whatever has become 'normal' and find themselves on what Positive Psychologists call the Hedonistic Treadmill,  needing ever increasing indulgence, bigger homes, ‘better’ cars, more fashionable clothes,  or simply more money to be content, never mind happy.       If there is a ‘happiness’ hole money does not seem to fill it.

This lesson has been learnt by people such as Tom  Shadyac, writer, director and producer of many box office hits (Ace Ventura, Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty, the two Nutty Professor movies, Patch  Adams and Evan Almighty.  

As his colleague Roko Belic said  in an interview  ‘He was living the Beverly Hills lifestyle: a mansion on 14 acres, with 30 people working for him as gardeners, chefs.   Many of his peers were living even more elaborate lifestyles.  But many of them he thought were less happy than his gardener and his housekeeper, who had a genuine smile every morning.  People who had achieved the extreme version of the American dream weren’t made happy by it.”     

Tom sold his mansion and art work, moved into a trailer (I am sure a very nice one) funded a charity for the homeless and set out in pursuit of happiness.   His journey included making two documentaries, I Am and Happy.     Here in County Clare for the last three years we have used these two films as part of our annual Happiness Project, marking the United Nations Day of Happiness.   The response has been very positive – and productive.   Feedback from showing Happy led us to organize a week of  eight activities in May 2014,  twice the number of events in 2015 and 27 this year.   

Positive Psychology and other studies help to give us a scientific understanding of things we have known for millennia, instinctive and intuitive truths about the sources of true contentment, happiness and growth.  

So the questions   

‘is personal survival the ultimate necessity and moral justification? ‘   ‘

do the ends  justify the means?’  

And 

‘why do we think it is worth risking our lives – and/or urging others to risk their lives – for the sake of money?’ 

are urgent.   

My pick of movies from 2015

These are the best movies I saw last year; sorry for the delay, but all will now be on DVD, plus few theatrical screenings.   

Do I have favourite favourites?   Well;  four very different movies stand out for me.   Brooklyn,  Fury Road,  Bridge of Spies,  and The Song of the Sea.   There are longer reviews of these greasy posted. 

Brooklyn.

Brooklyn was adapted by Nick Hornsby from Colm Toibin’s award-winning novel, directed by the Irish playwright John Crowley, and stars  Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters.     The story is set in 1950’s South West Ireland, and in Brooklyn.   It is a domestic drama with very little drama.   It is also exquisite.    This movie operates at a profoundly human, domestic level.   So do most of us.    We do not need murder, catastrophe or tragedy to move us.    The ordinary lives of other people, if they are presented with credibility and conviction, are enough to rouse our empathy and concern. 

The slow pace and lack of adrenalin allow us to admire the colour palate, the design, costumes, music,  and most of all the acting.  

Saoirse Ronan, who plays Ellis,  has  the ability to hold our attention while doing nothing, her performance is limpid; still and utterly transparent.    Jim Broadbent is a Catholic priest who sheds no darkness.    Emory Cohen is the Italian-American who falls for Ellis, and treats her honourably.      Domhnall Gleeson’s Jim is also a good man.   In fact the only malevolent character is a shopkeeper, who in times of scarcity revels in her power.    When I say that this is good movie I mean that to apply to every level, artistic, technical and moral.  

Fury Road seems to me to be an extraordinarily well made futuristic road movie.    Charlize Theron  gave us a gritty and determined action-movie lead character.   Tom Hardy as Mad Max is initially her unwilling and hapless passenger, but soon joins battle with her against the pursuing hordes.   There is not a lot of dialogue in this movie, but both actors know how to communicate without words.   Nicolas Hoult as Nux provides a pleasing sub-plot.   Many of the characters are truly cartoonish, but others  have subtlety and development.   The cinematography is magnificent, directed by John Seale,  who came out of retirement for this.    Here he matches the visual imaginations of Miller and Brendan McCarthy (the co-writer and Design Consultant)  with great skill.   This is an amazingly visual and kinetic movie,  made with great  technical skill  as unrelenting in its power as the scores of amazing vehicles that hurtle across the post-apocalyptic desert.

Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies  is as masterly as ever - more masterly, I suggest,  than some of his more recent offerings.    It is constructed with immense care,  artfully but unobtrusively set and lit.   Every frame is beautifully composed,  shot by Janusz Kaminski (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List and Catch Me If You Can)  from a sharp script by the British Matt Charman and the Coen brothers.    The evocation of the late 1950’s and early 60’s is spot on.    Bridge of Spies  tells the story of the capture by the FBI of a Soviet spy, Colonel ‘Rudolph Abel’,   who was later swapped for the American U2 spy-plane pilot,  F. Gary Powers.    Tom Hanks plays Jim Donovan, a lawyer  appointed to defend the spy.    Mark Rylance,  plays the spy.     He is perfectly cast here.    Some critics have complained about the film’s length.  I was surprised afterwards to learn that it is 141 minutes .   It did not feel like it.    It is a remarkable movie, and I strongly recommend it.  (If you want to know why I put inverted commas round Rudolf Abel, see my full blog entry.)

The Song of the Sea  is as Irish as can be, an animated movie made with the Cartoon Salon’s unique style,  using a style heavily influenced by the ancient  illuminative scriptures of The Book of Kells  (safely housed in Trinity College, Dublin) and using  the  two-dimensionality of the screen with profound seriousness as it brings together two ancient Irish legends.    David Rawle (Moone Boy)  is the boy with the Silkie sister,  Brendan Gleeson is his Lighthouse Keeper father, and Lisa Hannigan provides a character’s voice - and her own music.     I was simply ravished by the beauty of this movie. 

None of these, nor those that follow are in order of preference.

Ex Machina.   Domhnall Gleason, Alicia Vikander and Oscar Isaak teamed up with Writer/Director Alex Garland to produce a slick techno-thriller mainly set in the isolated laboratory/home of Nathan, (Oscar Isaac) the billionaire inventor of the world’s largest search engine,  now experimenting  with AI.

This is Alex Garland’s first attempt at directing, and he does a good job,  with help from  three ‘hot’ stars.    The set is brilliant, Nathan’s mountain hide-out constructed of concrete, stone and opaque glass walls.      The glass hides rather than reveals.    I thought it lacked the depth of Spike Jonze’s Her,  a moving exploration of how knowing,  growing, learning and loving  affects humans and may affect an artificial intelligent program.    Taken on it’s own terms, however Ex Machina is an engaging and enjoyable film.

The Martian.    Ridley Scott stepped aside from the Alien prequels to make this realistic account of an astronaut stranded on Mars.      Despite our confidence that the hero would survive and eventually return to Earth, Ridley Scott and Matt Damon maintain the tension and keep us engaged, rooting for our hero’s survival to the end.   There is an able cast, led by Jessica Chastain,  Michel Pena, Sean Bean, Bill Pullman and Chiwetel Enjiofor, and I thought Matt did a great job, bringing humour as well as vulnerability to his role.

SPECTRE’s record breaking box office figures are certainly justified by the spectacular flashes, bangs and wallops it delivers.   The usual kinetic opening sequence is terrific, and the rest of the movie has many well conceived and executed fights and chases with a variety of cars, helicopters and planes.    There is a secondary villain,  a mole, played by the ever-reliable Andrew Locke and  Ranulph Fiennes as the new M earns our respect,  even if we still mourn Dame Judy.   So far so good.   

However, despite Waltz is given the role of number One villain and despite this actor's best endeavors his part is badly underwritten.  He is given a laughable torture scene to play out.   The love interest in SPECTRE is also unconvincing.   There simply isn’t enough screen-time or chemistry  between Craig and Seydoux  to persuade us that the man who loved and lost Vesper would now give his heart to this woman.    Naomie Harris’s Moneypenny is underused.   So while I rate SPECTRE as matching or even surpassing Skyfall  and Casino for pure action it does not seem as engaging as either of them.   

Birdman (or The unexpected Virtues of Ignorance).    I had heard that this  whole film seems to consist of one take.   It does not, of course, but the scarce edits are skillfully hidden.    The movie is mainly set in a New York theatre as a new play is rehearsed, previewed and eventually performed.    Michael Keaton plays the self-referential role of an actor who was a Tent-pole movie hero  twenty years beforehand who now wants to make a comeback in something with more artistic authenticity.  Edward Norton plays another (allegedly) self-referential role as the ‘gifted but difficult’ actor.   Naomi Watts is simply delightful and Emma Stone and Andrea Risborough offer great support.         But the real hero must be the cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki,  whose work in Sleepy Hollow,  Y Tu Mama Tambien,  The New World,  Children of Men, The Tree of Life and Gravity puts him up there among the truly greats.

Orson Welles’ Touch Of Evil was made in 1958.   Welles’ was hired to play the part of Quinlan, a corrupt cop working on the Tex/Mex border, but he virtually rewrote the original script and, at the insistence of Charlton Heston,  took over the direction.     As soon as it was finished the studio fired Welles and butchered the final cut.     It was decades before it was recreated (much to the credit of Heston) in this,  something like Welles’  version.    I saw it at the Dublin Lighthouse cinema and it was good to see it more or less the way Orson wanted it to be cut,  and on the big screen,  as noir as noir can be.    Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich and Dennis Weaver joined Welles and Heston.

Slow West is set shortly after the end of the American Civil War and follows Silas (Michael Fassbender) and Jay (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they head west.   Jay is in pursuit of his love, Rosy, (Caren Pistorious) who has fled with her father, both of them  wanted for murder.    Silas is a gunman (not quite as competent as he thinks he is) who becomes Jay’s  guide.     The country through which they ride is actually New Zealand, but the Irish cinematographer Robbie Ryan films it beautifully.     MacClean has taken a fresh look at the familiar Western genre and despite the authentic and random violence that punctuates the movie it is a rather thoughtful and gentle film.    Jay’s heartful intention drives the plot,  and cynical Silas slowly responds to the foolish, but brave and intelligent, young man.     Fa

Far from the Madding Crowd

I think Thomas Vinterberg’s  adaptation of Hardy’s novel is superior in many ways to the 1967 John Schlesinger film.   It has only one failing, but it is major.  

I think Carrie Mulligan’s reading of Bathsheba is very good, less flirtatious than Julie Christie’s,  less impulsive and more emancipated.    Henry James complained of the novel that Bathsheba  “is a young lady of the inconsequential, willful, mettlesome type," who "remains alternately vague and coarse and seems always artificial."   I think that Carrie makes her much more than that.   She is never vague, coarse or inconsequential, even though she is decidedly willful.    However, Tom Sturridge who plays Sgt. Troy  is not Terrence Stamp.   He lacks the intelligence and charisma of Troy’s earlier incarnation, and he seems sullen rather than heartbroken.     Bathsheba’s  ongoing relationship with  Gabriel (Matthias Schoenaerts) however, properly reflects her growing maturity.    Michael Sheen presents a more sympathetic Boldwood than Peter Finch.  Vinterberg brought his usual cinematographer,  Charlotte Bruus Christensen, to England to shoot Far From, and her images are lustrous,  with misty mornings,  honey blessed sunny days,  unsentimental sunsets and the essential rolling landscapes, honouring Hardy’s love of the country.    It is thoughtfully Directed, beautifully shot, and with a good score.    

I was very impressed by Pixar’s  Inside Out and will write more on it later.  

In The Lady in the Van we have Dame Maggie Smith acting with so much skill, honed over the last six decades, that we do not notice it as she simply ‘becomes’ Miss Shepherd, the woman who lived on Allan Bennett’s front drive for fifteen years in a series of camper vans.   We see two Bennett’s, one of them living the life, the other observing it and writing – or not writing – about it.    Bennett has written the testy interior dialogue and Jennings plays out both  wonderfully.   

I saw three  National Theatre’s live broadcasts last year.

Everyman was a joy.    Carol Ann Duffy adapted this 15^th century morality tale, in which we are all (as Everyman) confronted with the reality of death and the question of whether or not our lives have been well spent.     Duffy’s script is decidedly  21^st century,   using both heightened and demotic language,  sometimes properly vulgar.      Chiwetel Enjiofor as Everyman brings enormous physical and emotional energy to the role.    Dermot Crowley plays Death with relish and Kate Duchene is God/Good Deeds,   deeply unhappy  about what Everyman thinks is success, and by what we are doing to her Creation.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s much anticipated Hamlet  was dominated by Cumber’s intelligence and physical grace.  We were given a clear reading, a well designed set,  and a worthy Claudius (Cierhan Hinds).   The rest of the cast failed to impress me, but this was nevertheless a thoughtful/thought-through production, and Hamlet’s protean quality makes it endlessly open to careful re-examination.    I also saw on television Maxine Peake playing Hamlet a the Manchester Arts Festival.   A very different production, but enjoyable.   I confess that I am predisposed to love everything that Maxine does.  

Gillian Anderson played Stella in The Young Vic’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire,  and fulfilled all of my (very high) expectations.

Among the DVDs I saw last year  I want to praise two admirable children’s films,  Despicable Me 2 and Big Hero 6.   I really enjoyed The Homesman  a Western starring Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones,     Jim Jarmush’s Only Lovers Left Alive,  The Double  and the truly remarkable British sf movie starring Scarlett Johanssen,    Under the Skin.     

The Nice Guys. Shane Black is back, and welcome.

Shane Black was 23 when he wrote Lethal Weapon in 1987.    He then wrote the next three Lethal Weapon  movies, a franchise that provided an original take on the Detective Buddy genre.    Shane Black then wrote The Last Boy Scout,  Last Action Hero, and The Long Kiss Goodnight.  We may now feel rather superior to some of these movies, but I do not think their success was based on lowest common denominator appeal.  There was some original and witty writing in there.   But Black disappeared after The Long Kiss Goodnight.   The booze got to him.  

These seven years in the wilderness were followed in 2005 by his writer/directorial debute,  Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.  This title had previously been used for a 1970’s British comic thriller novel and a Pauline Kael film crit collection, but it nicely sums up the genre Black was keen not to subvert exactly but to view from another angle.    Kiss Kiss Bang Bang  was a post-modernist/buddy detective/action comedy that gave Val Kilmer a rare chance to show his comedic chops and matched him well with Robert Downey Jnr,  kick-starting Downey’s return to the screen after his own sojourn in the wilderness, for which many thanks.     The film was largely a critical, if not financial,  success and prompted director Jon Favreau to call Downey when Iron Man came around.    Black was recruited as the writer-director of Iron Man 3,  widely considered to be best written of its kind – and one that has taken over a billion dollars at the box office.   

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was smart, fast and fun and Black’s  new comedy action movie, The Nice Guys, is also smart, fast and fun, even if not quite in the same league (for me) as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.   It also offers us (mis)matched buddy detectives,  this time Russell Crowe  and Ryan Gosling. 

The Nice Guys is set in 1977 LA.  The time and place are crucial.  It is before cell or mobile phones, the curse of modern thriller writers (save of course for The Departed which, even though adapted from the a pre-mobile Infernal Affairs trilogy of Hong Kong thrillers, brilliantly incorporated the devices).   The 70’s soundtrack nails the ambiance.   It plot also involves the burgeoning porn industry that was still seen by some as glamorous.   Do you remember the critical/moral confusion that greeted Deep Throat? 

The script for The Nice Guys has been hanging around for a long time, and it seems that Ryan Gosling came across it and wanted to be in it.   Gosling, as Holland March,  plays directly against his Drive persona and gives us some of the humour he showed in  Crazy, Stupid  Love.  Holland is basically an incompetent, often drunken and sometimes unprofessional Private Eye,  recently widowed and bringing up his daughter Holly, a 13 year old with smarts.   Black wrote other such precocious kids into The Last Boy Scout,  Last Action Hero and Iron Man 3.   Fortunately Angourie Rice as Holly plays it well, adroitly avoiding the swampy yuck factor.   

Crowe, as Jackson Healy, is essentially freelance muscle, but has a rudimentary (if maybe delusional) moral code, preferring to lean on predators, particularly those who pick on young girls.    For him violence has a kind of purity.   He looks fondly back to a time when he ‘thought I made  difference, I was useful’ as he tackled and beat up a crazy gunman in a diner.     Gosling and Crowe work very well together.    

As the film begins Holland is trailing a young woman as part of a job.   Jackson mistakenly thinks he is stalking her, and attempts to ‘dissuade’ him, with prejudice that is very painful if not extreme.   They eventually join forces however,  wading through blood and sleaze,  porn and corporate corruption at the behest of Kim Basinger’s  Chief Justice.

Gosling and Crowe generate enough warmth and the script enough humour to hold us and carry us forward.  The action set  pieces are well put together - but if Shane Black couldn’t do that by now something would be very wrong.    There is, by the way, a joke about Detroit at the end of the movie that took the whole film to set up.  People from Detroit may not appreciate it, and I may have been the only person in the cinema who laughed out loud,  but hey!  

The movie pretends to be hard-boiled, but we know it is soft hearted, though a lot of people end up very dead.   Holland and Jackson are both trying to do the right thing, to be the nice guys, even if they sometimes need young Holly to be their moral compass.    There is an obvious and deliberate opportunity for a sequel, and it really looks as Gosling and Crowe enjoyed playing together.   This is certainly not American Hustle, but I recommend it even if I will have forgotten it by the end of the summer.  And if there is  a sequel?   I think I will be there.