Author: juliamc25

Awards Season Special: Carol (2015)

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★★★★★

Carol is director Todd Haynes’s gift to cinema. What begins as a chance meeting between two women in a department store develops slowly, delicately, tantalisingly into a deep and true bond of love, played out in the shadows of a society that would never understand. It is an exquisitely crafted, beautifully shot gem of a film that moves and delights.

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara shine in Todd Haynes’s Carol.

As Carol and Therese, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara dazzle throughout. Blanchett laces her character’s maturity and forwardness with traces of trepidation; so timid and vulnerable is she when hinting her true feelings to Therese that she is barely able to make eye contact. Mara, meanwhile, is even more impressive in her turn as the younger of the two lovers, weaving Therese’s innocence and inexperience with firm determination and resolve. These are two very different – dichotomous even – performances, wonderfully imbued with subtlety and nuance. They complement each other spectacularly and the dynamic between them is electric.

 What Haynes has delivered is in many ways a cinephile’s dream. It is gorgeously shot on Super 16mm film, lending such grainy depth and texture to the picture that each frame could well be a photograph. Meanwhile Sandy Powell’s reliably remarkable costume design adds both flavour and genuine believability to a New York of times gone by. Haynes makes strong reference to the great filmic romances which have preceded Carol, most notably David Lean’s brilliant Brief Encounter, from which it borrows certain gestures and an element of structure. In so doing, the film poises itself to claim its own place among the ranks of the great on-screen love stories of our time.

Carol (2015)

It is wholly unsurprising that Carol has been met with near-universal thunderous critical acclaim. In one of their earliest meetings, Carol remarks that Therese is “flung out of space.” The film, like Therese, is positively stellar.

Awards Season Special: The Revenant (2015)

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★★

The fundamental problem with Alejandro G. Iñ֤֤árritu’s The Revenant is that it wrongly presumes that suffering is art. What could have been an epic tale of man against nature, of the unyielding strength of the human spirit, winds up being a seemingly endless slog which feels every bit as gruelling and as torturous as the journey which it depicts.֤

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Hugh Glass in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant.

On a purely technical level, the film is a success. It captures the harshness and bitterness of a raging American winter to such an extent that it will send a deep chill into your very bones. Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography – famous, now, for its exclusive use of natural light – is eerily effective with its use of low light, and will surely earn him his third Oscar in as many years. However, it is possible to appreciate the skill involved in the making of a film whilst recognising that the film itself is not particularly interesting. Stunning visuals do not a plot make, and are certainly not enough to carry a two-and-a-half hour film which contains very little semblance of a plot other than a draining, revenge-spurred trek through the mountains.

One would be foolish to bet against Leonardo DiCaprio’s chances of winning the Best Actor Oscar later this month for his performance as the determined fur trapper Hugh Glass. It is a rough, physical performance, with more said through grunts and glares than actual words. But as demanding as the shoot itself may have been (multiple stories have emerged of crew members refusing to work in the harsh shooting conditions of the Canadian wilderness in the winter), there is very little about the role itself which stretches his abilities as an actor – unless, of course, eating a raw bison liver ticks this particular box. He would, perhaps, have been better served by a more interesting character. The irony of Hugh Glass is that he is on the move for the entire duration of The Revenant, yet remains firmly static throughout. Hardened and weary though he may be by the end, he is essentially no different a person by the time the credits roll than he is when the film begins. This is not to say that DiCaprio is underserving of the trophy this year – but this has more to do with the lack of any viable competition than the strength of his performance. We have seen him do better.

Leonardo DiCaprio looks poised to win his first Best Actor Oscar, 11 years after his first nomination.

The Revenant is arguably the ‘Marmite’ contender of the awards season. In the screening I attended, audience members left early in their droves. Yet when the lights came back on, many of those who had made it all the way to the end raved about its brilliance. Few stand on middle ground where this film is concerned; you will either love it or hate it.

Awards Season Special: Sicario (2015)

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★★★★

Tense and heart-pounding from the outset, the terrific Sicario sees young FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) enlisted and embroiled in a conflict between the US government and a Mexican drug cartel. This is a film where less is more; the performances are wonderfully understated and the set pieces are brilliantly restrained. The final product is less an action-heavy, border hopping, all-guns-blazing depiction of one small fragment of the war against drugs (though when it does do these things it does them well) and more a thought-provoking meditation on the way conflict blurs morality.

Sicario.png

Sicario (2015)

Emily Blunt’s acting muscle was established a decade ago in The Devil Wears Prada, but in Sicario she is given the chance to flex. She is the human touch in a cold, hardened world which her superiors inhabit and even perpetuate. Naturally, she is brilliant in every scene she is in, and one cannot help but share in her pain and frustration as Kate realises she is simply an innocent pawn who exists to be manipulated in a wider, sinister game. But where Blunt shines brightest is every moment she shares on screen with Benicio del Toro, whose chilling Alejandro Gillick represents the seemingly immoral, self-interested antithesis of who Macer understands herself to be.

The film establishes that ‘sicario’ is the Mexican word for ‘hitman’. How fitting, therefore, that on every technical level it hits the mark. Roger Deakins’ cinematography effortlessly creates the dark, dirty world of the drug battlefield, while Johan Johansson’s score is equally as potent and atmospheric. Even the sound of a single bullet as it punctuates a deathly silence is profoundly startling and unsettling, and it is unsurprising that Alan Robert Murray earned an Oscar nod for his sound work here.

Emily Blunt is the beating heart of Sicario.

Sicario is arguably most effective when it is still. Its finest, edge-of-the-seat action sequence takes place in a stationary traffic jam; the brutality of the drug cartel is made clear when lifeless, headless bodies are shown hanging from a bridge; the grounding realities of the danger of the drug trade are made most evident by an empty bed. It is ironic, then, that the stillness of individual moments, which take place across two countries divided by one static border, is what stands out in a film that is otherwise interested in the constantly shifting moral boundaries in an ongoing war.

Awards Season Special: Joy (2015)

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★★★

In David O. Russell’s latest cinematic offering, working mum Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence) endeavours to make something of herself whilst the mundanity of her family life threatens to ground her dreams and potential. In a fitting example of life imitating art, Jennifer Lawrence is tasked with the similar struggle of staying afloat despite the attempts of a clunky and lacklustre script to drag her down. Thankfully, like her real-life counterpart, she is not beaten.

Jennifer Lawrence dazzles in Joy.

In a nutshell, Joy tells the tale of the inventor of the Miracle Mop, whose rags-to-riches story was driven by her own creativity and entrepreneurial flair. As inspiring as Joy the character may be, though, there are glaring problems with Joy the film. The dialogue is painfully amateurish at best, miles away from the from the freshness of Russell’s script for Silver Linings Playbook and the originality of American Hustle. Tonally, it never works out exactly what it is trying to be, veering wildly between soapish melodrama and genuine efforts to present a believable biopic. The plot itself meanders about, eluded by a decent structure, floundering even at the notion of knowing where to end.

And yet, despite the flaws by which she is surrounded, Lawrence shines. She lights up the screen in every scene, and elevates an otherwise average film into something that is at the very least enjoyable and even somewhat engaging. Technically, she is perhaps too young for the role that she has been given; but Lawrence is Russell’s muse, and this was never going to be an obstacle for him. This decision pays off, too, because there is such a maturity about her that age does not matter for one moment.

Lawrence portrays the real-life creator of the Miracle Mop, Joy Mangano.

The film does have some merits beyond its central performance. Other acting highlights include a solid, reliable Robert De Niro in the role of Joy’s unstable, unreliable father, and an on-form Bradley Cooper as the QVC executive who gives Joy the break she needs. Moreover, a well-chosen selection of songs gives the film well-needed bursts of flavour not provided by its script.

The pervading idea of the film is that, every single day, “the ordinary meets the extraordinary.” It is a statement that is true of the Miracle Mop and a statement that is true of Joy itself. It is a wholly ordinary film met by a wholly extraordinary actress.