The Mole

George Smiley is a quiet man. He says little, and in his large glasses and grey suits, he looks like a typical British government employee. Sometimes he looks slightly taken aback by something; most often, his face betrays almost no outward emotion. Smiley, underplayed by Gary Oldman, is the hero in Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John Le Carre’s eponymous novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Previously and famously adapted as a television series starring Alec Guinness in the 1970s, Tinker tells the story of Smiley’s search for a mole in the British intelligence community, all working together at what is aptly and only somewhat ironically referred to as the Circus. The aim of this establishment is to protect Britian’s interests against the Russians during the Cold War. Top management is aware of the presence of the mole, and Smiley is either their hero or their fall guy in his attempts to figure out the identity of the mole.

He has a few options. There’s Allerline (Toby Jones), an ambitious man who took over when their original commander, simply referred to as Control (John Hurt), stepped down from the position; Haydon (Colin Firth), a posh and amiable fellow; the rather dark Roy Bland (Cirian Hinds), who is somewhat of an oblique character; and Esterhause (David Dencik), whose allegiance to the United Kingdom may not be above suspicion. Indeed, any one of these men could be spying for the Russians. Tom Hardy and Mark Strong co-star; both are nearly unrecognisable.

I have here provided only the most basic idea of the plot of the film. It is more complicated than is suggested here, and much of the strength of the film lies in its structure and how it fleshes out its characters, even the socially elusive Smiley, and introduces other characters and elements to the plot in a way so unobtrusive it’s barely noticeable. I’m not surprised that David Bordwell has referred to the film as an anti-Bourne. Tinker is sophisticated, intelligent and unconcerned with spectacle. Here no-one leaps across rooftops; the film is understated and develops the characters instead of serving them up as plot fodder. In terms of character and aesthetics, it reminded me of Munich and Carlos. Indeed, Alfredson is an assured director, working with superb cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema to construct some impressive, thoughtful cinematic compositions.

This is why I find it odd that Tinker has been described as clinical and detached. There is so much investment in the visuals and the characters that no-one can mistake the film’s central humanity for anything else. There’s a scene where Smiley confronts a specific character about his role in recent events. While they talk, the reason for them being there becomes clear – it hadn’t been established earlier. Their dialogue has as much to do with the disclosure as the space around them, until finally Alfredson introduces something major in the background that heightens the emotional power of the scene. Not only do we come to further understand what is at stake for the character in the scene, we also realise that there is a very clear time limit (or deadline) involved.

The film has also been called confusing and complicated; it is certainly complicated, but definitely not confusing. As one Twitter fan put it, “it’s called attention – pay it”. The film gives you everything you need to know exactly what happened by the time the film ends (and what a perfect ending it is). It happens only on rare occasions that a genre film leaves me breathless, speechless and stunned, such is the case when material transcends the limitations associated with its form so majestically. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a sophisticated, meticulous work, a film of astonishing political and thematic clarity anchored by some of the best actors currently working in the British film industry.

Eros, Thanatos

Any film bringing together two of psychology’s pioneers is surely a dream project. In bringing Christopher Hampton’s play The Talking Cure to the big screen (inspired by John Kerr’s breathtaking book A Most Dangerous Method), Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg signed two of the best actors of their generation to play particularly formidable figures: Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung and Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud. The film, the appropriately titled A Dangerous Method, covers the period before World War I in Jung and Freud’s lives as their careers intersected and Jung became to heir apparent to Freud’s psycho-analysis. Only, as we know, that never happened, and the film deals with their initial courtship as well as their eventual falling out.

That alone is enough for a two and a half hour film, but Cronenberg inserts a third major character into the only 99 minute long films: Keira Knightley as Sabine Spielrein, who starts out as one of Jung’s patients – a hysteric - before becoming a psychiatrist in her own right. Spielrein’s story is in itself an entire film and in attempting to give all the film’s plot lines and relationships equal weight, Cronenberg denies himself (and the viewer) the opportunity to develop and engage with a given relationship in detail.

A Dangerous Method is also one of the more un-Cronenbergian films the director has made. Given his proclivity for sex and violence, there is a strange sense of restraint surrounding the film, as if Cronenberg was holding back when his material gave him free reign to present some vivid scenes of both sex and violence. (There is some spanking, but in light of Crash, that’s hardly anything). With one or two exceptions, Cronenberg doesn’t inject the film with any of his usual visual flair, and his depiction of the rise and fall of the Jung-Freud dynamic feels like it’s only skimming the surface (and it is).

A Dangerous Method is then in one sense strangely visually conservative and at the same time appropriately confined, in that the sense of inertia that characterises much of what happens on screen anticipates a beautifully underplayed, under written ending that delicately introduces one of Jung’s most famous dreams – “Europe is flooded...”- into a film in need of some adventure.

Through gritted teeth

In Antarctica, only Norwegian researchers can hear you scream. There’s trouble at a Nordic research base when a recently excavated frozen alien creature – the Thing! – amazingly breaks free from its prison of ice after thousands of years to run amok. Many characters die while the Thing squeals and lashes around with its many soupy tentacles. Matthijs van Heijningen’s remake-prequel of/to John Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic The Thing, also called The Thing, is an unimaginative mess. Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton star as Ripley-ain’t-gonna-be and Identityless Macho Pilot in a story that refers to its forerunner only cosmetically, without honouring Carpenter’s commitment to paranoia.

Carpenter’s film had the tag line “Man is the warmest place to hide”, and demonstrated that the creature can imitate humans (leading to a classic scene where Kurt Russell’s heroic Macready tests his colleagues’ humanity). The new film pretends to be interested in the same possibilities but pays it no respect. Instead, Van Heijningen is content to have his characters run around their snowy base camp with flame throwers while the titular thing – a terrible looking entity resembling an explosion at the pasta factory – culls the cast. The film’s main problem is its exposition heavy screenplay, which goes so far as to include an entire scene solely dedicated to telling the viewer that there are grenades in the base, thereby foreshadowing the use of said grenades in a later scene. The Thing is a less-than-pedestrian effort and contender for one of 2012’s worst films.

Speaking of remakes, Don’t be Afraid of the Dark, directed by Troy Nixey and co-written by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone), is itself a remake of the similarly titled 1970s horror that apparently inspired Del Toro to specialise in the genre. What a pity, then, that this is the weakest film Del Toro’s to be associated with. After a suitably tense opening scene, the film settles into a strangely slow pace as experienced genre aficionados tick off cliché after cliché, including but not limited to Careless Father (Guy Pearce, in a terrible performance). Pearce’s character is restoring Blackwood Manor to its former glory together with his girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes). When his young daughter Sally (Bailee Madison) comes to live with them, she encounters an ancient evil (I guess) intent on destroying the family in some way or another.

There are some moderately suspenseful scenes but Nixey is too eager to show off his CGI critters to sustain the suspense. He never develops the story to its full potential: when the film’s slightly unpredictable climax arrives, it’s a scene that in a better film would signal the third act of the film, not an abrupt ending. Have I told you about the vastly superior scary movie The Orphanage?

Gods Will

 

Is Prometheus the dark side of both intelligent design and evolution? Where not only the creator(s) are dismayed by their doomed creation, but where organic life itself somewhat inevitably leads to great destruction? It all starts quite amiably, with a sense of wonder; scientists discover proof that numerous cave paintings on earth actually provide a star map to a location where, if their theory is correct, humanity will find its celestial origins. After this brief exposition, an assortment of characters – including the optimistic, spiritual Shaw (Noomi Rapace), her lover and evolusionist Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), pilot Janek (Idris Elba) and corporate representative Vickers (Charlize Theron) – arrive at their destination, LV-233 (I think. Don’t mail me about this, please.)

Part of the crew, and indeed their guardian to a great extent, is the android David (Michael Fassbender), who learns ancient languages and watches Lawrence of Arabia while his human counterparts hibernate in cryogenic sleep. Once they’re on the planet, events occur that make it clear to the researchers that their lives may be in imminent danger.

Prometheus is officially the long-awaited prequel to Alien, and both are directed by the same director, Ridley Scott, who was also responsible for Blade Runner and Black Hawk Down. Scott is a great visualist, and the primary interest given to set design and aesthetics is clear in most of his films (Matchstick Men is a notable exception). But to simply refer to Prometheus as the Alien prequel is to invite misconceptions and anticipate dashed expectations: this is not an Alien movie. Prometheus is an expansion and exploration of the universe established in the 1979 film, but it differs considerably from the rest of the films occupying that universe. It isn’t the haunted house story of the first film, nor the military survival horror of the second film (James Cameron’s finest hour). It follows that Alien Resurrection is also far removed from Scott’s film; of all these other entries, Prometheus is closest to the unfairly maligned Alien 3 with its emphasis on claustrophobia and nihilism.

Prometheus is something else entirely, a film unconcerned with any aliens as we've come to know them, using the first film’s “space jockey” discovery that opens that film to establish a link between the movies. Another link is the android presence, which features in all the films. Fassbender is masterful as David, following in the footsteps of Ian Holm and Lance Henriksen. Another link is on the series’ emphasis on birth, which here makes for one of the film’s nightmarish highlights.

If Prometheus isn’t an Alien movie, it is certainly science fiction with an emphasis on hostility corporate ethics, much like the other entries in the series. To discuss the film and its themes in detail would require a substantive essay filled with spoilers. Instead of doing that, I will rather point you towards some of the interesting pieces already in existence about the film. What I can say, is that I am firmly in the pro-Prometheus camp (Scott’s visual design is striking, even if his science is not above suspicion at all times and if his characters sound a bit cardboard at times). If it is a flawed film - its final scene demonstrates a lack of imagination and a sense of overkill simultaneously – it’s a fascinating failure at worst.

For some absorbing reading, go to Bilge Ebiri’s piece at http://ebiri.blogspot.com/2012/06/this-is-not-prometheus-thinkpiece.html and take it from there.