Friday 24 April 2009

In the Loop

It seems fitting than among the scandals of MP’s expenses and impending political tensions between Iran and the West that Armando Iannnuci’s political satire, In the Loop, should hit our movie screens.

The film follows the backroom boys of UK and US political life when an MP, Simon Foster (played at just the right level by Tom Hollander) makes an on-air radio gaff, referring to war in the middle east as “unforeseeable”. Lambasted as a loose cannon by his parties’ spin doctors and as a surprising hero to an underhand Washington pro-war committee, he is suddenly thrown into the spotlight along with his aides.

But it is not Foster who is the star of the show but vitriolic Scottish spin doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi spouting off expletives and insults to make Gordon Ramsay blush). Tucker’s frightening temper lashes out against anyone in his way as he bids to toe the party line and use any underhand tactic in the book to quash anti-war sentiments.

The film is filled with wonderful gags but no fear of hiding away from what is a highly intelligent and biting critique of the way political policy works backstage and the corrupt and farcical nature of it. The main figureheads of parliamentary and presidential life are kept off screen – the prime minister and president are only referred to in passing - but the message is clear. Something is badly wrong with the system.

Amid the large collection of laughs, Iannuci still has the power to shock, with one line in particular near the film’s conclusion deservedly eliciting audible gasps from the audience I watched it with.

Mix this with sizeable roles for James Gandolfini (otherwise known as Tony Soprano) as a general in opposition to the proposed conflict and Steve Coogan in fine form as an angry resident in Foster’s Northamptonshire constituency and it is a potent blend of well crafted comedy and edgy political comment.

Fans of the BBC4 series In the Thick Of It which this was a spin-off from should expect to see slight recasting from that but with roughly the same ensemble. Despite TV feel of the movie in terms of its shooting style, this is perhaps less nuanced than the series when it stretches itself over 90 minutes but it remains true to its source material, if one can call it that.

The fast flowing journey is neither partisan in its politics nor afraid to push the envelope with cutting comedy. It is an enjoyable and enthralling watch which occasionally gets slightly lost on the big screen but never by sacrificing its originality, humour and acerbic appraisal of 21st century global politics.

Saturday 4 April 2009

Martyrs


One definition of a martyr on a popular dictionary website is someone who endures great suffering. Perhaps then it is me who was the martyr in watching this French horror because endure it I had to, such was the poor quality of a film which has been surprisingly lauded by critics.

The sketchy plot originally surrounds a young woman trying to get revenge on individuals who abused her as a child. This eventually shifts into a torture environment, characterised by such films as Hostel and Saw. It should be noted that writer/director Pascal Laugier has claimed this an anti-Hostel, trying to counterpoint the alleged “torture-porn” genre.

The opening half the film plods along quite neatly, following established tools of the horror genre popularised by modern teen horror movies with a violent unknown figure savaging the female protagonist. The sense that this entity may not be real and may be a perception in the girl’s mind could be an interesting allusion to the irremovable stain of child abuse on a person’s life but this point is not followed up by the movie at all, as a supposed “shocking” film shies away from ever addressing tangible questions of child abuse.

After this initial stage of the movie, it then moves into its torture area. I must admit to not having seen other proponents of the torture genre before yet I did not find the rather pedestrian horror torture frightening, original or exciting. Repetitive scenes of someone being force fed, beaten or what can only be described as “washed with a sponge in a nasty way” become boring with nothing to say other than to ask the audience to watch in a way that felt voyeuristic.

This voyeurism is a major problem – if these scenes are designed for the titillation of some morbid excitement in the audience, it seems they deserve condemnation rather than praise. If however, as they claim, they are trying to make some sort of comment or give meaning then the film fails spectacularly.

The meaning and justification for the individual being tortured in the second half the film (who is a separate character from the female protagonist) is explained in a very loose way by a typical ‘mad female scientist’ character. Pseudo-intellectual babble about transcendence and transfiguration which sounds like it has been written by a below-par arts graduate attempt to purport that those are tortured reach a state so close to death that they have a strong connection to the afterlife. Therefore torturing them gives others an insight into heaven.

This premise leads to the tortured woman reaching this state of “martyrdom” and she informs the mad woman of her experience (only after of course enduring more torture). Without giving away the ending, it feels like the writer is making this up as he goes along with a lack of cohesiveness to the plot, lack of story arc, and the sense that this is two flawed stories spliced together.

If you believe horror should be more about set pieces and eliciting an emotive response from the audience, it also fails with a lack of punch, innovation or the ability to grip the audience with sketchy ideas and uninteresting, bland violence. I have rarely felt so robbed by paying to see A film than I did after seeing martyrs.