Category: Irish Cinema
The General (Ireland-US 1998)
Brendan Gleeson as Martin Cahill and Jon Voigt as Inspector Kenny. Cahill often hid his face when questioned or interviewed.
Does British film culture appreciate its filmmakers enough? John Boorman is one of the most distinctive producer-writer-director figures to have made films in the UK. He left the country to work in Hollywood but then to settle in Ireland partly, I think, because he felt that filmmaking in the UK was not a serious undertaking. He has been recognised in the UK with a knighthood but not with the level of appreciation by his peers that he deserves.
The General was perhaps the last of Boorman’s films to make money and to achieve critical recognition, though he has completed four films since (the last of which was Queen and Country in 2014). The General was screened in competition in Cannes and Boorman won the Best Director award for the second time. It is now streaming on MUBI but in a print which is slightly different to that which appeared in cinemas in 1998. The film was released as a ‘Scope picture in black and white and therefore not a film that Hollywood studios were prepared to pick up for distribution – i.e. to pre-buy and therefore to effectively co-finance. Boorman had to make the film using his own resources and to borrow a large chunk of the budget from the bank. He also received some Irish public funding. Only after the Cannes win did Warner Bros. agree to distribute the film in Europe. Boorman has argued that in the 1990s no studio would support black and white films because TV stations wouldn’t show them. His film was eventually released on home video in the US. The film was actually shot on colour stock and printed to monochrome and the version on MUBI is presented with almost all the colour bleached out and just some vestiges of pale colour visible in certain scenes. Boorman talks about lighting for colour and black and white at some length in an interview printed in Sight and Sound, June 1998.
Cahill’s gang meeting in a local snooker hall.
The ‘General’ of the title is the Dublin cat burglar turned gang-leader and ‘folk hero’ Martin Cahill who became a well-known figure in Ireland during the 1980s and early 1990s. He was assassinated in 1994 in a hit claimed by the Provisional IRA. Boorman credits Paul Williams for his book on Cahill published in 1995. Because Cahill’s story was so well-known, Boorman decided to start the film with his assassination and then narrate the events as one long flashback. His choice of black and white was also partly concerned with wanting to create some historical distance. It’s not difficult to see why Boorman was attracted to the story. Many of Boorman’s films feature protagonists prepared to take on the world and Cahill was a rebel, a very complex personality but also one easy to engage with, despite the vicious and cruel aspects of his behaviour. He is played in the film by Brendan Gleeson who in 1998 was just beginning to break through in lead roles in Irish films. From the photos I’ve seen Gleeson bears some resemblance to Cahill and he obviously researched the role carefully.
Cahill with the sisters he met as a boy (Frances on the left played by Maria Doyle Kennedy and Tina played by Angeline Ball)
Cahill was an interesting figure for several reasons but primarily because he was a working-class lad who, at least initially, became a thief and a burglar because of his family’s fairly desperate economic situation. In an early scene we see him refusing to be rehoused because it would mean losing his place in a community he felt comfortable living within. Later he developed a more sophisticated persona as a joker who was eventually rehoused by the council closer to the affluent suburbs of North Dublin and gradually his ambitions as a criminal developed substantially. He taunted courts and played the system quite intelligently while at the same time developing the kinds of habits that would trip him up eventually. He had no real vices apart from crime except for a love of posh cars and motorbikes – flaunting his wealth while still ‘signing on’ the dole. The ‘Robin Hood’ tag came about because he divided the spoils of his major crimes equally among his gang members. But he could also be horrendously violent to any of his gang who disobeyed orders and his criminal activity was also damaging to the community he purported to support. Boorman does not take sides. He presents Cahill in context and offers us a police inspector (a composite of real Garda officers) played by Jon Voight, who is in some ways a similar kind of a figure but with police authority behind him. I’ve only given a brief description of Cahill – there is much more to add that the film presents in interesting ways.
Adrian Dunbar as Cahill’s ‘lieutenant’ Noel Curley
I’m not sure why I missed this film in 1998. I certainly remember its release but I guess I must simply have been too busy with full-time work to be able to see it. I’m conscious that the image of Ireland within the EU has changed since the 1980s but Cahill’s story has remained within the consciousness of filmmakers. Joel Schumacher’s film Veronica Guerin (Ireland-UK-US 2003), about the killing of a well-known journalist, also features Martin Cahill and his gang and much more recently the Irish TV crime serial Hidden Assets (Ireland 2021) features the ‘Criminal Assets Bureau’ set up in order to trace and recover the money and valuables stolen by the likes of the Cahill gang. Hidden Assets stars Angeline Ball who in The General plays one of the two sisters from Martin Cahill’s childhood who he eventually makes part of his family – he married one and with her consent also had children with her sister. The other notable actor in The General is a young Adrian Dunbar who plays Cahill’s closest gang member Noel Curley. This is ironic in terms of viewing in the 2020s since Dunbar is now one of the key figures in the success of Line of Duty, the TV series about the unit investigating police corruption in the UK.
Cahill takes out a street light in one of several cleverly worked schemes
The other aspect of The General is the sense that this is about a city and a country that has changed profoundly over the last 25 years. Ireland has thrived as an EU member, in many ways overtaking the UK in wealth creation and liberating itself from many of the restraints that held back Irish society for so long. Boorman made a film exploring the effects of the so-called ‘Irish tiger’ economy in The Tiger’s Tail (2006), again starring Brendan Gleeson. Irish cinema has also developed, throwing off its much of its dependence on the UK and US and finding its own stories. The 1990s was also the time that Roddy Doyle’s novels about working-class life in North Dublin were filmed – The Commitments (1991), The Snapper (1993) and The Van (1996). The other impact on Irish life that has been important in changing the country was the Good Friday Agreement that came into force in December 1999 and which reduced the activities of the IRA and the Loyalist paramilitaries, both of which play a role in Martin Cahill’s story. He dismissed both sets of paramilitaries and this lack of political awareness was a major factor in his downfall.
The General is a very entertaining watch, made with real flair, crowned by a superb central performance by Brendan Gleeson and with strong contributions by the supporting cast. Boorman uses two Van Morrison songs on the soundtrack which work well. As well as streaming on MUBI, The General can be rented cheaply on Microsoft (but I don’t know which version this might be).
LFF 2020 #2: Wildfire (Ireland-UK 2020)
Kelly (Nika McGuigan, left) and Lauren (Nora-Jane Noone) Photo by Aidan Monaghan/WILDFIRE
‘Wildfire’ is a good title for this intense 84 minute drama/melodrama that tells a personal story carefully set in a political-cultural context, allowing a metaphor to remain visible in the flames. This is an ‘Irish’ film though it is officially an Ireland-UK co-production under an EU framework agreement. You won’t read too much about that anymore and instead the headlines will be about ‘borders’. Fortunately there is still some sanity about and the film has funding from the BFI, BBC and Channel 4 as well as other Irish and UK partners. It’s already listed as ‘coming soon’ on Film 4 so I hope it will get a wide audience.
Kelly is a young woman of around 30 who we meet on a ferry in the Irish Sea, about to return to Ireland after a year away. I’m not sure if she lands in the South or the North but either way she heads for the border and her home town. Her older sister Lauren has not seen her since she left without warning and this narrative ‘disturbance’ has profound effects on everyone, including Lauren’s partner Sean and the sisters’ aunt, Veronica. Kelly and Lauren have lost both parents in tragic circumstances and their mother’s death still seems mysterious to Kelly. The film opens with a montage of news clips that range from the ‘Troubles’ to ‘Brexit’ and the town is built around a river which straddles the border so that as children the girls would swim “in both countries” at once.
It’s not easy dealing with your shared past . . .
I’ve seen one review that pitches the film’s aesthetic as a tussle between “gritty social realism and magic realist melodrama” and that’s not a bad suggestion, though I would argue that social realism often uses melodrama and that Kelly’s hallucinatory moments could be read as the product of her psychological state. The same (Irish) reviewer writes: “We’re not great when it comes to dealing with grief, trauma and other mental health issues.” Given what succeeding generations in Ireland have suffered as a result of British colonial intervention over hundreds of years that’s not surprising. The promise of no borders, now seemingly to be broken by Johnson and his cronies, simply exacerbates the confusion over identity and the pain of broken lives.
It’s staggering that this is a début film by writer-director Cathy Brady who has previously received recognition for her short films. The strength of the film derives from the performances and direction and it is no surprise to discover that Brady and her two principals, played by Nika McGuigan and Nora-Jane Noonan, were able to create something so powerful through extensive workshops over a year of preparation. The film was a genuine co-production. It seems to have been made across the island of Ireland and I think that’s important. I didn’t recognise the area in which the town was located and perhaps that’s a good thing. Cathy Brady is listed as coming from Newry in Co. Down and so is Nika McGuigan, though her father, the boxer Barry McGuigan was born in Co. Monaghan. Tragically Nika died before the film completed post-production from a return of the cancer she first had as a young teenager. What a talent was lost on the basis of this performance. I realise looking through Nora-Jane Noonan’s credits that I must have seen her in several films. I might go back and look at the horror film The Descent (2005) which I remember using with students. Wildfire is very much a film about the sisters and often it’s the other female characters who they run up against. It’s always good to see Kate Dickie, here playing Aunt Veronica and in some ways the villain of the piece. The other female ‘presence’ is the mother (Olga Wehrly). Cathy Brady is supported in the production by some of the leading figures in the recent upsurge of independent films by European women. The film was shot by Crystel Fournier, cinematographer on the first three features by Céline Sciamma and Carlo Cresto-Dina, one of three producers on the film also acted as a producer on the first three features directed by Alice Rohrwacher. No wonder Cathy Brady is attracting a lot of interest.
Dancing to Them
I enjoyed this film very much. At moments I wanted to look away and shout ‘No!’ but that’s my problem because I was so engaged. I’ve read quite a few reviews of the film and I’m a bit fed up with reviewers who can’t cope with melodrama i.e. they think it is a bad thing and one refers to it as ‘silliness’. There are several reviews which argue that the film ‘loses its way’ in the final third. On the contrary it builds up to the finale we have been waiting for. In a key scene with no ‘scene-setting’, the sisters are in a bar dancing together wildly to Them with Van Morrison shouting his way through ‘G-L-O-R-I-A’. We already know that one of Kelly’s memories as a child was listening to her mother singing and dancing along to Van. From this point on there is no stopping.
I hope my other picks for the festival are as good as this and I hope to catch the film again on Film 4 or, better still, in a cinema if I ever get into one again.
GFF20 #4: Arracht (Ireland 2019)
This debut feature shot in just 20 days on the coast of Connemara (the seaboard of present day Co. Galway) tells the story of one small community at the time of potato blight and famine in 1845. It’s a narrative that focuses on a personal story of survival within the context of the wider story of English indifference to Irish suffering. The inciting incident is the arrival in a small fishing community of an Irishman, Patsy (Dara Devaney) who has served with the British armed forces. He is most likely a deserter and he has strong anti-British feelings. A fisherman Colmán Sharkey is persuaded to put him up for a few nights. The potato blight is coming soon and Colmán can smell it on the wind. At the same time, the local English landlord has raised the rents on the smallholdings. Colmán decides to try to persuade the landlord to delay the rent rise for the whole community but foolishly perhaps he allows Patsy to join his delegation. What happens next will drive Colmán into hiding during the terrible impact of the famine. Colmán represent a man at peace with the world in before the blight arrives. He’s an intelligent man with extensive local knowledge of his environment and an uneasy but stable relationship with his landlord. But his world is going to be turned upside down.
Colmán (Dónall Ó Héalai) and his brother Sean face the landlord’s English agents outside their smallholding
Dónall answering a question in GFT2
The central section of the film focuses on Colmán’s almost impossible struggle for survival as most of his friends and family succumb to starvation and disease. His salvation comes partly from his chance encounter with a sick young girl Kitty (Saise Ní Chuinn) who he is able to save and who will help him remain sane. In the final sequences, the past will ‘return’ and Colmán will find some form of closure. I’m outlining the narrative in this way to demonstrate that this is not a full scale story of the famine, or of English persecution of the Irish and the resulting migrations from the West of Ireland. It’s much more one man’s story. We were lucky in Glasgow to have the lead actor Dónall Ó Héalai present for a Q&A. This was the second screening of the film at GFF, the first being the UK premiere. Dónall proved an engaging guest and spoke about the intense preparation for the shoot, including the ‘controlled’ starvation dieting and the skills needed for the water-based sequences. I found these an interesting aspect of the story. In discussion, Colman explains to the English landlord that many families gave up their fishing traditions because growing potatoes was easier. Colman’s use of his own boat takes him outside of the economic trap that catches his neighbours. Those who survive also need to know the old ways of using local resources like the kelp on the rocky shore as well as the shellfish.
Siobhán O’Kelly as Áine, one of the survivors in the community, who, like Colman, has the knowledge of flora and fauna
The film is the début effort of writer-director Thomas Sullivan. It features stunning cinematography by Kate McCullough in CinemaScope ratio and her long experience of documentary is evident in presenting Colmán’s life in hiding and at sea. Music by Kila and editing by Mary Crumlish add to the presentation of the local environment. Many of the cast, including Dónall Ó Héalai, are locals. This part of Connemara is an important region in the Gaeltacht and the film uses Gaelic throughout apart from the confrontations with the English and their agents. At just 86 minutes the film offers a thrilling and hard-hitting experience illuminating one aspect of the colonial suppression of the Irish. I was reminded of a similar representation of British exploitation of colonised people some thirty years earlier in The Nightingale (Australia 2018) which featured the experience of an Irish woman at the hands of British soldiers as well as the murder of indigenous peoples.
Patsy and Colman outside Colmán‘s home close to the sea
The rights for distribution of Arracht are held by Break Out Pictures for Ireland and the UK. The Irish release date is April 3rd. In the UK, the company is listed as ‘Break Thru Pictures’ and the film is listed for the same opening date but no details of how many screens or locations are on the release schedule as yet. There is also an ‘international title’ of ‘Monster’ which may be used in other territories. That is an ambiguous title that could refer to Patsy Kelly or to the famine or the British colonialists. I was very impressed by Arracht and I hope it finds its audience in both Ireland and the UK. Most of the reviews I’ve seen have been very good but the rather dismissive view in Sight and Sound seems to me to miss the point of the film, comparing it to Black ’47 (Ireland 2018) and complaining that it has “no similar wit or ideas”. I was unable to catch Black ’47 in the cinema but will look out for as it is set in the same region during the famine. It seems to be a ‘larger’ film with a starry cast and more of an action narrative. I think there is room for many more stories from the 1840s, especially in post-Brexit UK obsessed by an imaginary past. The Glasgow audience clearly enjoyed the film.
LIFF 2019 #10: Calm with Horses (UK-Ireland 2019)
Cosmo Jarvis and Barry Keoghan are brilliant as low-life gangsters
This is an impressive feature film debut from director Nick Roland and writer Joe Murtagh (based on a Colin Barrett story of the same name). It features a low level gang in the west of Ireland who blight the lives of all they touch, including themselves. It is the not-very-bright protagonist, Arm (brilliantly played by Cosmo Jarvis who was in Lady Macbeth, UK, 2016), with whom we are invited to sympathise with the most despite the violence he metes out at the beginning of the film. Just before this he voiceovers, a technique not used in the rest of the film, that we shouldn’t think that men of violence like to be violent. It is an unnecessary statement because it soon becomes clear that that’s what the film’s about; in addition, Jarvis’ ‘hard man’ stare clearly conceals a deep vulnerability.
Arm is an ex-boxer who leaves the ring after killing a man during a bout and is recruited by the nascent leader of the Dever family, superbly played by Barry Keoghan, as his enforcer. There’s something of an Iago about Keoghan’s character, whispering into Arm’s ear about how his ex-partner is trying to blackmail him for money for his autistic son. You can almost see the conflict boiling beneath Arm’s battered face as he struggles with his loyalties. In the way it is pronounced, the ‘Dever family’ sounds like the ‘Devil family’ and the moniker is not far wrong.
Cinematographyer Piers McGrail manages to drain the stunning landscapes of western Ireland of their grandeur, giving a suitably gritty look that is far from the tourist ‘Kerrygold’ imagery. Most of the people, too, who populate the film are miles away from the whimsical friendliness of the Emerald Isle. Instead we see desperate people in desperate circumstances. There is some hope, though, through the mother of Arm’s child, played by Niamh Algar, who is striving to do the best for her difficult son; and Anthony Welsh has a small role as a BAME student from the north of England researching the use of horses in therapy and he punctures the insularity of the narrative world. Maybe in the original story the horses are more central; here they are peripheral.
It’s an impressive film that, although offering a sort of redemption, avoids any sentimentality in its ending. I’m looking forward to this talented crews’ next offerings. It’s due for release in the UK next March.
Gaza (Ireland-Palestine 2019)
This was the second film I watched at the Delius Arts Centre during Bradford’s 2019 Refugee Week. As with Beats of the Antonov, this was a screening with a very engaged and committed audience who, as the post-screening discussion revealed, were supportive of the Palestinian cause. We were privileged to see this film which was first screened at Sundance in January 2019 and has not, to my knowledge, been theatrically released in the UK.
Gaza is credited with twin directors, Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell. Both are Irish and both are highly experienced in their own fields but are here making a first theatrical documentary. Garry Keane has been making documentary films for television since the 1990s. Andrew McConnell is an award-winning photographer who has specialised in projects in parts of the world where conflict and displacement are common. He has lived in Beirut for the last eight years. Garry Keane owns the production company Real Films and this is a co-production with Canadian input and what appears to be a local/regional crew. Gaza is very restricted, because of the blockade, in terms of local equipment and facilities for filmmaking. That’s something the film might have explored.
The Ambulance paramedic
As you might imagine Gaza is beautifully photographed with arresting imagery and it is put together with great skill (and some great music). It introduces us to a range of people living and working in Gaza and offers images of a unique community of 2 million people crammed into a narrow strip of land. We rarely see such images in TV coverage of the conflict between its residents and the Israeli state which controls its two longest borders (the other closed border is with Egypt to the south). It’s perhaps best to let the directors present their intentions themselves:
From the very beginning we wanted to address the disparity between perception and reality. Having spent years working on the ground, we knew that Gaza was so much more than its portrayal in the media. This unique and vibrant land, rich in culture and history, is home to a people who are oppressed and dehumanised but who are also resilient and strong, and who want nothing more than to live normal lives.
. . . Through a cast of major and minor characters, we meet Palestinians from all walks of life, who individually have a strong story to tell but who together, create a portrait of Gaza like no other. The siege, brought on by history, Israel, Hamas and the abandonment of the international community, is the villain of our story. (Directors’ Notes – see the whole statement on www.gazadocumentary.com)
I’m certainly not going to disagree with the first statement and the film’s biggest achievement is to represent the resilience of the people of Gaza in the face of the most difficult conditions imaginable. The problem with the film for me lies in its structure and in the last statement above which suggests that there is a clear villain in the story. I question the definition of the ‘villain’, but perhaps the fact that for most of the time the filmmakers try to avoid ‘political issues’ – but are then forced to face them by circumstance – means they actually create more confusion and frustration than if they had taken a clearer line to begin with.
The primary aim seems to be to present us with individuals and families in Gaza (they don’t say if this is Gaza City or other settlements further down the coastal strip). We meet a whole range of people from cello-playing student Karma to a tailor, from an ambulance driver to a taxi driver and from a family of traditional fishermen to a theatre director and many more. Each is presented in situ and given the opportunity to tell their story – there is no ‘authorial commentary’ as such. During the period in which they shot the film, the directors were faced with some of the most violent altercations along the border with many casualties amongst Gaza’s youth and bomb damage which killed families further away from the border. This is shown, sometimes in long shots, sometimes up close, sometimes with shaky hand-held camerawork in the midst of the running crowds. We never see the Israelis who fire across the border at the youths hurling stones but we do get a glimpse of a huge rally of Hamas supporters and a few shots of Palestinian paramilitaries.
Getting the wounded out of the firing line
My worry is that for audiences who don’t know the intricacies of the politics of resistance by the Palestinians, these ‘glimpses’ are likely to be confusing. For instance, at one point we see a banner with Yasser Arafat’s face and also a banner for the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), opposed to both Hamas and Fatah (the Palestinian political party founded by Arafat). In the film, Hamas appears to be something like a dark cloud hanging over the territory. I know it’s difficult to present the political situation in an objective way and that you can’t show everything in a 90 minute documentary, but by not discussing, explaining or confronting Hamas while at the same time showing them on the ground, a political position is being adopted by default.
The other problem with the structure is that there are arguably too many people who speak, often saying similar things – and that the people who do speak are mainly men. Apart from the cello-player and her mother I don’t remember other female witnesses (i.e. who speak on camera) and this seems a mistake in the current climate. Most of the people who do speak are self-employed or in public service jobs. We know half the working population are unemployed so why don’t we hear more from them? Reading the notes on the film’s official website it seems that the main structuring device is to show the the cello player and one of the fisherman’s sons as contrasting figures, but I think that gets lost in the range of other stories we hear.
The fisherman’s sons
All of this may sound like nit-picking and an attempt to prescribe what the film should do. I can appreciate that but another point is that documentary is something of a Palestinian specialism. For many years documentaries formed the major share of all Palestinian film production. Now we have diaspora filmmakers returning to the West Bank to make films and others living in Israel or occupied territories making fiction films. Those Palestinian films are usually committed to the Palestinian desire to get back control of their lands. It seems this film wants to simply state: “This is how people in Gaza live.” By not mentioning the politics perhaps they will get wider audiences on TV? But they still won’t avoid the charge of ‘propaganda’ – see The Hollywood Reporter review.
The film shows the closed border crossing to Egypt but does not explain why it is closed. An Egyptian in the Bradford audience pointed out that Egyptians who might ordinarily have supported their “brothers in Gaza” have come to believe that Hamas is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt which formed the first administration in Cairo after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. I also suspect that the Egyptian military, as the real power in the country, is now aligned to American foreign policy and therefore to the American-Israeli alliance.
I want to re-assert that the film does present the resilience of Gazans and it also stresses the despair and the insult that comes from the 3 mile limit for Gaza’s access to the sea imposed by Israel. At one time Gaza was famous for its fish, said to be the best in the East Mediterannean. Since this film was made the limit has been extended to 12 miles in the central coastal area and six miles in the North and South. This is still less than the 20 mile zone set for the Oslo Accords in the 1990s. Many believe the blockade and its enforcement by Israeli gunboats is illegal under international law. In the film, many of the interviewees look out to sea and the fisherman greets his son who has been imprisoned by the Israelis for fishing beyond the three mile limit. Not surprisingly, the local waters are now over-fished.
I’m not sure how Gaza will be distributed. It sounds like it might get a theatrical release in North America and surely it will be/has been seen in Ireland. Elsewhere in Europe, given the TV funders listed, it should appear on TV and on DVD/VOD. Despite my reservations I would urge anyone to watch the film since the directors do achieve their primary aim of showing us life in contemporary Gaza – life lived by ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances.
Greta (Ireland-US-South Korea 2018)
At first Frances and Greta get along fine . . .
Surprisingly, this is Neil Jordan’s first cinema film since Byzantium in 2012. He seems to have spent the intervening years working on two TV series and writing a couple of novels. It’s always good to see him back on the big screen and Greta shares some of the same elements as Byzantium, though the genre base has shifted from vampires to psychological horror with distinctive gothic touches. The principal characters are again played by talented female actors having a lot of fun. As Nick suggested after the screening, Greta is perhaps best described as ‘classy schlock’. I certainly found it entertaining and there might be something else there which a second viewing might illuminate – or not!
The premise is straightforward. Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz) is a young woman down from university in Massachusetts and now waitressing in an upmarket restaurant in New York at a difficult time in her life after her mother’s death and her father’s distant behaviour. She has a flatmate Erica (Maika Monroe) who appears to be a follower of ‘wellness’ regimes and the like. One day Frances finds an expensive handbag on the subway and takes it in person to the strange little house owned by Greta Hideg (Isabelle Huppert). Erica had warned her not to meet Greta, but initially Frances doesn’t mind the company of someone she sees as a lonely older woman and a social relationship begins. She learns that Greta is missing her own daughter’s company. But the initial companionship won’t last long. Greta is not someone you want to let into your life . . .
Frances with her flatmate Erica. What is Erica’s role in the narrative going to be?
Greta is an unsettling film to watch. Although set in New York, the film was shot in Toronto and Dublin and Greta’s house and the restaurant where Frances works are odd locations. The film is shot beautifully by Seamus McGarvey (and presented from a 4K DCP in Bradford) and edited by Nick Emerson – a pair of Northern Irishmen to go with Sligo-born Neil Jordan. The music is by Javier Navarrete who composed for Byzantium and earlier for Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish films Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone. Nick was particularly taken by the sound design by Stefan Henrix. Sound is still and ‘understudied’ aspect of film narratives and on a first viewing/listening I find it difficult to analyse any sequence in detail. What I did notice in Greta was that apart from the very obvious music cueing of certain sequences (which works well I think) there is also a harshness and jarring effect coming through the combination of cinematography, editing and sound effects. From the limited amount of promotional material on the film that I’ve seen, Jordan (who co-wrote the script with Ray Wright, one-time collaborator with both George A. Romero and Wes Craven) wanted to look back to 1980s/90s thrillers like Fatal Attraction. What he seems to have achieved is a strange mix of that earlier period of thrillers sliding into horror with some modern concerns and characters. In this respect the casting of Moretz as the ‘up and coming’ young actor, pitted against Huppert seems a good choice. And while the mise en scène seems to look back, the use of modern phone technologies is well integrated in the narrative.
Domesticity seems an unlikely outcome for this relationship
Once Greta’s behaviour teeters over into the clearly dangerous Jordan cranks up the pace, scrambling through the gears and the last third of the film is highly conventional but presented with real panache and one or two clever turns. It also includes an oddly humorous gruesome moment perhaps inspired by the Korean team working on the effects. Neil Jordan fans will also enjoy the brief appearance of Stephen Rea, the actor who most of all reminds us of Jordan’s early successes.
Greta has received very mixed reviews and similarly mixed responses from audiences. I think it works because Moretz takes her role seriously and plays it for real and Huppert is her usual marvellous self revelling in playing Liszt on the piano and dancing round the strange little room she inhabits. She’s made well over 100 films but I suspect she remembers some similar roles and characters she played for Chabrol. There are holes in the plot and you need to suspend belief but Jordan and his team create genuine excitement throughout the final section. I’m not going to show the trailer as it gives too much away. See it for the performances of the three women.
The Case for Global Film 