The Friday Tramp Review: Looper

Looper, directed by Rian Johnson, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Jeff Daniels, Emily Blunt.

Rian Johnson’s third feature, following his wonderful debut Brick, and 2008’s disappointing con-man fairytale The Brothers Bloom, is his largest, most ambitious to date, featuring a captivating central performance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Looper follows Joe, a hitman in 2044 whose job it is to assassinate undesirables sent back from thirty years in the future. He is the eponymous looper, enjoying handsome rewards and a lavish lifestyle with one catch: eventually he will meet, and be compelled to kill, his future self, played with an appropriate impatience by Bruce Willis. The reward is an early retirement, a big cash settlement and thirty years to contemplate the inevitable. The reason that the future gangsters don’t just send the ex-loopers back to someone else to kill them is never addressed, nor are the various plot holes that present themselves, but it matters little that the film doesn’t concern itself too closely with the minutiae of time travel movie paradoxes. Rather, Looper is at heart a character piece, with both JGL and Willis doing a fine job of bringing pathos and believability to a character who is often so morally reprehensible he makes Rick Deckard look like a boy scout. Granted, it’s a character piece with hoverbikes, retro-futuristic weaponry and one of the best-realised and believable futurescapes this side of Blade Runner, with shanty towns lining the streets as Joe and his pals pass by in their solar-powered sports cars, seemingly indifferent to the extreme poverty surrounding them.

The future looks none too bright for Joe

Indeed, Looper’s most effective scene is the tense discussion between young Joe and his future self in a 1950s-styled diner. When young Joe, effectively standing in for the audience, asks old Joe how the time loop works the older man just tells him he doesn’t want to waste time having to draw diagrams with straws. It’s not why they’re meeting, and it’s not why we as an audience are watching, either. Johnson seems acutely aware that films like Looper, with complex premises and plots, are often susceptible to those enemies of narrative economy: needless exposition and unnecessary voiceovers. The director plays with both these clichés, first by beginning Looper with a voiceover from JGL, only to drop it before bringing it back at the end; referring both to the conventions of film noir, and to the rightly-maligned voiceover narration that was hastily put together for Blade Runner’s original theatrical release. Second, the frequent expository discussions between characters are often interrupted mid-explanation, leaving us with just enough information to get through without ruining the film’s singular sense of momentum.

It’s that sense of momentum, built up in the first two acts, that keeps things compelling in the final third, where the action slows in favour of developing the relationship between young Joe and Sarah (spot the reference), played by the ever-reliable Emily Blunt. Another bugbear of big action cinema, the shoe-horned love interest, Sarah and Joe’s reluctant friendship gives us just enough decent characterisation and well-placed plot developments to maintain emotional interest, even if we all know where it’s going. Moreover, it’s in this section that old Joe goes into full Terminator-mode, going after a hit-list of children (yes, children), knowing that one of them will grow into the man who will murder his future wife. It’s one of Looper’s greatest strengths that it borrows so heavily from the sci-fi canon without ever feeling derivative. The casting of Willis is an obvious homage to Twelve Monkeys, and the final act plays almost identically to the early scenes in James Cameron’s seminal time-travel yarn. Just as he did with detective movie Brick, Johnson blends a mixture of the familiar to make something that feels new and refreshing, though it’s fair to say that despite its emotional depth, Looper lacks the intellectual complexity of many of the works to which it pays tribute. In addition, and without spoiling anything, the ending feels just a little too neat and tidy, and while there’s little point in picking apart plot holes in this sort of film, there do seem to be one or two that could have been tightened at the scripting stage.

What with Neill Blomkamp's District 9, Duncan Jones’ excellent Moon and Source Code, Chris Nolan’s Inception and now Johnson’s Looper, it seems that intelligent, single concept science fiction has surely returned to mainstream cinema. Where, for example, Jones’ recent triumphs felt like callbacks to the meditative sci-fi of the 1960s and 70s,  Johnson’s entry in the genre is in many ways a tribute to the science fiction of the 1980s; movies that blended big ideas with bigger action. Though undoubtedly a smart film, Looper doesn’t match up to Cameron or Ridley Scott’s best work, and at no point is it at as groundbreaking as either The Terminator or Blade Runner. Nor is it as audacious as Paul Verhoeven’s extravaganza of violence, Total Recall. But consider this year’s remake of that film, widely considered a bland, flat and pointless retread of Verhoeven's original. Then consider Johnson’s film. Flawed, yes, but full of personality and ambition, not to mention giving us another great turn from JGL, finally in a leading role after playing second fiddle to the DiCaprios and Bales of Blockbusterville. While lacking the intellectual heft of the films to which it aspires, Looper is still challenging, engaging, and one of the most satisfying sci-fi movies you’re likely to see this year. 

The Friday Tramp Review: Killing Them Softly

Killing Them Softly, directed by Andrew Dominik, starring Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn.

The opening credits of Andrew Dominik’s second collaboration with Brad Pitt, with a grimy-looking man shuffling through a dark tunnel into harsh sunlight while a Barack Obama pre-presidential speech is interspersed with jarring, discordant music, is a sequence strongly reminiscent of the great paranoid crime thrillers of the 1970s (Hollywood’s most creative period outside of the 1930s). It’s a fantastic opening to a film that very quickly announces itself as an examination of the profound and fundamental rottenness that lies at the heart of both the criminal and legitimate economies of America, and one that owes a debt to previous studies of moral and financial corruption, such as Serpico and The French Connection. In his post-9/11, financial crisis-era crime thriller, Dominik consciously recalls the paranoia and cynicism of Vietnam-Nixon-era cinema, and both in form and in content there’s a clear debt to Scorsese’s early work. The film refers directly to Scorsese's Mean Streets, with the (slightly overused) juxtaposition of pop music and violence, use of tracking shots and stylistic framing, and emphasis on small time hoodlums scrabbling for a taste of power and wealth. Harvey Keitel’s character in Scorsese’s film provided a kind of moral resistance to a world otherwise devoid of integrity and ethics, and even in Taxi Driver De Niro’s Travis Bickle offered a perverted sense of morality against the overflowing decadence and misery on the streets of New York. But Killing Them Softly provides no such respite from the darkness, and in a film that that uses many conventions of the morality play, it’s a crucial irony that here, there is no absolutely no ethical centre. This is reflected in Dominik’s placing and presentation of character: even the menacing Jackie Cogan, in another charismatic turn from Pitt, couldn't really be described as the protagonist, only turning up in the second act, and gradually entering the spotlight as one by one he eliminates the other crooks.

Angel of Death: Brad Pitt as Jackie Cogan

Much has been made of the political broadcasts and news footage that play in the background of many scenes, and at times they feel superfluous; heavy-handed at worst, and at best, offering trite comparisons between the banking system, American politics, and the criminal underworld. But as the inevitable grip of violent retribution tightens around Frankie and Russell, the crooks who robbed a card game and left Ray Liotta’s Markie to take the blame, those comparisons begin to offer interesting new dimensions to the onscreen action. Cogan is brought in to kill Markie, knowing full well that although he had nothing to do with the robbery, someone must pay for the transgression. Much like Anton Chigurh in 2008’s No Country For Old Men, Cogan is figured as an angel of death, acting to restore the appearance of order. For him, right and wrong are irrelevant, balance is everything.  

It’s entirely appropriate then, that Pitt gets the final line in the film, giving us not simply a deliciously pithy, cynical summation of the rotten core of America, but one whose dark humour and rhythm is up there with the all-time great finishers that round off Goodfellas and John Huston’s beautifully nihilistic The Maltese Falcon. Adapted from George V. Higgins’ 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade, Dominik’s Killing Them Softly is a very talky film, swimming with Mamet-esque, expletive-ridden dialogue and efficient, engaging exposition. The violence, when it appears, is often short, nasty and brutish, save for one technically astonishing sequence involving traffic lights and extreme slow motion. The extreme stylishness of this scene is matched only by an odd feeling of it being at odds with the tough grittiness of the rest of the piece, and in several other places Dominik’s strong sense of style threatens to overwhelm the drama. In contrast, the simple robbery scene in the first act is fraught with tension, as the two amateur crooks fumble their way through the scene with a comically short sawn-off shotgun and two pairs of bright yellow marigolds, presumably to protect against fingerprint evidence. Indeed, this collision of humour and darkness is one of the film’s strengths, situating itself alongside this year’s Killer Joe, and even last year’s Drive, with its combination of heavy stylisation and brutal, explicit violence.

What he hasn't fucked in the last three days he's drunk:
James Gandolfini as washed-up hitman Mickey

There’s no doubt that Killing Them Softly is imperfect, with the political commentary sometimes coming off as clunky and unnecessary, and the film takes a few stylistic liberties too many. However, with a terrific performance from Pitt, a sensibility richly steeped in the traditions of American crime cinema, a corking, funny script and a sense of darkness and cynicism that sustains to the end, this is arguably the best crime drama of the year. Only time will tell if it can stand up along with its classic forbears, but regardless, this is cinema at its most pessimistic, satirical and vital.

The Friday Tramp Review: Samsara

Three young girls in elaborate golden headdresses and intricate make-up dance in unison, staring wide eyed at the camera, with eerily fixed grins and movements of the head reminiscent of stringed puppets. Smoke billows gracefully from an erupting volcano, the white plumes unfolding hypnotically, outward into the blue sky. The face of a long-dead man lies on a floor as if he is asleep. His features are perfectly preserved in death, every line and blemish, his expression frozen in petrified blackness. His skin resembles burnt paper, and seems so fragile even the contours of his cheek yield and slide as he rests his head on the stone. These three images are the first in a collage of footage shot on stunning 70mm film, made over the course of five years and across the landscapes of more countries than I can count. This is Samsara, the most haunting, baffling, and at times, darkly comic cinema experience you'll have this year. It's also the most staggeringly beautiful film you're likely to see in your life. Without exaggeration, Samsara is like nothing you have ever seen. 

Over the last two weeks I've seen Brave: masterfully animated, engaging and overall delightful, Lawless: great performances, thrilling and shocking violence, muddled narrative - as well a wide variety of films on DVD. All of these would have been far easier and more straightforward to review (not to mention having wider appeal) than Samsara, a film that is in many ways diminished by attempting to make sense out of it in something as limiting as a review. But at the same time, I feel compelled to write about it, simply because I want to encourage every single person that I possibly can to see this while they can. Directed and photographed by Ron Fricke, Samsara comprises a collage of images taken from around the globe, with no dialogue, no characters and no story. At almost two hours long it is one of the most compelling, enthralling and dramatic films to come out this year. Aside from anything else, the photography is unquestionably the best I've ever seen, and should be experienced on the biggest screen possible. Colours are vivid and striking, almost vibrating with intensity. Tricks with time lapsing make constellations swirl at night, cars in LA become ribbons of light, and pilgrims at Mecca resemble a human whirlpool swimming impossibly around the motionless black cuboid Kaaba. Crucially, the photoplay, while magnificent in its own right, is far beyond empty spectacle. Though it lacks anything resembling a story, the imagery in Samsara weaves a narrative of thematic resonances, irony and at times, pitch black humour. In one sequence, a man in Africa is buried in a coffin in the shape of a gun, while in North America a family, including the teenage daugther, wield their collection of firearms. The daughter's, of course, is electric pink to match her T-shirt. 

If all this seems terribly arty and a mite pretentious, don't be put off: despite the suggestion of heavy, intellectualised discourse and navel-gazing waffle, Samsara is a surprisingly accessible film, forever offering up ideas but never demanding that you take them. It's possible, if not advisable, to just sit back and enjoy the lavish photography on offer, and indeed it's a wonderful pleasure just to let Samsara's visual splendour wash over you. The film is brimming with evocative footage: bombed out classrooms, cathedrals, slaughterhouses and human cadavers, shots of gargantuan factories full of identically clad workers. But central to Samsara's premise is there is no comment, only observation. The camera records what is happening, but rarely, if ever, overtly says what it is, or what it means. Rather, meaning comes from the way I, you, the audience, discover the connectedness of the sequences. For example, footage of a bizzare machine that (there's no better way of putting it) hoovers up live chickens is juxtaposed with hundreds of soldiers marching in perfect unison. The film doesn't state this connection overtly, though: it is through my own personal views, prejudices and preconceptions that draw these particular images together. Others may pick up on the copious religious imagery, the natural landscapes or the vast, Blade Runner-esque skyscrapers of Dubai. If Samsara has any concrete 'message', it's to make what you will of what you are seeing: the camera observes, leaving you free to comment. Documentaries sometimes fall in to the trap of didactics and easy platitudes, but Samsara is a film that never offers answers, and instead presents us with a vision of beauty that is unique, often sublime and always breathtaking. One last time: Do Not Miss This Film.

The Friday Tramp Review: The Bourne Legacy

Following 2007's definitive The Bourne Ultimatum, director Tony Gilroy brings us The Bourne Legacy,  an enjoyable and well executed but ultimately shallow and unnecessary addition to the Bourne franchise. Released in 2002, Doug Liman's The Bourne Identity was an unexpectedly slick, engaging and taut little spy thriller, with a smartly delivered central premise, likeable lead in Matt Damon and a sense of action and spectacle grounded in reality. Paul Greengrass' sequels, The Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum respectively, elevated the series to one of the best action franchises ever devised and gave us the first truly great trilogy of the new millennium.  

The Bourne Ultimatum satisfactorily concluded Jason Bourne's journey, but this didn't stop Universal  ordering another addition to the franchise, this time sans Damon or Greengrass. Instead, proceedings see The Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner arrive as Aaron Cross, a souped-up version of Jason Bourne, enhanced by chemical supplements on which he has become cripplingly dependent. The 'legacy' in the title refers to the fact that the actions of Bourne in Ultimatum (which happens in parallel to Legacy) have spurred the Agency to destroy all evidence of their nefarious assassin programs, which includes terminating Cross and his co-agents.  It's a solid, if rather uninspired, basis for exploring the ripple effect of Bourne's actions, and Gilroy goes to great lengths to remind us that the events in Legacy are a direct result of Ultimatum. He does this mainly by periodically splicing key moments of agency-good-egg Pam Landy's ongoing whistle blowing with the main story, but they never really connect in anything other than the most superficial way, and feel artificially overlayed on to a story that really has very little to do with Jason Bourne.

The best action films tend to offer the simplest plots: a cop is trapped in a building full of terrorists and has to stop them; Nazis are trying to take over the world by stealing a magic box and have to be stopped by a man in a cool hat; a cyborg is coming to kill the mother of mankind's future saviour and can't be stopped. And so it is (or should be) with Bourne. After all of the shady government dealings and double-crossings are stripped away, the original Bourne films offered a similarly simple but effective story: a man who can't remember who he is escapes from people trying to kill him for reasons he doesn't understand. The basic premise of the original Bourne trilogy offers both intriguing mystery and tremendous narrative momentum, and the lack of that kind of singular narrative is one of Legacy's major failings, instead contriving a drug-dependency plot in order to keep the story moving forward. This is most apparent in the final scene, which offers no resolution beyond clearing up Cross's chemical dependency. I'm not even clear whether the baddies are still chasing Cross, and the Pam Landy indictment sub-plot seems no further forward than it was at the beginning. It's shameless sequel-baiting, and the re-using of the Moby theme at the end simply underscores that this is by far the most unsatisfying conclusion in the franchise.

Renner and Norton square off.

That's not to say there aren't plenty of Bourne-esque thrills to be had throughout the 2 hour-plus running time. In physical ability, for example, Renner is more than a worthy replacement for Damon as the film's protagonist, proving himself in several well-staged and visceral action sequences that sit very well against those of the original trilogy. In addition, Rachel Weisz is effective as scientist Marta Shearing, offering  one of the film's few original ideas in the film's exploration of her character's moral culpability and complicity. This is the theme that could have allowed Legacy to transcend its limitations as simply the fourth part of the Bourne Trilogy, but unfortunately it's underwritten, hinted at only in a few scenes with Weisz, and in a flashback scene with Edward Norton's agency honcho Eric Byer. Although oddly disconnected from the rest of the film this scene offers one of the film's best lines: in an early mission, Cross expresses consternation over what he is being asked to do in the name of patriotism. Byer responds with frighteningly convincing concision, 'we are morally indefensible, and absolutely necessary'. It's a shame that Legacy doesn't offer us a deeper exploration of the moral grey areas hinted at in declarations like Byer's, and instead seems more concerned with covering the now well-worn Bourne film hallmarks of gritty action and car chases. 

In Aaron Cross, there's an admirable attempt to distance Renner's character from Jason Bourne: Cross comes to us amnesia free and fully formed as a trained killer, but as a result we lose the central compelling premise of the previous films' search for Bourne's true identity. Instead, we have a functional but bland chase  story around the globe for the chems that will keep Cross in peak fighting condition. Legacy's plot gives plenty of opportunities for stylised rooftop chases, vehicular carnage and bone-snapping violence, but by film number four, these once-fresh staples of the franchise, while still extremely well-executed and visceral, have become predictable and formulaic. More engaging is the relationship between Cross and Weisz's Marta, which develops with an organic warmth that is reminiscent of the Bourne / Marie tryst in Identity, and rarely feeling derivative or contrived.

The Bourne Legacy is far from the disaster that it could have been, and, like its titular assassin, executes its duties as an action film competently, concisely and with deadly precision. Making Legacy a spin-off, rather than a direct sequel was a smart move, leaving the original trilogy (mostly) well alone, while transparently setting up the potential for a new franchise. But for a property that effectively reshaped modern action cinema, Gilroy's addition to the series is a significant step down from Greengrass and Liman's entries, both in terms of thematic depth and narrative clarity. That said, as a stand-alone film it works well, and although nowhere near as compelling as Jason Bourne, Aaron Cross gives us enough humanity in his assassin to just about care what happens to him. The Bourne Legacy is ultimately an unnecessary cash-grab for the studio; an action film slapped with the name and stylistic trappings of Bourne, but this does not deter from the fact that it remains largely a morally ambiguous, exciting and smart addition to the Bourne universe. 

The Friday Tramp Review: Ted

After making his name with the animated comedy shows Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show, writer-director Seth MacFarlane arrives with Ted, his frequently funny, intermittently hilarious, but ultimately unbalanced and shallow big screen debut.

To the uninitiated, MacFarlane is the creative mind behind Family Guy and its spin-off shows American Dad and The Cleveland Show. In Ted, there is no mistaking MacFarlane's particular brand of comedy, both in the irreverent content and well-timed delivery of its humour. Ted opens by telling the story of a small boy, John Bennett, who on Christmas night wishes for his new teddy bear to come to life. Miraculously, his wish comes true, and John and Ted, as he names the bear, become overnight celebrities. However, as Patrick Stewart's narrator informs us in a reference-dropping introduction typical of MacFarlane, 'No matter how big a splash you make in this world, whether you're  Corey Feldman, Frankie Muniz, Justin Bieber or a talking teddy bear, eventually, nobody gives a shit'. The credits roll, and we skip ahead several decades where both boy and bear have (ostensibly) grown up. The premise is thus: perpetual man-boy lacks the motivation to grow up and A) progress his career, B) show his commitment to his long-suffering girlfriend in *apparently the only way women characters can ever understand or expect* by proposing to her, and most crucially, C) ditch his loveable but loser buddy. The novelty of course is that that the main character's buddy is a magic, foul-mouthed, over-sexed teddy bear in an otherwise mundane and realistic world. However, magic bear or no magic bear, it's an incredibly familiar set up, and the plot trundles along at a very predictable rhythm hitting all the story beats you'd expect, with the inevitable second-act conflict practically telegraphed by flashing neon signs. It's a shame, because by confining itself to such formulaic rom-com plotting, the film is never fully allowed to explore the comic potential of having a foul-mouthed celebrity teddy bear running riot. 

Ted  proves a crude but likeable comic creation

In many ways, Ted reminded me of last year's Paul, with its similar pot-smoking, expletive spewing fictional ragamuffin. Paul also stuck pretty closely to formula, but where the road trip / FBI hunt plot of that film sat well with the sci-fi comedy premise, the rom-com foundation of Ted just seems to intrude on the comedy, which at times nears hilarity, but all too often feels held back by its own self-imposed restrictions. That's not to say there aren't plenty of jokes: they come thick and fast and in many varieties; sight gags, expletive-laden banter, the inevitable pop-culture references, and in the film's funniest moment, an inspired, brilliantly edited sequence in which John races to meet his cinematic childhood idol. It's in breathless moments like these where Ted really catches fire, unconcerned by the tedious trials of John and Lori's relationship, allowing itself to get on with the business of being funny. In a film with deeper characters, the central conflict of John's inability to grow up and commit to Lori might work better, but depth of character has never been one of MacFarlane's strong suits. That shortcoming never been more apparent than here, in which the humour does little to distract from the dearth of multi-dimensional characters. Factor in a pointless sub-plot about an obsessive father and son desperate to get their creepy mitts on Ted, inserted in order to provide an undercooked climactic kidnapping / chase scene which leads to the film's muddled finale, and large portions of the film feel contrived and rote. Make no mistake, there is much humour to be had, but most of it centres around the one-note premise of a teddy bear that swears a lot. This no doubt will delight the film's intended teenage audience, but there are also a few too many badly misjudged jokes tending towards the racial and homophobic (a tiresome mainstay of MacFarlane's stable). Having said that, by the time the final credits roll fans of Family Guy are guaranteed to be grinning, but very few of Ted's scenarios really deliver the subversive humour or scenes of outrageous debauchery that the central premise promises us.

John and Ted: Thunderbuddies for life 

On a minor note, the performances from Wahlberg and Kunis are serviceable but fairly pefunctory, while Seth MacFarlane invests Ted with life and humour. Consequently the chemistry between the bear and Wahlberg fizzes much more convincingly than the other relationship in John's life. It seems odd to bring up an issue as technical as this for a comedy, but Ted is one of the most egregious offenders I've yet witnessed of the Curse of the Orange and Teal Colour Scheme . The entire film is soaked in virtually only these two colours, making the visuals very ugly. When photography is so generic that you can apply it with equal, dispassionate excess to both action films and romantic comedies, it's time to reign it in, chaps. 

For a debut feature, Ted is a perfectly serviceable, and on occasion, very funny comedy. In the eponymous bear, MacFarlane has crafted a very likeable and enjoyable comic character, and many scenes replicate his TV-based humour at its best and most irreverent. Fans of MacFarlane's previous work are certain to be satisfied, even delighted with MacFarlane's first feature, but Ted's strengths are tempered by the fact that it repeats many of Family Guy et al's mistakes, with a bland and uninteresting central story populated with  clichéd supporting characters, topped by two relatively likeable but ultimately boring paper-thin leads. 

The Tramp Reviews: Vertigo

Every decade since 1952, the film magazine Sight and Sound have published the definitive list of the fifty greatest films ever made. Definitive, supposedly, because almost a thousand critics, academics and industry bods are polled in order to construct the list. Orson Welles' Citizen Kane won the number one position in 1962, and has dominated the top spot ever since. Until yesterday, of course, when the 2012 was published, and Citizen Kane was finally toppled from its perch by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Whether Vertigo is the greatest film ever made has been the subject of much debate over the last couple of days, but it is undoubtedly refreshing to finally see a different film at the the top of the list. More to the point, while I question the designation of ‘greatest film ever made’, Hitchcock’s tale of murder, obsession and acrophobia is arguably his fullest and most satisfying work, offering classic Hitchcockian intrigue, mystery and suspense, and is the subject of this week’s Tramp's Review.

Along with Rear Window (1954), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963), 1958's Vertigo is one of Hitchcock's great masterpieces, and in many ways epitomises his greatness as a master director. I would go as far as to say that Vertigo is Hitchcock’s most spectacular film, and one of the richest and most visually compelling films ever made. The plot involves John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson, played by James Stewart, a police detective who is forced into early retirement due to a severe bout of vertigo which results in the grisly death of one of his colleagues. Scottie’s friend, a wealthy businessman named Gavin Elster, hires him as a private detective to investigate his wife’s strange behaviour, whom he claims is the reincarnation of a woman who died in tragic circumstances. Ferguson is understandably sceptical, but agrees to investigate Elster’s wife, played by Kim Novak, anyway.

Spot the subtext: Vertigo plays with our desire to see the unseen.

What follows is a fascinating and disturbing examination of voyeurism, obsession, and an incredibly rich and complex deconstruction of the inherent fetishistic nature of cinema. After Scottie follows her to the foot of the Golden Gate bridge, Madeleine Elster, apparently in a trance, throws herself into the river. After rescuing her, Scottie becomes obsessed with Madeleine, engaging in an ill-advised affair with her, leading to a series of violent and surreal discoveries. Up to this point, Scottie has appeared as most of Stewart’s characters: calm, morally upstanding and heroic, but in the scene directly following Madeleine’s rescue this begins to change. When Madeleine wakes up, she finds herself in Scottie’s bed, nude. Presumably he removed her wet clothes before putting her to bed, but what exactly happened after he removed her clothes, or why he did so at all, remains conspicuously unspoken, and Scottie’s almost uncontrollable sexual attraction to Madeleine becomes extremely apparent. Hitchcock’s casting of Stewart here is inspired: Stewart typically played heroic everymen, and so casting him as a lecherous anti-hero both unbalances that sense of typecasting (a trick that Sergio Leone repeated to great effect by casting perennial good guy Henry Fonda as the villain in Once Upon a Time in the West), and for a time obscures the character’s more ignoble traits by manipulating the expectations of an audience familiar with Stewart’s more conventional heroic roles. Brilliantly, on a second viewing, the way that Scottie follows Madeleine before she jumps in to the river offers a far more sinister, predatory perspective on his behaviour, and the intense colours with which Hitchcock fills the frame emphasise Scottie’s dangerous sexual-visual obsession with Madeleine’s appearance.

One of the film’s high points happens before the film proper even begins, in a bravura opening-credits sequence designed by Saul Bass. Bass was the creative genius responsible for many of cinema’s most iconic poster and design campaigns, including the opening credits in Psycho and North by Northwest, and the poster designs for Otto Preminger’s 1955 The Man with the Golden Arm. In extreme close-up, the camera fixes on Kim Novak’s face, moving from her cheek, to her lips, and up to her nose, before settling on one eye, as disorienting music plays. The camera methodically dissects the face on screen, coldly examining each of her features. As we are directed to her eye, patterns swirl up and disorient us, mimicking the effect of vertigo that Stewart’s character experiences in the film. Vertigo’s credits aren’t just a stylish opening to the film: they’re integral to the way that Ferguson’s illness is used as a physical manifestation of his detached voyeurism: spectatorship that has become out of control and without perspective. It’s a triumph of the merging of theme and spectacle.

Indeed, visually, the film is a tour de force, and one of Hitchcock’s most beautiful and spectacularly arresting pictures. Where Psycho uses black and white photography, all sharp edges and stabbing lines, to emphasise its violence, Vertigo saturates the screen in lurid, gratuitous colour. When Scottie first sees Madeleine in a restaurant, her striking green and black dress and blonde hair are contrasted against the wallpaper that floods the screen with deep, violent red, and as the camera focusses on Madeleine, the screen visibly glows with luminescence. Similarly, in a brief dream sequence that rivals the Salvador Dali scene in Spellbound, colour flashes through Ferguson’s mind in a swirling, chaotic spectacle. The intense visuals of Vertigo reflect Scottie’s own obsession with the visual, and his equation of sexual desire with physical appearance. He compulsively fixates on Madeleine, frequently mistaking women with similar hairstyles or clothes for her. Later, when he meets and begins a relationship with Judie Barton, a woman with an unusually striking resemblance to Madeleine, he tries to remodel her in the former’s image. The fetishisation of spectacle is one of the defining elements of Hitchcock’s oeuvre, and nowhere is it more apparent, or more fully explored than in Vertigo. Moreover, Vertigo offers a commentary on the inherently voyeuristic nature of cinema, and is surely one of the best examples of Laura Mulvey’s theory of the ‘male gaze’, writ large in Jimmy Stewart’s fetishistic obsession with Kim Novak’s Madeleine.

Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster, in one of Vertigo's many painterly compositions.

Vertigo is Hitchcock at his most mature and assured. Psycho is undoubtedly a masterpiece in its own right, but as the marketing campaign for that film underlines, there is an almost puerile delight at the violence and perversion taking place on screen. By comparison, Vertigo engages in the same voyeurism and fetishising of violence as Pyscho, but goes further by offering an analysis of the nature of that voyeurism, to the point where it becomes the film’s central concern. Ironically, given the highly stylised, cinematic world of Vertigo, this film offers a far more psychologically nuanced, textured narrative than any other of Hitchcock’s pictures, presenting us with arguably the most complete vision of Hitchcock’s cinema. Hitchcock’s examination of the relationship between sexual desire, violence, and death, are present in most of his other works, but are never richer, even in the sexually rampant Psycho, than they are here. Strangers on a Train offers a vision of perversion and entrapment, The Birds, inexplicable, unknowable violence and panic, and Psycho, sexuality and transgression. But Vertigo presents us with everything Hitchcock could offer as a director and storyteller. It would be reductive to claim that Hitchcock distils everything about his narrative, visual and thematic concerns into one film. I do think, however, that Vertigo is his most thematically complex, and complete, film, offering us a definitive thesis on the nature of film, and securing Hitchcock’s position as one of cinema’s greatest directors.  

Bat-Extravaganza Part 3: The Dark Knight Rises Review

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. 

In 1997, Joel Schumacher's risible Batman and Robin effectively buried the Batman film franchise, and all but destroyed the superhero action film as a genre. It was only with hits in the early noughties, such as Byran Singer's X-Men, and Sam Raimi's Spiderman, that the superhero genre began to recover. And it wasn't until 2005, almost a decade after Ground Schumacher, that the industry dared to return to the caped crusader, this time with a young, talented director named Christopher Nolan. The result, Batman Begins, took superhero films to an unprecedented level of realism and seriousness, and restored the menace to Batman that had for years been sorely lacking. It's difficult to overestimate Begins' influence on the industry: as well as spawning two sequels, for better or worse it ushered in a new era of blockbusters that centred on gritty realism, with this year's The Amazing Spiderman borrowing many of its character arcs and visuals from Batman Begins' template. Its sequel, 2008's The Dark Knight, is one of the most successful films of all time and is widely regarded as the best superhero film ever made. Heath Ledger's Joker was revelatory, Aaron Eckhart as the doomed Harvey Dent was magnificent, and the film featured some of the best, most breathtaking action set pieces since Raiders of the Lost Ark. So, to 2012, and the end of the Batman legend. And make no mistake, this is the end of the Batman as we know him, despite the wishful thinking of some commentators. The Dark Knight Rises is the final chapter in Nolan's Dark Knight saga, referring to and combining elements of both its predecessors (more on that later). For now, let's get out of the way the one question everyone has. Is it better than The Dark Knight?

Well, no. 

The Dark Knight Rises does not better its predecessor, just as Return of the Jedi couldn't ever hope to beat The Empire Strikes Back (although any dip in quality is far less apparent here than with Jedi). What we have instead, is not a Dark Knight beater, but rather, arguably the most challenging and visceral Batman of the entire trilogy. Although garnering an overwhelmingly positive reception, it is no surprise that TDKR has received more mixed reviews than the other two installments. Structurally, it's a far looser film than its predecessor, and, yes, Bane is neither as compelling nor as complex a villain as the Joker. At 2 hours and 45 minutes, TDKR is by far the longest of the three films, and as such the script experiences a slow beginning and a langorous mid-section. Similarly, where the themes of the first two films were easy to hook on to: fear in Begins; chaos in Dark Knight, getting a line on the central thesis in Rises is far less straightforward. However, for all the the thematic complexity of Begins and Knight, there is no denying that both films hit their points pretty hard on the nose at times, with characters often spelling out meaning with all the subtlety of a lamborghini ramming a police van. Dark Knight Rises certainly has its share of clunky lines, but it allows its themes to develop  more naturally than the expositional dialogue of Begins and Knight. Moreover, it very successfully juggles the arcs of four main characters (Bruce, Bane, Selina Kyle and John Blake), as well as Bruce's ongoing relationships with Alfred, Lucius and newcomer Miranda Tate. But perhaps most importantly, Rises picks up and re-threads plot points laid down in its predecessors, namely, the lie that Harvey Dent died a hero, and the League of Shadows obsession with uprooting corruption, into an unexpected, compelling and believable narrative. Perhaps the greatest achievement of Rises is in weaving a narrative through all three films where before there were only two distinct stories united by a common Batman. Inevitably, this places the narrative of TDKR under a tremendous burden, and at times it struggles under its own weight. Where the through-line of the previous two films was apparent from the start, it takes until towards the end of the second act (I count four acts, and a coda, in total), for the film to snap fully into focus. But when things do line up, we get one of the best finales of the summer, and easily one of the most riveting and tense sequences in the Bat trilogy. 


What I found particularly interesting about TDKR, especially on the second viewing, is that it doesn't present a singular thematic question in the way that Begins and Knight do with fear and anarchy. Instead, it asks what happens in the aftermath of those conflicts, and in so doing answers a question that was originally posed by Batman Begins: how far are the legend and the man connected, and can one outlive the other? This is the heart of The Dark Knight Rises, and a motif that is tied inextricably to the plot that bent on fulfilling Wayne's apparent death wish. Some may baulk at the ending, but to do so is to miss the point of the film, and the answer to the conflict between myth and reality. Alfred makes it clear that for Bruce to go to his death willingly, even wantonly, would be the ultimate failure of his life. For Bruce to finally realise that is to cement the myth of the Dark Knight in a far more thoughtful and meaningful way than would be the adolescent,  petulant urge towards entropy. In this sense, The Dark Knight Rises gets to the heart of the Batman as legend more so even than The Dark Knight did.

On a technical level, everything is at the high watermark you would expect from Nolan's team. Wally Pfister's photography is sharp, crisp and often beautiful, and really deserves to be seen in IMAX. Similarly, Hans Zimmer goes all out with a heavy, industrial score, amping up the tension (and volume) with what sounds like an army of percussion, and he provides highly effective and memorable themes for both Bane and Selina Kyle. Bane's voice, a source of consternation following trailers where he was barely audible, has been clearly tweaked, with mixed results. His voice is now mainly clear, although occasional words and phrases do escape detection, and often the levels sound so out of sync that his performance has a peculiarly dubbed quality. However, this doesn't diminish Hardy's wonderful, theatrical performance, and really is a minor technical flaw rather than outright irritation. Additionally, the action editing is much better than the previous instalments, and for the first time in any Batman film, we really get to see Batman fight, with none of the shaky-cam nonsense that dogged Begins. 


Indeed, it is in The Dark Knight Rises that Nolan gives us some of the most brutal, visceral action we have yet endured. For all the pyrotechnic, truck-flipping mayhem of the last outing, Batman never really felt in peril. Here, Batman seems frail and vulnerable throughout, and as a result Rises gives us the trilogy's best fight, symbolically staged in a sewer, scored only by Bane's fantastic monologue as he knocks seven shades of shit out of Batman, pummelling his head until his cowl breaks. Furthermore, Rises treats us to by far the most incendiary, political, and striking imagery of the trilogy. Bodies hang from bridges, people run icy gauntlets for the pleasure of Bane's faithful, while snow silently blankets Gotham's deserted streets in a prophetic forboding of the promised nuclear winter. In one of the film's richest visual moments, an aptly-appointed judge sits atop a mountain of torn paper, passing sentence on members of Gotham's old regime in a scene that recalls the imagery of the French Revolution. There has been much debate around the politics of Nolan's film, and there is, I suspect, more to come. Some accuse Nolan of siding with the 1%, whereas others have argued that his attack on the banking system amounts to no more than surface rhetoric and a warning against political messiahs bearing false promises. While these perspectives are valid and have been well argued, I suspect there is a little more to the film's politics than this simple dichotomy, and as always with Nolan, answers are not immediately forthcoming.



So what of the legend, Batman himself? The film opens on a reclusive Wayne, hobbling around on a cane after submitting his body to years of punishment. It is a full forty five minutes before we see him re-don the cowl, and then only briefly before he is whisked off to a prison until the film's explosive final act.  On the one hand, it's fascinating to see Wayne as an emaciated, crippled man approaching middle age, but on the other there at times seem lengthy stretches where we're waiting for the film to get on with things and get Bruce back in the suit. The decision to leave take Batman out of the picture for the majority of the running time won't be for everyone. What also will leave some people cold are the differences  between this instalment and the last. Having now seen Rises, it's apparent just how optimistic much of The Dark Knight actually is: Rises gets very, very dark in places (in one screening I saw parents leaving halfway through with their children), but its pessimism occasionally tends towards gloominess, particularly in those early, problematic acts. In addition, although it has a fantastic supporting cast, Rises presents us with no characters with either the charisma of Ledger or the complexity and Shakespearean grandeur of Eckhart's Dent. Indeed, it's telling that the ghost of Harvey Dent looms over the narrative of Rises, informing it throughout and rearing its inconvenient head every time the plot needs a kickstart. That said, Hathaway, while not as revelatory as the Joker, gives us arguably the best interpretation of Selina Kyle yet. She invests her character with warmth, depth, and a sexuality that never topples into fetishism or male masturbatory gratification. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is typically brilliant as rookie cop John Blake, and while its very obvious where his character is going, it  always feels natural, with his character's arc proving to be the most satisfying in the film, and a triumph for the series overall. 

Robin Rises: JGL is wildly impressive as John Blake

Indeed, if nothing else, TDKR is the character piece of the trilogy. In terms of performance, it seems as if every player has upped their game, with Bale and Caine continuing to bounce off each other. Their scenes together are by turns funny and heartfelt, and in one stand-out exchange, Bruce and Alfred's relationship is strained to breaking point, with Caine giving one of the best performances of the year. In contrast to Hardy's obscene bulking out for his role, Bale looks visibly emaciated, not quite as skeletal as his role in The Machinist, but far diminished from the peak-level fitness when we saw him last.  Where Oldman and Freeman are reliably excellent as Gordon and Fox, Gordon-Levitt gives us yet another standout performance as Blake. Alongside Wayne, it is Blake's arc that feels the most complete, and for a series that promised never to return to the realm of the dynamic duo, Rises gives us in many ways the perfect Robin. It is surely a remarkable achievement that this film makes that concept palatable, let alone enjoyable. There are of course, weaknesses, and as always with Nolan they tend to be with his female characters, who often play more as plot devices than human beings. Brilliant as Hathaway is, I would perhaps have liked to see more of her jewel thief. Moreover, I loved the Miranda / Talia twist at the end, but felt that her meagre screen time up until then lessened the impact somewhat. In addition, Matthew Modine's police chief Foley felt superfluous, and his heroic turnabout scene in the finale was one the film's few truly bum notes. The good, however, far outweighs the bad, and it is testament to the script and direction that an ensemble cast this large is able to give as good an account of itself as it does.


The Dark Knight Rises has already drawn its detractors, and undoubtedly it is a more problematic film than either of the previous two. But with these problems come bold choices, subverted expectations and a deeply satisfying, pitch black final chapter. We may lament the lack of the Joker, or a fall as tragic as Dent's, but the ultimate success in TDKR is in not attempting to emulate the successes of its predecessor. Sure, Rises' script is a little loose, but it is also the most daring of all three Batman films. What the film loses in narrative focus it more than makes up for in scope, spectacle and emotion, ultimately providing the epic, thundering conclusion that Nolan's definitive trilogy deserves.