The Greatest Showman

Following on from the unprecedented success of La La Land, we have another musical gracing the big screen. Featuring new songs from the same composers as the aforementioned film - Benj Pasek and Justin Paul - the film takes on the well known story of P. T. Barnum, the visionary promoter who created the modern day circus full of oddities, curiosities and amazements.

Hugh Jackman plays Barnum with great aplomb, a role he was born to play and coveted for several years having followed it from inception to production over a seven year period.  Barnum was a down at heel, jack of all tradesman who took an opportunity and sold himself to banks and the people he exploited for his gain.  That is telling that Barnum, like other self-made men in American history (think Henry Ford, Tucker, even Donald Trump) they have this self-belief and drive to make the most of a bad situation and damn to the consequences.

The film follows Barnum from his youth where his first and only love Charity (Michelle Williams in adult life) is from an upper class family and that the things he promises to her will be gone if he cannot supply a stream of income to a life she is more accustomed to.

There follows Barnum's wheeling and dealing initiating the works of the freaks and outcasts to his show and how the audience eats it up; he is shut out by theatre critics and ostracised by society of New York who consider him a laughing stock and treat his cast with disdain and fear.

Michael Gracey directs the film (in his debut feature) with great relish, instigating some great set pieces from the bar duet between Barnum and his business partner, Philip Carlyle (Zac Efron) 'The Other Side' to the scene stealing 'Come Alive'.

While the film may take on board current day affairs such as identity and gender politics - all ages, races, shapes and sizes are conveyed in Barnum's troupe - the film is a winner because it embraces the outsider and the underdog who fights to be heard and ultimately are.

That is the beauty of most musicals, it follows the downtrodden on their journey and watch out as they endeavour to be heard.  Pasek and Paul have written a great crossover hit in 'This Is Me', one that shall be heard at countless talent show auditions and is struck in the same vein as Sia or Lady Gaga.

When watching the film, the trailers before hand were of The Post, Darkest Hour and Phantom Thread; prestige films but dark and grey in compositions.  The greatest feat of the Greatest Showman is that it is a film full of vibrancy, joy and life; too often you have to find films of colour and excitement within a comic book adaptation or animation, a film like this should be embraced and loved for being exactly that.

The Greatest Showman is out now on general release.

LFF 2016: Certain Women

In the last ten or so years of reviewing films and witnessing the beginning of genuine brilliant careers and attending film festivals around the country, you get to see films from all walks of life, that gestate somewhere and manifest into a whole project that appears in your home city. It is a privilege to witness them when they come to fruition.

And yet you sometimes search for the roses amongst the odour. You always miss the boat on certain auteurs or writer-directors who are swooned over by peers and critics of the current age, and yet you miss their coming out party. You try to second guess yourself and wonder maybe it is your point of view or background that is not doing justice to the film, and sometimes it just cannot be helped.

Certain Women, is that sort of film.  Kelly Reichardt, is rightly acclaimed as a light for female directors in the still male dominated world of popular cinema from her feminist western Meek's Cutoff to her fable Wendy and Lucy. Reichardt comes from a less heard voice of middle America, telling stories rarely seen and sometimes pushed to the boundaries of social documentary. 

Reichardt has also hit upon a budding relationship with Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) as her muse of sorts. This film is based upon the short stories of Maile Meloy who herself is from Montana, where the film is set.

The palette of the film is stark and grey, the tone of the film is ponderous and plodding. From the start of the film with a long cargo, freight train coming from the east to the west - establishing the new settlers coming out west perhaps - the shot goes on for as long as the cast and early production members are listed. We then cut to a clandestine affair taking place between lawyer, Laura Wells (Laura Dern) and Ryan Lewis (James Le Gros). The set up looks clandestine due to the lack of discussion between the two and his abrupt departure.

We follow Laura as she deals with an injury lawsuit client Fuller (Jared Harris) who took an early pay-off and thus denied himself a big pay day in court. His own shortcomings come to a head when he takes a security guard hostage when seeking evidence of his being screwed by the system, this belief becomes fact when Laura recites to the illiterate Fuller her statement to the corporation she was meant to be fighting.

From his arrest, we cut to Gina Lewis (Williams) who is married to Ryan, the guy we saw having an affair earlier. Gina has aspirations of building a house with sandstone and attempts to take some from an elderly man who lives on his own, there is tension between Gina and Ryan which serves as reason
for his affair.

Then we cut to a horse handler, Jamie (Lily Gladstone) who on an evening drive goes into a night class where people are. There she meets the teacher Beth (Kristen Stewart) who gives the class as extra income despite the 8 hour round trip to Belfry from Livingstone.

Jamie seeks solace from her loneliness by listening to Beth's classes and their brief discussions in a diner before her long journey home.  Beth stops coming to the classes due to the arduous journeys prompting Jamie driving to Livingstone to see her one more time.

That is the synopsis as best I can describe, not a lot else happens throughout the film, with the ponderous framing and narrative taking shape as I describe it.  There is not a lot of incident and a lot of plot points are not resolved or concluded; Gina does not learn about Ryan's affair, Laura is forgiven by Fuller for her shortcomings and the film ends with Jamie back in the stables with her horses.

To be cruel you could call this film boring, having seen versions of slow cinema, it felt stale that with a cast of this much talent there was not a lot asked of them in terms of character development.  However, the film is an attempt to comment on the alienation and loneliness felt by people in the less populated states of America, where you work to live and live to work. Yet you hoped for more of an emotional impact, however, this perhaps Reichardt's modus operandi, she wants you to see how other people live in poverty.

The role of farm hand Jamie, is beautifully played by Lily Gladstone who does the most with what she is given, gaining the most emotional resonance when she departs Beth and Livingstone, welling up as she drives away from what she felt was a genuine connection with somebody else.

It is those sort of connections that were lacking throughout the film that was reaching for contemplation but left this reviewer frustrated.  Overall a shame as it does not do justice to the beautiful landscape photography captured by Christopher Blauvelt (The Bling Ring).

Certain Women will be released in the USA by IFC Films on October 14th.

Blue Valentine DVD review

Blue Valentine is released by Optimum Entertainment on Monday 9th May for £12.99RRP and is also available on Blu-Ray

Director, Derek Cianfrance, has taken a long while to get his screenplay to the screen - supposedly nine years from treatment to production; what has to be asked is why did theoretically a two-hander between the man, Dean (Ryan Gosling) and wife, Cindy (Michelle Williams) take so long to get to the screen. The dual narrative tells the story of a breakdown of a marriage, whilst also showing how they came together in the first place.

This narrative of a breakdown of a marriage due to an overblown ego of a male and a derailment of romance has been seen previously in American independence cinema and is a familiar trope to be executed, most notably by John Cassavettes' Faces and most recently in Francois Ozon's memorable 5x2, which showed the breakdown of a marriage in chronological order but in reverse - starting in the divorce lawyer's office and ending with the meet cute.

On this occasion we start with the couple with their child and then sending child to grandfather to indulge in a romantic getaway at a fleabag themed hotel, ironically they choose the 'Future Room' which is exactly what they do not have by journey's end. This narrative is interrupted by flashbacks to the time when they first encountered each other, the meet cute and personal dilemmas involved once Cindy becomes pregnant with someone else's baby.

After she refuses an abortion, Dean offers to be a father to a child that is not his and husband in a new family. The film shows them 6-8 years after this life-changing decison and the effect it has had on Dean is startling; a shadow of his younger, viral self with a receding hairline and alcohol addiction, which is alluded throughout the film and admonished by the film's chronological end.

This is a bold and brave piece of filmmaking, especially by the two leads who helped with the film's flow in terms of improvising dialogue but at times some scenes come across a little too self-indulgent, such as when Dean serenades Cindy with a solo ukelele performance with a high voice as she dances in a doorway; whilst this is romantic, could the flashback just be too indicative of how perfect it all was back then and perhaps too sentimental to punch the message home.

Cindy wants to be a doctor but ends up as a nurse who is hit upon by her new boss, another example of a man in this film who is a douchebag. Most of the men in this film are douchebags, especially Dean who at times is both irritating and selfish, as is Bobby (the man who impregnated Cindy), a boy all full of testosterone. And Dean could be a renaissance man, but puts his idea of virtue above providing financial stability for his family by becoming a house painter.

Interestingly, the scene where Cindy bumps into her child's father, Bobby (Mike Vogel) in a liquor store is a weird scene but played perfectly by Williams - her eyes lighting up at meeting an old flame with excitement burning in her heart for the first time in quite a while.

However, even good production values such as switching of camera style - from handheld video for the contemporary scenes giving it a harsher, grittier quality and then harking back to 16mm for the flashback scenes giving them a warmer, happier tone - cannot save the film from the requirement of a tighter script that on occasions in the modern day scenes pleads for the less is more approach, as Dean repeats another vital line to death. Sometimes the audience, especially the independent cinema one should be respected enough to get the message straight away.

Not to do a disservice to Williams and Gosling in their performances, whilst Gosling is all brooding and showy with his sunglasses hiding inner turmoil, Williams is brilliant as a young woman whose ambition and drive to be a better person and wife than her own browbeaten mother is shot to pieces by the sheer over-inflated ego of her husband. But it is these two performances from two esteemed actors of their generation that raises this film above from passable to watchable.

Released on May 9th by Optimum Entertainment on Blu-Ray and DVD