In praise of...Breaking Bad

Last night, I had the pleasure of completing my first box set. Breaking Bad. It has taken just about five weeks but me and my girlfriend, have witnessed countless deaths, numerous cooks and shady dealings in Alburqueque. We have followed the transformation of high school Chemistry teacher Walter White from fighting lung cancer to the horrific Heisenberg, the empire builder who would stop at nothing to get what he wants.

Oddly enough, when the conclusion of series 5 first aired in America on AMC I avoided any spoilers as best I could, thankfully the Internet community found it necessary not to ruin it for non-watchers as it is something best experienced first hand, much like The Mousetrap.

The ending was to me a complete finite ending deserving of the legacy that Vince Gilligan and his team have created.  Usually when series come to a finish, it is perhaps two series past its sell by date or the characters have outstayed their time.

Breaking Bad was good because it did not take a series as  the same temporal period for the viewer, for example, the original audience did not witness a White family Christmas when they did. The action started in series one around Walt's 50th birthday and ended a day after his 52nd, therefore the condensing of all the narrative action in to a timeframe of five years served a greater reality to the drama; things change dramatically from day to day in our lives, so why can that not be reflected in our viewing pleasure?

A lot has been made of the writing by Gilligan and his writers, yet while the show has been rightly heralded as the perfect amalgamation of talent, special mention must go to the acting of Bryan Cranston and the ensemble who infused all the characters with not just a belief but a humanity not seen before in American television drama. Whereas, characters in the West Wing or The Sopranos, where highly stylised versions of political and gangster conventions, in Breaking Bad these were actual people doing what comes naturally to survive and exist.

Yet that was the appeal and motivation for Walter to begin with. We meet a man on his 50th birthday, who feels unfulfilled in his life. A teacher who is not respected, mocked by his alpha male brother in law who works for the DEA. Had things been different for him he would have been a CEO of a Fortune500 company, yet fate dealt him a bad hand seemingly, and he cancer diagnosis leads him to reassess his options. His lack of insurance coverage means his family will be bankrupt should he die, so he attempts to cook Crystal meth and get close to the $700,000 he requires for the medical bills and pay his disabled son through College in his absence.

In the final episode, when Walter and his wife Skylar talk for the last time, she believes he will say he did it all for the family. Yet he surprises her by saying he did it for himself and he liked doing it. That was a good line to have Walter say, as the series has predominantly been about pride and the things people do when their ego is out of control. And it was this battle of wills sometimes between Walter and Jesse. I say sometimes as too often Walter seemingly got away with his malicious acts of violence, in contrast to the mindset of Jesse who has seen too much bloodshed and wanted to avoid it as best he could.

The story would ask if it was possible to avoid violence, or if it was the only course of action with say the murder of Gus in the nursing home.  It would also make you root for the villain as Walter slowly became one, and made you root for Hank and Mike who were oddly purveyors of justice and attempted to make you get the bad guy.  Through the last series, you were still rooting for Walter until he crossed the line of domestic violence in the episode containing Hank's death, that was the act that made you want to get caught, or die and ultimately the act that made him leave New Mexico and go into hiding.

I saw an interview with Gilligan, where he said his writers stole from the best in reference to their ending matching The Searchers. I think they also stole from The Godfather, in that Walter is similar
to Michael Corleone played by Al Pacino; a man so vastly different from that young idealistic soldier,
that he is almost unrecognisable. Yet the way in which he slips into the skin of malevolence and murder is the most unsettling aspect of it all. Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's novel was as a watershed moment in American film history, as is Breaking Bad in American television history.

Is Walter the devil or just a bad man, I believe he was not a changed man, he was a man who learnt a lot about himself and became a version of himself he did not know was possible nor capable of such acts. How do we know what we are capable of doing until we do it the first time?

Breaking Bad is as close to the perfection people have envisioned in this box set culture. A show that was brilliantly written, wonderfully acted and produced week in, week out not missing a beat and containing surprise that kept you gripped throughout without going for cheap way outs and belittling the audience it treated with intelligence and respect.  The ending was as close to perfect to, because it tied up all the loose ends with a sense of gravitas and humanity befitting a show about living and dealing with your own mortality.

She Monkeys

The debut feature of Swedish filmmaker, Lisa Aschan is a delightful, yet intelligent film that subverts the coming of age generic picture with a queer twist. It won Best Film at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, so you can see the universal themes of young love travels well.

14 year old Emma (Mathilda Paradeiser) joins an equestrian gym team (handstands and vaults whilst the horse is moving) where her naturalness on the equine beauties is initially met with trepidation and jealousy by Cassandra (Linda Molin).  Slowly though a kinship forms between the two teenagers, a friendship full of looks and unspoken feelings.

The dynamism of their horse riding routines speaks of their unspoken admiration and romantic affection towards each other.

There is a reassuring confidence about Aschan's direction - affection for the characters and a softness in the depiction of new adolescent love.  Aschan is helped by the equally brilliant performances by the two teenage girls, and even by Isabella Lindquist who plays Emma's younger sister, Sara; herself a young girl a bit confused with her emotional connections, as she falls for her cousin.

In the same vein as French film Water Lilies (2007) by Celine Sciamma , about sexual awakening in adolescent girls She Monkeys has a correct tone and fervour to succeed in garnering critical attention and some box office from the arthouse crowd.

The film is distributed by Peccadillo Pictures, a company that specialises in queer cinema and enjoyed huge acclaim with the British film Weekend, one of my films of 2011

She Monkeys is out on limited release from Friday 18th May

www.peccapics.com

A Screaming Man

The acclaimed director of Daratt, Mahamat-Saleh returns with a telling meditation of an ageing African male that has a deftness and humanity within it, which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.

Said screaming man is Adam (Youssouf Djaoro) who is a happy pool attendant at a fancy hotel in civil war Chad.  Adam shares the duties of his job with his 20 year old son, Abdel (Diouc Koma), yet there are fears over the future of job security owing to the investment of Chinese money into the infrastructure of the hotel.  Many workers fear for their job, one is David (Marius Yelolo), a chef who in the few scenes he shares with Adam gives wisdom and advice - upon hearing the unwanted news, David says to Adam, 'the problem is we put our fate in the hands of God'.

After this news, Adam is told he has been demoted to the role of gatekeeper of the hotel - the man who must raise and lower the barrier for cars and other motor vehicles - whilst Abdel has been given sole responsibility of the pool.  Hence, Adam feels embarrassed and devalued as a man as well as a trusted worker.  His role as moneywinner is further but into question by the demands of a local district chief who keeps pestering him for money to help with the war effort.  (It should be noted that there is never any mention or reason given as to why Adam keeps saying he is broke and cannot pay.)  Yet the conversations with the chief lead to Adam making a decision that will lead to a terrible act of betrayal.

Haroun has a real assuredness behind the camera - he cleverly shows a difference between the workplace environment and the home environment; one is vibrant, the other is still - but he does this without going to lengths of changing the tone or colour of the palette, instead relying upon the performances of his actors who are front and centre.  A good scene at the start shows Adam with his wife, Mariam, as they eat food together you feel the warmth of their love, but in the background is a television with news of the civil war ongoing.  The scene tells you two things; the personality of Adam is enhanced as a loving husband and provider, nevertheless the civil war intrudes upon their sanctuary, as it will do later on with more tragic consequences.

The script, also written by Haroun, asks questions about duty (to work, to family, to your country), the idea of loyalty to the same factors and the father and son dynamic (an ongoing trope of Haroun's previous work).  Adam is jealous of Abdel as much for his youth as for being selected for the job of pool attendant; but once Abdel's pregnant girlfriend, Djeneba (Djeneba Kone) appears this affection for his son is reassessed leading to the final act of the film.

This conclusion of the film - whilst an eventual part of the narrative - is handled deftly offering the chance of reconciliation with a distinctness and deftness you rarely see, giving ample opportunity to his DoP, Laurent Brunet to shoot some wonderful landscapes of the Chadian landscape.

Djaoro as Adam gives a strong central performance as he morphs from the the life and soul of the hotel to an aged man broken by promises and his own selfish acts.  At the end a screaming man (because if the title of the film was 'The Screaming Man' it would lose that universal feel), wonders the plains and wading in the river.  But he wonders around in the best African film since Moolaade.

A Screaming Man is released on Friday 13th May by Soda Pictures.
Click on the title of the film to watch a trailer.

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