| Never Let Me Go: 'A a cogent, subdued parable of mortality' This intensely English adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel is too tasteful to be scary and too contrived to be tragicWARNING: Contains spoilersThe London film festival begins with neither a bang nor a whimper: more a musical sigh of bewilderment and pain. This intensely English film is the muted story of submission to authority, adapted by Alex Garland from the 2005 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, and presented with the thoughtful restraint, literate dialogue and hardback-cinema production values reminiscent of recent Ian McEwan adaptations.Mark Romanek directs, and the movie stars Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield as Ruth, Kathy and Tommy: young people who have grown up incarcerated in Hailsham, a strange, elite boarding school in the 1970s and as adults become involved in a love triangle made more painful by the consciousness of how short their lives are to be. Ruth is sexy and smart, Tommy is vulnerable and awkward and Kathy — played by Mulligan with an almost unvarying expression of caring concern — is more mature than the others.They exist in a strange, alternative-reality sci-fi England, more like the wartime 40s or pinched 50s, with a Sovietised social structure, and burdened with creepy, Huxley-esque medical technology and laws about how to preserve health and banish sickness. It is only when they are 11 years old that the boarding school children accidentally learn the sinister truth about who they are, why they are there, and what awful plans the state has in store for them.Never Let Me Go is not exactly "sci-fi", though its founding premise has already been pretty well explored in sci-fi and genre fiction. There is exactly the same idea in Michael Bay's deafeningly brash Hollywood sci-fi thriller The Island — and a more different film could hardly be imagined. The slightly disconcerting thing about Never Let Me Go is that it is too tasteful to be scary, exactly, and yet too contrived and unreal to be tragic. Michael Bay's The Island, however ridiculous, did feature people who raged against the truth when it was revealed to them, and tried to escape. This never seems to occur to Ruth or Kathy or Tommy, and scenes at the seaside, with images of a lonely pier, only emphasise the sense of imprisonment, as well as reviving memories of the Merchant Ivory version of Ishiguro's The Remains Of The Day.What is, however, intriguing about Never Let Me Go is the way that the medical police state is imagined to be so entrenched, so invisibly embedded in this tatty, provincial fantasy-England that there is no flash of horror or vertigo when the secret is revealed. Everyone is very English about it: phlegmatic, accepting, melancholy, and this is arguably a shrewd, real insight into how people would actually be — or, indeed, how they actually are. The inmates of Hailsham become obsessed with the paintings that their art teacher periodically accepts for her "gallery", convinced that some can stave off their fate by proving to the authorities, through their paintings, that they are higher, nobler souls capable of passion. It is a very Larkinesque idea about perhaps surviving through love and art, and the movie functions as a parable of how, in this real, non-sci-fi world of ours, we go through our lives glumly declining to consider the chilling mystery of our own future deaths. The film withholds the explicit fear and passion that another kind of treatment might have aimed for, but it works as a cogent, subdued parable of mortality.Rating: 3/5DramaPeter Bradshawguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Audrey Hepburn stamps fetch $606,000 for charity By MARY LANE 2010-10-16T18:05:27ZBERLIN (AP) -- A rare sheet of 10 stamps depicting Audrey Hepburn fetched euro430,000 ($606,000) at a charity auction in Berlin on Saturday, two-thirds of which will go to help educate children in sub-Saharan Africa.... hosted.ap.org |
Russian wins Polish piano contest By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA 2010-10-20T22:59:56ZWARSAW, Poland (AP) -- A jury of the world's leading pianists awarded this year's Chopin Piano Competition to Russian Yulianna Avdeeva, the first woman to win the prestigious classical music competition in 45 years.... hosted.ap.org |
Old country for new films George VI's stammer, 70s Glasgow, Pakistan 30 years ago – all fine, but is period drama the best British film-makers can do?Although it prides itself on showing the "best films from around the world", this year's London film festival has showcased the broadest spectrum of British film-making for years. Irony thus abounds: the UK Film Council's demise and the 15% funding cuts – announced exactly halfway through its festival – to the British Film Institute's future budget, have thrown the domestic industry into confusion and panic.I would argue, however, that the enforced reshuffle in funding now means we have the chance to fashion a model of film culture for the 21st century, where creativity and productivity are harnessed to encourage both talent and audiences. The range of films at LFF shows wit, invention, great acting and great passion for cinema but what are we going to do with it?The King's Speech – starring Colin Firth as George VI, thrust into leadership when Edward chooses Mrs Simpson and having to overcome his stammer to address the nation and inspire it against Hitler – is a good story but no surprise. It's giving the Yanks what they want, with its little queen (Helena Bonham Carter's new shtick) squealing with delight, the king saying fuck, and stuffy Englishness being unbuttoned. I found it dull and visually cliched, but the crowd cheered it like a homecoming battleship.It could be that in times of uncertainty about the future, cultures comfort themselves with the certitudes of the past. A Blitz spirit hangs over British film, an attitude that says: "Well, we lived through that misery – war, strikes, sexism, banned pop songs, whatever – and came out smiling, so we'll do it again." My worry is, the more period product we trot out, the further distanced young British audiences become. Do our 16-year-olds give a toss about stuttering kings?The other platformed British films were Peter Mullan's Neds; Richard Ayoade's Submarine; the East Is East sequel West Is West; Never Let Me Go: all fine, all enjoyable, but hardly scintillating, hardly groundbreaking, neither big box office nor great art, and all set at least 25 or 30 years ago. Why is no one addressing the here and now? I'm hoping the drying-up of public funds will force film-makers to stop spending money on period costumes and old wallpaper, and concentrate instead on the country we've got. Cinematically, we've surely exhausted where we've come from (just in this past 10 months: Made in Dagenham, Cemetery Junction, SoulBoy, Nowhere Boy, Brighton Rock, Robin Hood).Neds was the best new film I saw. Peter Mullan, a fiery performer and even more intense director when given the chance (this is his first film since The Magdalene Sisters won at Venice in 2002 – why?), brings a skewed blend of humour, violence and fantasy to his tale of a bright Scottish schoolboy in 70s Glasgow who turns murderous just to fit in. It's like Kes by way of John Carpenter, shot through with bitter laughs. I loved the remedial summer camp for slightly incapacitated youths. The final credits are a joy, too.West Is West is far from the knockabout family comedy of its original. Written again by Ayub Kahn-Din but directed by Andy DeEmmony, it features Om Puri's George Khan taking his youngest son, Sajid (the one who was hidden in the parka hood, now 13) back to 1976 Pakistan to learn about his roots. It develops warmth and wistfulness as stubborn George, reunited with his spurned first wife and family, realises his betrayal to his own ideals. There are, alas, too many cliches about cows, beggars, weddings and dirt, but it does allow Linda Bassett the great line to her mate who's had too many kebabs: "Don't you dare shit yourself in front of this lot."Submarine has sweetness and whimsy, as well as lovely turns by Sally Hawkins and a mulleted Paddy Considine. Debut director Ayoade throws everything – why do young directors feel compelled to include diddly bits of animation and doodling? – at his story of a nerdy Welsh schoolboy's first love, so the film comes over like Grange Hill done by Truffaut, Charlie Kaufman and Mike Leigh. It craves indulgence a little too hard, but could be the start of a beautiful career.Leigh's reflective Another Year was greeted with deserved affection and I marvelled once more at how bloody good Jim Broadbent is, my performance of the festival. And I write this before seeing Joanna Hogg's Archipelago, a bourgeois drama of the type the French do so well but we seem incapable not only of making but, more importantly, of watching.Which of these films will survive outside the forgiving embrace of festival audiences? That will be the acid test. It could be a bitter one unless someone, somewhere livens things up.London film festivalPeriod and historicalColin FirthMike LeighJason Solomonsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Armenia's Arzumanyan Wins Junior Eurovision Song Contest Vladimir Arzumanyan, a 12-year-old from Armenia, won the 2010 Junior Eurovision Song Contest on Nov. 20. Does the future of pop have an East European accent? feedproxy.google.com |