| The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, 1962) |
[Jun. 6th, 2009|04:24 pm] |
Smith says "It's not that I don't like work. It's just that I don't like the idea of slaving me guts out so the bosses can get all the profits. Seems all wrong to me."
This is a story about Northern England and it's an appeal to socialism. Tony Richardson was part of the British Free Cinema movement and was associated with the British New Wave.
In the 60s there seemed to be a lot of exciting filmmakers that came out of documentary traditions. I kept thinking about how much Long Distance Runner reminded me of the early films of Québécois filmmaker Michel Brault. Like Richardson, Brault came from a documentary tradition, the Cinéma direct group. The Free Cinema group believed in making films outside of the industry, that films should be personal. The Cinéma direct group believed in objective reality at all costs with minimal intervention on the part of the filmmaker. But for both of them light weight 16mm cameras and innovations in sound equipment meant making better, more personal, and more natural documentary films. But in the 60s these documentarians moved to fiction film and the documentary influence is evident. The films have an ax to grind. Brault's films hinted at separatism and racial and class tensions in Entre la mer et l'eau douce while Richardson makes a point about class stuggle. Maybe it's a documentary impulse that makes Long Distance Runner feel like it's presenting evidence to you as it unfolds. Colin smith is not an ideological young man. He seems to know nothing about the Communist Party, makes no mention of unions, says he wants to make the world a better place but doesn't know where to begin. In his youth detention centre the house leader tells him that the authorities have the whip hand. He replies, "Do you know what I'd do if I had the whip hand? I'd get all the coppers, governers, posh whores, army officers and members of parliament and I'd stick them up against this wall and let them have it 'cause that's what they'd like to do to blokes like us." He comes to this outlook based on his surroundings. I like that Rchardson starts with the image. The shot of Colin burning the dollar bill. Or the boys pranking the Prime Minister's address on the TV by shutting the sound off and mocking it. Even the use of running as Colin's natural talent: it's a sport that the working class have access to. It doesn't require loads of cash. Yet running is also a response to being cornered.
Hmmm. I was describing this film to Amy earlier and I was sounding much more lucid and erudite. Now I'm not sure what I want to say. Oh well. |
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| The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992) |
[Jan. 18th, 2006|05:52 pm] |
I'm short on time so forgive the unstructured nature of this entry.
There was this period in the 90s when Channel Four FIlms seemed to be producing all these gritty, exciting films. Naked and Trainspotting are films that came out of this period. The Crying Game. is another. Briefly looking at imdb.com the Channel Four list of productions seems to be a fraction of what it used to be. There was the 24-Hour Party People and a documentary about Mel Gibson. Maybe in a decade of Harry Potter there is less of a need for innovation their local film practice.
Watching The Crying Game again I was really into the part in which Fergus goes to London to seek out Dil as Jody's last request. Now I haven't seen Vertigo in awhile and I suck at psychoanalytic film theory but there's something like Scottie's obsession with the blond woman in Vertigo in the character of Furgus. Neil Jordan's London is small and claustrophobic. While never really covert, we share in Furgus' gaze as he follows and watched Dil. He is out of his element and we're following the plot through his eyes. There's some scopeaphilic identification going on. The first scene in The Metro is great. They look at each other though the mirror and communication is mediated through the bartender. there's something perversly exciting about discovering things through Fergus' eyes as he sleuth's around London dropping into these peope's lives.
I also liked Fergus because his hard-boiled character lacked any charisma and seemed unsure of what he wanted throughout. Whenever someone says somthing to him he'd blankly reply "must be" but offer nothing new to the equation. His character seems to have grown out of the ruins of Thatcherism and he doesn't seem to have any family, career, or anything to hold on to except the IRA. After that doesn't work out the only source of meaning in his life is this connection to this dead person. That seems to be the other Hitchcockian motif: the ability of a character to influence events from beyond the grave (as with Rebecca, Psycho). |
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