Film Review: River's Edge (1986)

 

 

 I joined Frodi for the Decameron film review festival to talk about the 1986 film River's Edge. Hear me explain the boomer vs generation X dynamic and the danger of hyperreality in this review of the 80s (anti) teen flick River’s Edge.

The Northman: Pagan themes explained

Back in 2010 a PR company sent me an advance screener of 'Valhalla Rising' so I could review it prior to its official UK release. I heaped praise upon the film, despite the fact it contained many historical inaccuracies, because I was delighted to see a story set in the Viking age which had an esoteric dimension and which was crafted with more concern for artistic vision than with box office sales. In the 12 years since then, that violent, moody tale of an Odinic hero has set the tone for a wave of Viking invasions of popular media, many of which, including History Channel’s Vikings series and the Assassins creed Valhalla video game, copy the “biker Viking aesthetic” established by Winding-Refn’s bloody offering. Discerning audience members are now justifiably fed up with seeing the Viking age depicted with so much brown leather, tattooed heads, woke casting (a recent fad absent in Valhalla Rising) and punk rock haircuts.

So when Robert Eggers, a director whose previous two films each dealt with pagan mythology and folklore in a nuanced and thought provoking way, announced that his third film would be about Vikings, and when the trailer seemed to signal a break from the biker-viking aesthetic, I wasn’t the only one who dared to get his hopes up. 

Eggers described the film as Andrei Rublev meets Conan the Barbarian; the former, Tarkovsky’s deeply philosophical biopic of a medieval Russian artist, widely praised as a masterpiece of film making, is a personal favourite of mine while the latter is the definitive sword and sorcery fantasy popcorn movie, yet to meet its match even 40 years after its release. Eggers’ boastful claim is of course promotional hyperbole but, I am pleased to announce, not too far off the mark in the sense that The Northman is indeed, consistent with Eggers’ last film The Lighthouse, a work which delves into mythology as a means to explore the dark caverns of the human psyche. Yet unlike any other of his films, it contains impressively choreographed, high octane, (and perhaps a tad gratuitously gory) action sequences which will appeal to an entirely different audience.

In a nod to the first ever story recorded in Western literature, the Odyssey, the Northman also begins with a plot summary in the form of a pagan invocation. While the immortal lines in Ancient Greek invoke the Muse, likely the goddess Calliope, the husky narration of a character later revealed to be a priest of Odin, invokes that god and then reveals exactly what is going to happen with merciless disregard for spoiler-sensitive surprise-enjoyers. This introduction is also highly reminiscent of the opening of Conan the Barbarian which presents the film as a story told by a wizened old yarn spinner, much like this Odinic priest. Right from the get-go, the very pagan theme of fate inexorably leading our protagonist to his end is introduced, and we know what must occur before we finish our popcorn.

Spoilers should not concern anyone who knows the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet since this plot borrows from the same source Shakespeare referred to; the medieval Danish tale of Amleth recorded in the 12th century by Saxo Grammaticus. Amleth was previously adapted for the screen in Prince of Jutland (1994), starring a young Christian Bale as ‘Amled’. This formidable adaptation was more faithful to the original plot than The Northman is, but it occupied a more confined cinematic vision, without the much called-for exploration of the Viking world and the dark pagan themes central to the Nordic thought world which make the new film a modern classic. In the original medieval story, the young protagonist, after witnessing his father, the king, killed by his own uncle, feigns madness in order to save himself from the same fate, but is later sent by his suspicious uncle from Denmark to England. Eggers has replaced Denmark with the more dramatic landscape of Iceland, and England with the easternmost colony of the Viking world in Ukraine. But Eggers’ Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) does not feign madness, rather he descends into a very real divine madness after being initiated as a wolf of Odin. 

This transformation is depicted in two scenes showing separate Odinic initiation rituals each of which draws to some extent from historian Kris Kershaw’s work which connects the cult of Odin to the raiding party tradition of the Indo-Europeans. The first scene is early in the film, during Amleth’s childhood, when his father King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke) initiates his son into manhood with the help of the court jester, Heimir (Willem Defoe). This ‘fool’ character is not in the original story but his inclusion was a stroke of real genius on Eggers’ part. Heimir is a clear nod to Shakespeare’s Yorick, the court jester who Hamlet remembered so fondly from his childhood, but who appears in the play only in the form of a disembodied skull. The name Amleth itself, in its Icelandic form Amlóði, had come to mean a fool or jester in medieval Iceland, but it is thought to have originated from a term using the suffix óðr, a word cognate with Odin which refers to the divine madness or frenzy with which that god was associated. Since Amleth’s feigned stupidity is replaced by Odinic frenzy in this plot, his feigned stupidity is instead personified as a character who Defoe skilfully portrays in a manner at turns hilarious and terrifying. But Heimir is not just a fleshed out Yorick backstory, but is also a deeply Odinic figure who introduces the young Amleth to the mysteries of the Odin cult in a visually captivating scene which reimagines the world tree of Norse mythology as a family tree on which all the royals of that lineage hang like the hanged god Odin. This interpretation of the world tree as a family tree is also present in stanza 21 of Sonatorrek in Egils saga. Additionally, the Vikings also believed that kings were descended from Odin and the visual device of a family tree also serves to illustrate an unforeseen plot twist at the end of the film. During the first initiation, young Amleth not only becomes a "wolf of the High One", but is also advised by the fool in regards to the mystery of women which he says is connected to the Norns; semi-divine female entities who weave the fates of gods and men. Some Viking-age women practised a kind of shamanic, divinatory magic relating to the threads of fate which was called seiðr - a word which originally referred to a kind of thread like those used in spinning. Odin himself had to learn this magic from a goddess. The theme of the threads of fate is frequently invoked throughout the film with shots of spinning whorls and woollen threads as well as a Norn-like witch played by the Icelandic post-punk popstar Björk. While Shakespeare’s Hamlet agonises over the question of his own being and is thereby delayed from the righteous action of vengeance, Eggers’ Amleth remains almost constantly focused on his vendetta, and when he tries to turn from this path, the threads of fate pull him back to his inevitable end. 

The second Odinic initiation scene occurs when Amleth has become a man with enormous trapezius muscles (row-maxing will do that), employed as a slaver in the kingdom of the Rus in Ukraine. He and a group of men all wearing the skins of wolves are led by a horned priest (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson) in a shamanistic ritual which culminates in the men howling and snarling like wolves possessed by Odinic frenzy. Neil Price, Professor of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University, who was an advisor for the film, is likely to have guided Eggers in respect to this well-crafted scene. The priest wears a headdress with horns which terminate in bird heads and this motif is recorded on dozens of Germanic artefacts from Anglo-Saxon England and Scandinavia all of which are thought to pertain to a cult of Odin, with the birds representing that god’s two ravens. See my video on the subject for more on this. Several depictions also show the horned man dancing with spears and one such depiction from Sweden shows the dancer next to a man in a wolf skin. Thus the priest in this scene struts rhythmically around a ritual fire brandishing two spears in one hand. Kris Kershaw identified this wolf cult, known in Norse as the Úlfhéðnar, as a continuation of a prehistoric Indo-European tradition she called the Männerbünde, in which young men would leave their homelands and live as wolves in raiding parties, preying upon foreign cultures they encountered.

This is immediately followed by a testosteronous, adrenaline pumping sequence depicting the wolf men raiding a Slavic town for slaves. The town’s defenders launch a spear at Amleth who catches it in mid air and returns it in one impressively fluid movement. This seemingly impossible manoeuvre is taken directly from the medieval Icelandic story of Njáls saga in which the Viking hero Gunnar catches a spear and throws it straight back into his enemy. So even the action choreography has benefited from consulting historical sources!

After the raid Amleth receives advice from the Slavic witch Björk who sets him back on his fated path of revenge, stowing away on a slave shipment to Iceland. This part was a bit strange, since Russian slaves are unlikely to have been sent further west than Sweden because Icelanders were able to acquire slaves more locally from Scotland and Ireland.

Next Olga and Amleth live as slaves on a remote Icelandic farm owned by his uncle and Mother who don’t recognise him. This part of the film bears rather a close resemblance to 'When the Raven Flies' (1984), an Icelandic Western about an Irish slave who, having been taken to Iceland by Vikings, seeks revenge on his masters who murdered his parents. Although perhaps partially derivative, there is an innovative and enigmatic sequence when Amleth is led by a supernatural guide in the shape of an Arctic fox to a cave in which he finds a priest of Odin who Bjork had called "the ancient one" - the god Odin was also known as Forni which means ‘the ancient one’ and this wizard is a priest of the god Odin which means to an extent he also is Odin just as the horned spear dancer was in the other scene. The wizard, like Shakespeare’s gravedigger in Hamlet, shows Amleth the disembodied head of the court jester he loved so well as a boy. "Alas poor Yorick" is shortened to "poor Heimir". But this is not merely a skull like Yorick’s, rather the priest has preserved the head with magic, just as Odin preserved the severed head of Mimir so that it could recite to him the esoteric wisdom of Hell. Now we leave Elizabethan courts, descending into the misty realm of telluric pagan esotericism. We hear Defoe’s voice speak from beyond the grave telling Amleth how the sword was forged by dwarves from the bones of a Jötunn. Then the priest tells Amleth to enter a barrow at night to retrieve a legendary sword, ᛞᚱᚼᚢᚷᛦ Draugr the Night blade, with which he shall avenge his father. Heimir, like Mimir, serves as a prophet in death, but in fact he had been a prophet even in life too, for at the start of the film he makes lewd insinuations about Amleth’s Mother the Queen (Nicole Kidman) and her intentions toward her brother in law. A grave warning disguised as bawdy humour.

We never see the lips of the head move, and as with all the supernatural sequences in the film, Eggers leaves open the possibility that these phenomena are only depictions of what the characters imagine or dream they are seeing. This ambiguity regarding supernatural elements is also present in The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019) and permits a more nuanced reading of the text. It is employed again in the following scene when Amleth, beneath the light of the full moon, breaks into a barrow containing a boat burial in order to obtain his fated sword. We see again how faithfully the film adheres to historical accuracy, since the corpse of the great man in the barrow can be dated to the pre-Viking Vendel era based on his shield mounts and the domed mounts of his sword sheath. This is implausible since Iceland was not yet colonised by Norsemen in the Vendel era. There are, however, many stories of men retrieving ancient swords from barrows such as the poem Hervararkviða in which a woman climbs into her father’s barrow to retrieve an ancient family sword called Tyrfing from his ghost. The corpse Amleth encounters is sat upright on a throne, which in Norse lore is a sure sign that he will come back to life as a zombie/ghost which the Vikings called a draugr (confusingly the sword he retrieves from the draugr is called Draugr). Sure enough an intense fight scene between Amleth and the Vendel-era draugr ensues, ending with Amleth shoving its decapitated head between its buttocks - not merely gratuitous Hollywood filth for this too is attested in Grettir's saga. After the battle it cuts back to Amleth standing before the seated corpse as though nothing had happened. Was it all a dream? This may seem an insufferable cliche but here too there is a similar historical precedent to justify it. Barrows were associated with strange dream visions in many cultures. In the Icelandic Flateyjarbók, a Viking named Thorsteinn sleeps on a barrow and dreams of the ghost buried within who reveals to him that there is magic gold inside. When he awakes he discovers there is. So even if Amleth only dreamed that he fought the draugr, that doesn’t mean it didn’t really happen. Exactly the sort of supernatural ambiguity we should expect from Eggers.

Going back to the previous scene with the priest of Odin, though brilliant, it takes liberties with historical accuracy. The grizzled priest wears a sleeveless dress with two so-called tortoise brooches (I call them booby brooches) - typical women’s attire for the Viking age. We know from clear examples in texts like Njals saga and Gautreks saga that it was utterly unacceptable for a man to wear a woman’s garment. Even offering a man a slightly feminine garment would be justification for him to kill you. The idea that Odin or his priests cross-dressed is the theory of Neil Price, but it is strongly opposed by other experts such as Jens Peter-Schjødt. There is no source which proves these priests or Odin himself wore the garments of women for magical purposes, rather the theory depends on Price’s interpretation of Lokasenna in which the wicked god Loki, who is himself severely guilty of transgressing gender roles, accuses Odin of practising magic on the island of Samsø in the same way women usually do, and that he was in the form of a (male) sorcerer (vitki). Loki thinks this is ragr "perverted" but there is no mention of cross-dressing. He is referring to seiðr which was associated with weaving/spinning (a female gendered activity) and the Norns who control fate. Odin does actually cross-dress in another story, but only as a disguise so he can rape a woman. The other problem with the priest’s attire in this scene is that he wears a headdress with some tree bark bearing a magical Icelandic symbol known as ægishjálmur - this is a Christian symbol dated no earlier than the 17th century yet the film is set in the late 9th century. It has nothing to do with Odin.

Later in the story we learn that Amleth’s regicidal uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang) is a devotee of the god Freyr, disparagingly referred to by Amleth as a “god of erections.” The form of ritual devotion depicted draws in part from the same source in which Amleth’s story was originally preserved; Saxo’s Gesta Danorum. Saxo wrote that the hero Starkaðr considered the cult of Freyr in Uppsala to be unmanly due to the associated dances and clattering of bells. Fjölnir doesn’t dance but he does ring bells before the idol of Freyr, and along with his ill-gotten wife, and a priestess, veils his head in the presence of the god. There is no evidence that Germanic pagans such as the Vikings were veiled during rituals, but this practice is perennial among many pagan cultures including the Romans, who even required that the Emperor himself, along with other officiants, would veil his head (capite velato) during a public sacrifice to the gods. This representation of pagan piety was in stark contrast to the orgiastic wolf ritual for Odin depicted earlier, however the priestess of Odin in the first initiation scene at the temple in Iceland is also wearing a ritual white robe and veil. In an interview Eggers reveals that the decision to include the robes arose when he questioned Neil Price about how sacrificers would prevent their clothes being covered in blood, and Price replied that he had never had to think about this in this way before. Fjölnir's devotion to Freyr is also demonstrated through his horse sacrifices at two points in the film offered as part of funeral rituals. This is well established in the archaeological record and is something I attribute specifically to the cult of Freyr in my dissertation.

The dream sequences featuring a Wagnerian valkyrie (Ineta Sliuzaite) are also worth a mention. The mounted woman is adorned with an ahistorical helmet embellished with what appears to be a swan, presumably in reference to the association of valkyrja with the swan maidens of Germanic folklore. People have asked me why she is wearing braces - she isn’t - those are meant to be filed marks on her teeth- a peculiar practice which is attested in the archeological record.

The film is not without its flaws. I was unconvinced by the Slavic love-interest’s accent, fluctuating between faux Norse (all the characters use this ill-advised 'Allo 'Allo technique) and faux Russian, and the Slavic slaves in Iceland felt like a shoehorned incongruence. However, the touching theme of a man driven purely by hatred and revenge who finds salvation in a woman’s love, although cliche, is timeless. It speaks of an eternal truth contrasting the masculine with the feminine and I always prefer what is eternal to what is merely novel. Fans of Kentaro Miura’s Berserk will recognise the hyper masculine, ultra violent medieval wolf-man raised in gore and hate, driven by an obsessive thirst for vengeance tempered only by moments of tenderness in the embrace of the one person he loves. There is even a touching post-coital halcyonic respite in the woods when Amleth and Olga are allowed a moment of peace - a little too similar to Guts and Casca to be coincidental maybe? 

I consider this to be the best Viking film ever made and I expect it will be remembered as such for some time. But while I had hoped this would mark the long awaited end of the biker Viking-age aesthetic which has so permeated popular culture over the last decade, its tawdry mark can still be detected. Not so much in the costumes, but more in regards to the colour palette and score - the former consists of the rather familiar Hollywood medieval drabness with which historical dramas consistently deny the era’s vibrance. The score, while competently composed by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough, and effective in keeping the adrenaline pumping while the blood flows across the screen, will date the film since it owes much to the recently invented percussion driven fusion of neo-folk, world-music and martial-industrial that has become the stereotypical “le Viking music” of our time. Widely perceived as authentic because it uses medieval instruments, the combination of far flung elements such as didgeridoos, Siberian drums and Mongolian throat singing would have been as unfamiliar to Vikings as it was to anyone before the likes of Hagalaz Runedance and Wardruna invented it some 20 years ago. 

These are, however, minor quibbles with an expertly crafted film which is well cast, with actors pulling off some phenomenal performances (Nicole Kidman deserves particular praise for her role as the detestable Queen Gudrún). Eggers is certainly among the greatest filmmakers of his generation and regardless of how well The Northman performs at the box office, I don’t need to put on a dress to prophesy that it will be remembered as a cult classic of cinema history. 

- Tom Rowsell, April 2022

Film Review: THE LIGHTHOUSE

Film: Justice (2004)

A short film I made in 2004 about how an impoverished squatter punk, fed up with rising levels of violent crime, decides to take matters into his own hands. The film was a comment on Jack Straw and the New Labour government's failure to address the issue of violent crime despite their mantra "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"

Valhalla Rising

Valhalla Rising Explained

Death has dominion over this nauseating Nordic blood bath of a movie.

Just as last year's Bronson was a huge step forward for Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, from his Pusher trilogy, so too is Valhalla Rising a definitive progression in the forging of his identity as an auteur (Drive really confirms his skill). The tension of this slow moving story, punctuated with explosions of ultra violence and fountains of blood, is heart stopping. The dialogue is sparse; the protagonist is a mute Viking slave who has killed his masters and is accompanied only by a young boy who speaks on his behalf.

The film is set against dark and ominous Scottish Highlands occupied by Nordic pagans whose way of life is threatened by the spread of Christianity. A group of Christian Vikings find the pair and see the benefit of bringing the one eyed slave bezerker on a journey to Jerusalem for the first Crusade. After they embark, the Christians suspect that a mysterious fog that impairs navigation is a curse brought upon them by the pagan slave. He is too powerful to kill and at any point in the film when he is challenged there follows a gory scene with lashings of crimson and the barbaric sounds of axe cleaving flesh and splintering bone.

Without a background knowledge of the subject matter, the plot may seem far fetched and the violence gratuitous. It is remarkable that in fact every aspect of the film; from the decapitation of a chieftain whose head is then placed on a pole (a magic rite to pagan vikings), to the accidental discovery of Canada hundreds of years before Columbus, were things that actually happened. All the activities of these fictional characters are based on archaeological and mythological sources.

The linear story of an escaped slave finding salvation amongst Christians is brought into question. The slave never confirms his beliefs and is content to kill the Christians at the first sign of aggression. The name of the pagan protagonist is One-eye, a Viking nickname for their God of war Odin. When questioned by the Christians as to the origins of the slave, the boy responds, "he was brought up from hell." It seems that One-eye is more symbol than character. His emotions and intentions are never made clear. He is a source of fear for the Christians who mistake Canada for Hell, believing the pagan slave has led them there using magic. But he is also a guardian figure who takes the boy under his wing after killing the rest of his tribe.

The film explores the complex issues of cultural and spiritual conflict that were being played out in Europe 1000 years ago. The Christianisation of Europe, the slaughter of the pagans, followed swiftly by the first crusade and the slaughter of Muslims in the holy land are all addressed. While in Europe the pagans are said to live on "the edge of the world," hunted and killed in their thousands, in Canada the tables are turned and the pagan Indians hunt the Christians. The Viking landings in the new world ended badly and foreshadowed the colonisation of the Americas 500 years later. The repeating shots of crosses from obscure angles cut with One-eye's premonitions of extreme violence seem to be a message of the danger of Christianity. The Christian Viking leader's maniacal screams about "My new Jerusalem!" echo those of the early Christian settlers of America who made similar declarations before slaughtering native Americans.

The appeal of this movie for most will not be the spiritual message nor will it be the un-hurried cinematography and beautiful shots of the Scottish highlands. It will be violence. There is no denying the violent scenes are shockingly graphic, but they are too sparse to hold the attention of the average sociopathic gore-hound. Some sections are extremely drawn out and confusing, including a scene in which one viking inexplicably rapes another whilst under the influence of a hallucinogenic narcotic. Nothing is explicitly explained in the film. For some this will make the challenging story more intriguing, for others it will be simply bewildering.

FAGS

In 2007 I directed a short film called Fags. There were problems during production that resulted in some footage being unusable. This footage may have been salvaged and I will attempt to resurrect this thing that might have been. This is a teaser trailer of the film set to music by Teeth of the sea

The 16th Raindance Film Festival Review

The Rain Dance film Festival had it's 16th year this month, and as usual it was host to an international selection of challenging independent cinema. I interviewed festival organiser Elliot Grove, a couple of directors and have reviewed a few of this years offerings. Enjoy!



Hi Elliot, you must be very busy this year! What have you enjoyed most at this year’s festival?


Elliot: The big story this year is the attendees, the box office is up 40% which is astounding, and having done it for so many years it’s gratifying to see that people are finally getting out to find us, which proves that independent cinema is alive and well! Very much so!

So you think the future is bright for independent film And British cinema?

Elliot: Yeah, independent cinema is not for everyone, but it is definitely for people who want something a little different from the normal Hollywood fare, that you get at the multiplexes and the normal fare that you get at other film festivals. Our programming is much more underground and extreme than you’ll see elsewhere, certainly more extreme than you’ll see in the multiplexes.

Could you possibly pick a favourite?

Elliot: I don’t like picking favourites because all the films are favourites, but there is something that’s happened this year which is a bit different, there were three excellent films from Canada, one is ‘production office’, another is ‘Who is KK Downing’ a hilarious comedy and the actors are coming over, this is a comedy troupe from Montreal that feed into second city, the stand up club in Toronto which feeds all the big names to TV show Saturday night live, and is the route taken by all the big people like Jim Carey, Dan Akroyd, Martin Short, Mike Myers and so on so that film is great. And on Sunday Jeremy Podeswa, the great auteur, is attending with a film called ‘Fugitive Pieces’ which is a harrowing account of the holocaust, so those are all very different films, but I would heartily recommend any one of them to anyone, they have to be my personal favourites because I’m Canadian!

Congratulations on receiving the honorary doctorate, what kind of people do you think most benefit from your lectures?

Elliot: Anyone who wants to write a film, make a film or direct a film.


What will your next film be about?

Elliot: I’ve put all that aside for the past year while I’m working on the launch of raindance.tv our web distribution portal, so none right at the moment although I have some ideas, but I don’t really want to talk about them.

What things will be different at next year’s festival?

Elliot: I think what will be different is, we’ll have to address our infrastructure because we just can’t cope with all the people wanting to come, most things are sold out and people are damned lucky, if they don’t already have a ticket, to get a ticket which is unfortunate. So what we’re trying to do now is to address that issue and see if we can get larger screens and make the wonderful films we have from all over the world available to an even wider audience.

Did your Amish background affect your style of film making or your attitude to cinema in general?

Elliot: Yes and no, no in the sense that cinema and acting are my natural topics, but the yes is as a child I was exposed to all the story telling that you do in my community, that certainly affected the way I look at films, from a storytelling point of view, I love great stories, and the fact that there’s cinema means everything I grew up with has been enhanced. The storytelling I grew up with has made me particularly receptive to the visual storytelling of cinema, and wow! What a great way to tell stories.

You have a lot of contacts in the film industry but can you still get star struck?

Elliot: Yes, every time. Faye Dunaway came, on the one hand, I’m able to speak to her as I’m speaking to you now on the other hand I’m pinching myself thinking can this be real? I’m having dinner with Faye Dunaway, like wow! Its quite an experience that, in itself. And taking her through all the paparazzi and seeing all the pulling power she has, the pulling power that Adam Yauch of the beastie boys has, that Peter Greenaway, that Michael Winterbottom, that Bill Nighy, that Liz Smith the wonderful actress, that they have. They can do something that I can not, and I am forever in awe and respect of them. It’s a bit like going to the private show that Prince was doing at the O2, where he would play after the main show for 4 hours, he had done an energetic 2 hour set for 20,000 and then going with a few people and playing for 3 or 4 hours, My god, that’s something special. How does he do that? How does she do it? Amazing.


Heavy Load – Jerry Rothwell

A documentary film about a punk rock band from Lewes near Brighton called Heavy Load, the majority of it's members are disabled. The film begins with the director explaining his depression and shows how he uses the optimism and perceived happiness of the band as a vehicle to pull himself out of his misery, but as the film progresses and the band run into problems, he wonders whether by making the documentary he is taking away from their happiness. The band starts off playing only at disabled events, then progress to pubs and finish by playing at a festival alongside the Levellers and the fun lovin’ criminals. The disabled members of the band are very likeable and although the film is in no way patronising, it is slightly too sentimental for my tastes, and seems somewhat self serving, drawing no conclusions about the lives of the subject matter only that of the director. The drummer Michael’s expanding ego is one of the most entertaining aspects of the film, despite having barely mastered the drums after decades of playing, he becomes convinced he is too good for the band and threatens to start a new one. The director covers the subject skilfully and with sensitivity, he also uses the Sussex coastline to great atmospheric effect, ultimately this is no better than a feel good TV documentary about what strong little soldiers disabled people are.

The Blue Tower- Smita Bhide



The Blue Tower is this year’s winner of best UK feature at the Rain dance film festival. What I presumed to be a straight forward inter-racial romance story set in Southall, is in fact so much more as producer Jamie Nuttgens explained to me “the romance isn’t problematic like Romeo and Juliet.” In fact the sexual relationship the protagonist Mohan (Abhin Galeya) has with his wealthy aunt’s white care worker Judy is in fact the only thing that doesn’t directly create problems for him in this film, His wife is distant and unfaithful and her family particularly her brother do not respect him because he has no job and has not yet fathered a child, his mates are chancers trying their luck at get rich quick schemes and he is hoping desperately that another unreliable friend will come through for him with a job. His wealthy aunt doesn’t suspect her nephew and care worker of anything, even when they start stealing from her; she is too concerned with her vanity, which is exasperated by her creepy sycophantic neighbours and their plans to take her money. To escape from the mess of his life, he and Judy conceive a desperate plan. As his marriage and hopes of work look more and more bleak, Mohan becomes delusional and desperate, Director Smita Bhide skilfully uses the prominent red and blue towers that dominate the landscape of Southall as symbols of the security of Mohan's life and the menacing reality that lies behind the illusion.

The symbolism of the blue and red towers is very striking, where did you get the idea from?

Smita: When we were scouting the locations, looking for interesting landmarks, I just noticed them; they were sort of organically integrated into the plot. They are such amazing structures that we couldn’t really film there and not include them somehow. The shot where the blue tower emerges from behind the red tower is how it actually is, and that’s how that came about.


And was a lot of the plot developed organically in this way?

Smita: Well some of it was, I had an idea that we should make a short story featuring the three main characters, and I wanted to set it in Southall because that’s a place I know quite well. We wanted to make something that was set in that kind of Indian landscape, that’s also very suburban.

By the three main characters do you mean the lovers and the auntie?

Smita: Yes, I had a story that revolves around that, a bit like the Honeymooners, I love that 1950’s feeling.

So the secondary characters were developed later?

Smita: Yes, I wanted to expand Mohan’s life, to explain why he is the way he is, and why he is so protective of the old woman. Both of the other themes developed from this.

Is Mohan your favourite character in the film?

Smita: I really like Judy, she’s the one that I think is most interesting. In fact we had much more storyline involving her, but when we were editing, it was too long, and we ended up having to focus more on Mohan. Alice O’ Connell was brilliant as her, I think she was the character with the most layers.


Did Alice bring a lot of that to the character, or was this already created in your writing?

Smita: Well I wrote the part very much with Alice in mind, it’s such a shame more of the scenes with her in weren’t included, but you have to be discriminating when editing.


Who is KK Downey? – Darren Curtis




A Canadian comedy critique of the easily deceived, attention seeking hipster culture. The story concerns two failing creative artists, a musician whose band is laughable and a writer who can’t get his book ‘truck stop hustler’ about a drug addled trans-gendered prostitute, published on the grounds that he is too middle class to release such material. Together they create a fictional character named KK Downey who is presented as the author of the novel, but things go a bit pear shaped when their web of lies comes unstuck. The film is a hilarious spoof of the artistic and creative youth community that is done in an original and at times surreal way with all too familiar characters who despite their hopelessness are very endearing. There is a lot of very basic and vulgar humour, but the film never pretends to be anything it isn’t, taking the piss out of pretentious indie types rather than trying to entertain them.


Flick – David Howard


A rockabilly zombie comedy bonanza. The plot is feeble at times, and the character’s motivation unconvincing but the flawless style of the movie more than makes up for it, including the teddy boy clothing, zombie gore and classic comic book style framing with actual illustrated comic panels used in place of montages for the plot links. The cast is also very impressive including the Oscar winning Faye Dunaway as Lieutenant McKenzie , the one armed American cop partnered with detective sergeant Miller played by Mark Benton (The fat bloke from the Northern Rock ads) who had her flown in to catch a rockabilly serial killer in the dark decrepit environment of a modern Welsh city which lends itself well to the horror genre. There are some great one-liners and amusing Monty pythonesque blood squirting wounds that provide the comic relief from the rampaging zombie teddy boy murderer Johnny Taylor, whose insane mother played by Liz Smith (Royle Family) is the best part of the film.

Hollywood star Faye said she was happy to work on what she described as an innovative film, saying “I was very taken with this little piece, it was an honour to work with all of them.” Mark Benton added “I think Faye learned a lot from me.” Despite not yet acquiring a distribution deal, Director David Howard has high hopes for the film, saying “hopefully it’ll get a cult following!” I asked him where he got the inspiration to draw together the different elements that gave the film it’s style, he replied “We were aiming for a B-movie feel, also a comic book feel in terms of the framed sequences. I already had an idea to make a low-budget movie, then I heard ‘Teenager in love’ on the radio and I thought about killing a man in a record shop, as well as that song things like Roger Corman, American International pictures and all those B-movies that have enduring appeal and an innocence which I think is appealing, I also love David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock!”

Watch Out - Steve Balderson



Disturbing comedy about loveless self obsessed narcissist who is looking for work as a lecturer at a small town college, it features a hilarious scene where he tapes a picture of his own face on a blow up doll then fucks it. The subject is compelling and the parts with dialogue somewhat intriguing, but the film is mostly comprised of shocking yet tedious sequences showing the protagonist masturbating. The violent ending is somewhat predictable but quite satisfying; I think the whole film could do with being cut down by ditching a few of the numerous wanking scenes. The subject of a cold, almost inhuman narcissist who reads German philosophy and hates humanity is somehow compelling, but not enough to endure this very boring film.


Mao-ce-dun – Besnik Bisha

An endearing comedy about a roma gypsy named Hekuran who lives on a gypsy camp in Albania during the reign of the 1970’s communist government, he names his ninth child Mao-ce-dun, at first he is met with anger by the party as it is not a conventional Albanian name, but after he writes to the Chinese embassy, they show an interest and the party, eager to maintain a good relationship with China, award Hekuran with luxuries he has never before experienced. He learns to manipulate the party, but takes a greater interest in communism as the film develops, it is never clear whether he is manipulating the party for his own means, or he has just misunderstood the way communism works and merely wants to be a functioning member of communist society. By bringing his family into the world of politics, he puts himself and the security of his gypsy community in danger. Not just a critique of communism but also of hypocrisy and international political relations in general. The simple characters are easy to love, and their uncertain future weighs heavy on the mind of the audience, but the ending is unremarkable, unskilfully portrayed and would have benefited from a different pace of editing, or perhaps a different final scene.


Adrift in Tokyo – Miki Satoshi

Adrift in Tokyo is a heart warming comic drama about luck, a common theme in Japanese cinema, but interesting nonetheless. The film’s protagonist Takemura is a law student with a debt to pay off, a debt collector named Fukuhara who visits his house and threatens him, offers him a way out, all he has to do is walk the streets with him. The untrusting relationship changes as the two learn more about each other, it has the feel of a road movie, with the friendship developing between the two men, with the underlying theme of luck shaping their futures, Fukuhara lost his child and Takemura was abandoned by his parents as a child, they end up posing as Father and son and gradually Takemura realises his luck is changing. This sentimental and somewhat obvious male-bonding plot is held aloft by hilarious secondary characters, unlikely comic scenarios and the beautiful cinematography that captures the full range of Tokyo’s landscape and atmosphere. Uplifting, thought provoking and at times very amusing.


The Daisy Chain – Aisling Walsh

Female directors are too rare, particularly those willing to approach the horror genre. Walsh uses the beautiful Western Irish coast to create a bleak atmosphere of isolation and vulnerability. The plot is somewhat obvious, a young couple move away from the bright lights of London to raise a family, the wife is pregnant, and the husband has inherited his childhood home in Ireland, but the neighbour’s child Daisy is suspected of being a fairy changeling, born in a fairy ring on Halloween. The Neighbour’s son is killed under mysterious circumstances and the parents are soon to follow, the child is then adopted by the London couple, the motivation for this aspect of the plot is addressed but remains unconvincing. The superstitious locals become increasingly scared of young Daisy. The film lacks originality but has some redeeming qualities, the child actress Mhairi Anderson who plays Daisy is exceptional, providing a genuinely disturbing performance, the cinematography and score combine to give the film a unique character that is tense and engaging. The theme of fairies and the supernatural remains frustratingly unresolved, it is never made clear whether the girl suffers from autism, is very disturbed or is really a fairy changeling, a question left unanswered deliberately by the director, but in a clumsy way, that doesn’t encourage the audience to feel sympathy for the girl, who is properly identified neither as victim nor as aggressor. Despite the flaws The Daisy Chain, a combination of Straw Dogs and the Wicker Man, is a visually appealing and at times moving addition to the horror genre.

Fine, Totally Fine – Yosuke Fujita


This is a delicate Japanese comedy about how life can be disappointing, it features three main characters approaching 30, none of whom are satisfied with their lives. A nervous, shy girl with an unusual affection for fish sausages who aspires to be an artist but is too clumsy to hold down a job, a hospital manager who never confronts anybody and commands no respect because he is always trying to be nice out of fear that people won’t like him and the most compelling and amusing of all Teruo an obtuse, sadistic but dim-witted part time park keeper who likes scaring kids and dreams of one day building a super-ultra-haunted-house-deluxe, which will literally scare people to death. There is a brief sub-plot where the two men compete for the affections of the girl, but this is never resolved as she finds love with another man. None of their dreams are realised, and there are no scenes where emotional or hopes are addressed, or aspirations resolved. This is not a fantasy film, but a film about fantasy, and it’s stark contrast to reality. The film is charming, set predominantly in a second hand book shop belonging to Teruo’s father, despite the lack of a conventionally satisfying plot resolution; there is a poignant message about the pleasure that can be taken simply by enjoying each other’s company and being thankful for it.

The Tour – Goran Markovic

Based on Markovic’s award winning play of the same name, his anti-war comedy is a film about a group of failing actors living in Belgrade in 1993, depressed and drunk. They embark on a reluctant tour to the frontlines to perform for the Serbian soldiers, but they are constantly manipulated by different forces of the Bosnian war, over the course of the film they perform and socialise with doctors, writers, generals, Serbian soldiers, Croats and Muslims and they come to realise that the different sides are hardly different, the actors feel removed from the whole business of war, but learn that most of the people directly affected feel just as far removed from the horrific events. Markovic’s script is a fine example of his literary and comic talent, he also unflinchingly recreates the gritty, snow, blood and mud streaked landscape of former Yugoslavia. The comic addition of a somewhat ridiculous sounding folk score adds to the impression of the ridiculous nature of the war despite the tragic and horrific reality. I found the film a bit long, but the script never failed to entertain, as a script writer, and a storyteller Markovic is a highly experienced and accomplished artist, but he would benefit from fine-tuning his film making skills with attention to pace and structure.

Outlanders - drama about illegal Polish labour in London

could you choose between love and blood?

Outlanders is a very well written film, with the plot falling like a blade aimed directly at the heart of the issue of cheap illegal labour in Britain, without drawing obvious conclusions or shying away from the complicated reality of the phenomenon. The plot focuses around a Pole named Alex who goes to find his brother Jan who moved to London illegally years before, and has become involved in the exploitation of illegal immigrants. The direction features some wonderful obscure shots that help to depict an unseen part of London but the film suffers from a poor script, dodgy sound quality and lack of decent lighting at times. All the elements for an engaging drama are in place, a great plot, good lead actor and a director with an eye that appreciates the appealing nature of the obscure, and can construct atmosphere with impressive skill. But the failings of the film can detract from the plot, when script is barely audible and some scenes so dark that you can barely see the actor's expressions. I spoke to director Dominic Lees and lead actor Jakub Tolak who plays Adam Jasinski.



Dominic: It’s easy to market the film for the polish community in Britain, which is huge, and it’s an opportunity for the UK audience to discover new stars.

Were you very conscious of the different national markets when making the film?

Dominic: No, I didn’t think about it in market terms, it’s a film about brotherhood, but it’s set against the background of East European migration to London and Britain, so the universal story is about the relationship between the younger brother Adam, who is the hero and his older brother Jan who has been here a long time, he came when Poles were having to work illegally, so he’s worked on the black economy and has become a corrupt character. Essentially it’s just a film about brotherhood, but because I lived and studies in Poland and speak Polish, it was natural that the story was going to be about two Polish brothers coming here.

How do you anticipate the film being received in the two countries? I know you said you don’t think about it in market terms…

Dominic: Now it’s going to be really interesting because it’s one of the first films that’s going to be marketed at two sides of the British audience, the cine savvy UK audience who love independent film, they’ll have a natural interest in it, and festivals and so on it’s been getting a good reaction from those kind of audiences and separately there is a marketing effort to get Poles in the UK, I mean there’s what a million people, to be interested in a British film that can reflect their experience. That’s a kind of voyage of discovery, because no one has really done that yet. It may be a whole big new section of the British community that will come into film watching through that, you never know.

Jakub, how did you go about preparing for your role?

Jakub:It was kind of a process, at first I came to London just shooting for one week or more and I really wanted to feel abandoned so I went to the city a couple of times, walking around in the areas I didn’t know, and I wanted to feel totally lonely and I just wanted to feel the city, because I’ve been to London before, but I’ve never travelled just like that, I was always purposefully seeing something. The character comes here knowing nothing about the city so I kind of took the tube and just went somewhere, anywhere, got lost and watched different kinds of people, this was a very good part of it. The second part was a lot of talking, we had rehearsals, and we built up a back story which was pretty huge for this story.I knew what happened, I almost became the guy. I also tried to draw from my own experiences and put them into the character.

How does the atmosphere of London differ from that of Warsaw?

Jakub: In my opinion London is more alive, it has more different cultures, a mixture, it’s a bigger city. You enter London, and you enter London, there’s houses and houses, it’s huge, I can’t have a view of the whole city, it’s impossible for me. Despite the diversity it’s very much a whole, different races and languages, but the city is a whole, with the architecture, you can feel the spirit of the city. I think it’s on purpose, because I know English people really like the symbols of the city, red post boxes etc

How do you feel about the mistreatment of illegal Polish workers?

Jakub:I do have some friends who came here, to work or usually to study. But I didn’t have any experience with illegal workers which would have helped, but I knew that was a problem, and it’s a problem that is everywhere at the moment. In Poland we have people from the East or even the Far East coming to work illegally, I think that’s the normal way of history, usually when the country has better living conditions, people go there, the whole of America was made of illegal immigrants.

And have you any feelings with respect to the vulnerability of those immigrants?

Dominic: One thing the film does with these two brothers is compares their different experiences, because the older brother has already been here for 10 years, working on the black economy, he was really vulnerable and exploited. His back story is really sad and quite tragic and that compares with his younger brother who has turned up here after Poland has joined the EU and all he has to do is flash his passport and they let him in, he can work legally and he can do what he likes. Two completely different experiences of what it is like to come to this country. The older brother is corrupt in his own way and he now exploits workers from outside the EU, who he can get to work for cheap, illegally on construction site, repeating the same exploitation that he himself suffered.

Could you elaborate on the theme of the unseen “dark heart” of London?

Dominic: It builds on what Jakub was saying about the nature of London, it’s a beautiful city, its fabulously multi-cultural, it’s so varied but still has a unified soul to it. We have to be aware that a lot is built on the suffering of very vulnerable people, this film is about the way migrants from outside the EU are very vulnerable, and are ruthlessly exploited, and have no protection whatsoever. Every civilisation does this, from the Egyptians who built the pyramids with slaves and onwards, every civilisation has built itself on other people. That to me is the two sides of a great metropolis.

Jakub: I think netiher of us wanted to criticise the system or preach, just ask some questions about some general situations, some things that are going on, but we don’t want to answer we just want to ask. If people want to think about it they can, otherwise they can just see the movie.

Do you think the film will help to break you into Britain?

Jakub: I wouldn’t expect that, it would be naïve, my motivation to take part was neither money nor fame because it’s an independent movie, I wouldn’t expect that, we all knew that so that would be nice, but I just wanted to do such projects. I’d like to do more in England, as it’s very interesting for me as a pole, everything is new.

What attracted you to the role?

Jakub: I was attracted because it was an adventure, and the story is quite dense, a lot of things going on, interesting scenes, interesting emotions. I would say I treated this as an experimental thing because I was alone here; I purposefully cut contact with my family. Trying to find something more of myself.

Dominic: Jakub is being modest, one thing I’ve really enjoyed about the limited audiences that have seen it so far, people who don’t know the leading actors in this film, they say God! Who is that guy, the leading actor in this film!

Jakub: you didn’t tell me that!

Dominic: Haha! It’s really exciting because they have no preconceptions, this is an actor they haven’t seen, he’s come straight at them from under the radar, Jakub is very well known for his film work and television work in Poland. I was very excited to have him board.

Was the casting a difficult process?

Well I was certain I wanted Polish actors for the main two roles, twenty years ago Jeremy Irons played a Polish construction worker in the film ‘Moonlighting’ that today is absurd. You can’t have a British actor do that. Poland has a wealth of talent, but I needed to find two talented actors who could work English, which narrowed down my choices, in fact when it came down to it, there was only one actor I wanted to play Adam and that was Jakub and one to play his older brother and I was really lucky to get both of them.

You see Adam as being a hero? His role seems to be that of an individual with a difficult decision rather than a hero.

Dominic: when researching for the film, I asked my friends ‘if you knew you’re brother had murdered someone, would you shop them to the police or if they needed your protection would you protect them? And almost every single person said they would protect them. But they’re also thinking ‘I don’t like the fact that I’ll protect him even though I know I must’ that kind of tension is what the whole film is founded on. For me it’s a film of universal themes of brotherhood and morality, but set against very current phenomenon, but it’s not about that phenomenon, it’s opening questions about what it is to love and hate your brother at the same time.

Jakub: Many people ask if it’s a movie about Polish people in London, it’s not, it’s about immigration anywhere, I would like to see it this way. I wouldn’t treat the film as a story about Polish guys, but about brotherhood and immigration in general. The brothers do not represent their country.