Bombshell doesn't pack enough of a punch

The Me Too movement gets The Big Short treatment in Bombshell; a film which manages the difficult feat of raising an important subject while at the same time not giving it the attention it deserves.

The two films share a scriptwriter in Charles Randolph who in The Big Short (2015) gave us a Coles Notes version of the financial crash and in Bombshell does the same for the pre-Weinstein era. It covers a lot of ground but possibly at too much of a gallop.

The subject is Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) the head of Fox News who ran a years-long regime based on bullying, intimidation and sexual predation. The exemplar here is Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie), a composite fictional character used to illustrate his worst excesses in some truly cringe-making moments. Eventually Ailes was undone by two of his real-life on-air stars Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman). 

The performances throughout are excellent, even if Theron and Kidman have to act behind a lot of latex. There is no denying the bravery of Kelly and Carlson, or the humiliation that the women who Robbie’s character is based on. But at the same time it feels like this is all done in a bit of a rush. The story feels breathless and a little superficial. There are times when it could engage with the material a little more.

Bombshell gives the impression that it was all down to the toad-like Ailes but fish stinks from the head. He created a culture of malice and toxicity over decades. There are others who were involved who get a free pass in this film because, I suspect, it wants to tell a story without attracting too much attention from my learned friends. Ailes is dead now so he’s not going to sue but you can’t be sure about the others.

The story is told much better in the HBO miniseries The Loudest Voice (2019) which puts Ailes – played superbly by Russel Crowe – into context and, thanks to some heavy legal checking, also holds others to account.

Bombshell is very good but it’s an amuse bouche, The Loudest Voice is the a la carte menu which deserves to be savoured.

1917 is a triumphant exercise in pure movie-making

1917 is a film that totally reimagines the First World War in cinematic terms and the results are spectacular. It is a completely immersive cinematic experience that will, at times, make you catch your breath with astonishment.

Full disclosure. This film was co-written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns who was a student of mine for two years. I am of course immensely proud of her but that friendship has not influenced this review.

She and director Sam Mendes have crafted a script that encourages us to see a familiar conflict through entirely different eyes, it is a fresh perspective on a genre that has become calcified with clichés.

Whether it is All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Shoulder Arms (1918), or the most recent version of Journey’s End (2018) , World War One movies operate within a specific set of tropes mostly involving waterlogged trenches, traumatised soldiers, uncaring officers, and suicidal attacks. With 1917 we get, for the first time on screen, a more accurate vision of the conflict.

This was a war of grinding attrition. The troops spent as much time away from the front as they did on the firing line so there was a lot of down time. It was a war of tedious longeurs punctuated by relatively brief episodes of nerve-jangling fighting. They had to make a life for themselves in this nightmare scenario and the film does a very good job of normalising the hellscape. There are the usual decomposing bodies and shell craters and sudden death but none of this is overly dwelt on. Instead the film focuses on the impact this has had on the soldiers and how they cope with this abnormal new normal.

The story is simple. It is a basic ticking clock scenario. A regiment of British soldiers is about to launch an attack believing the Germans have retreated. In fact new intelligence indicates the Germans have merely withdrawn and regrouped and the regiment is now heading into a trap.

Two soldiers, Lance-Corporal Schofield (George MacKay) and Lance-Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), are ordered to deliver a message to the commanding officer to call off the attack and save the regiment. As an added incentive, one of the lives that might be saved is Blake’s brother. They have sixteen hours to complete the hazardous mission and rescue their comrades.

There is not a frame of film wasted in their pursuit of the mission. Much has been made of Roger Deakins’ cinematography and rightly so; this might be his finest work. Mendes wanted the film to appear as if it was done in a single shot. This means that in the opening scene he pulls back on Schofield and Blake and they take us through this nightmare. The novelty fades quickly and you stop waiting for the cut that isn’t coming and concentrate on the story. The film is so skilfully shot and directed that it replicates the classic Hollywood dictum that the audience should never be aware that they are watching a film. Here, Deakins’ camera and Lee Smith’s editing create a uniquely immersive cinematic experience.

1917 also has something we seldom see in this kind of film; space. The frame is wide and the images expansive as we take what might, in different circumstances, be a walk in the country with Schofield and Blake. The war is something happening around them not to them, beautifully indicated by plumes of smoke on the horizon and the drone of a distant dogfight.

We also get the chance to know them as men and not as soldiers. Despite the war being three years old Blake is still idealistic, there’s still a touch of death or glory about him. He envies the fact that Schofield has a medal. Schofield on the other hand is much more complex. He hates the war but he doesn’t want leave; he loves his family so much that he can’t bear to go home and see them for fear he may never return. They are both fascinating characters and our engagement and involvement with them makes us care so much more about what happens to them.

Chapman and MacKay are excellent and bring a compelling script to life. Their journey is punctuated by brief cameos from a sterling group of British actors. These include Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Scott, and others. They are all fine but the slightly haunted portrayal of a war weary officer by Mark Strong is the one that sticks in the mind longest.

Mendes direction is flawless. His single-take approach is undoubtedly a rod for his own back but he carries the weight well. The story is immaculately paced, Mendes never allows us to lose sight of the mission. In allowing the most emotive part of the film to effectively happen off screen Mendes takes a big chance but, like everything else, it pays off superbly. This is highly ambitious, risk-taking direction.

For all that there was one scene which nagged at me. Towards the end of the film, the mission almost complete, Schofield encounters a young Frenchwoman and an abandoned baby. My first thought was, no matter how welcome the respite, that the scene was unearned sentiment. After some reflection however it emerges instead, for me, as a pivotal moment.

This is Schofield’s Gethsemane. The family man could linger just a little longer with this faux-family, the mission is almost doomed to fail so why not just stay? But he realises that, to be biblical, this cup cannot pass and he must drink it. For the sake of his comrades he must go on.

It is a marvellous moment in a film that is by turns moving, exciting, thrilling, suspenseful and never less than completely involving. In some senses 1917 is a film that evokes the mood of the war poets such as Sassoon or Owen or Brooke. As Owen put it in his Anthem for Doomed Youth

‘Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.’

Mendes and his cast and crew have taken those words and wrought them superbly as images in this magnificent film.

Jojo Rabbit is a dark delight

I appreciate that it is the job of the marketing department to get people in to see a movie but sometimes they are a little, shall we say, overzealous. There is anecdotal evidence of audience members walking out of the otherwise excellent Uncut Gems because it’s not the type of Adam Sandler movie they’re used to. For what it’s worth I think that alone is a compelling reason to see Uncut Gems.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Jojo Rabbit has similar misfortune. The trailer sells the movie as an outrageously wacky wartime romp in which a naïve member of the Hitler youth has Adolf Hitler as his imaginary friend. That would actually work for me as a movie - I loved The Producers (1967) - but there is more to Jojo Rabbit than this.

Taika Waititi’s film deals with much bigger things. It’s about the rise of populism, it’s about the trials of adolescence, it’s about tragedy and loss – common themes in his films – it’s about survival, and most of all it’s about the things we do for love.

And as well as all of this there is the wacky stuff with Waititi as Hitler. In passing there can be no more powerful argument for diversity than having a Polynesian Jew playing the Fuhrer. Also, the film is not really about Hitler per se, it is more about the slavish adoption of a dubious philosophy.

Set in Austria in the last days of the Second World War, when the Germans were relying on children and pensioners to defend the Fatherland, our hero Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) is anxious to do his bit. Jojo is not a natural warrior but he is spurred on by his imaginary Fuhrer friend (Taika Waititi).

A training accident further limits Jojo and his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) insists that, in reparation, local militia commander Klenzendorff (Sam Rockwell) find Jojo something to do at HQ. Rosie disappears from time to time leaving Jojo to fend for himself but one day, mooching around the house, he discovers Rosie’s secret; she is harbouring a Jew.

Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) has been hiding in the attic for months. Jojo’s friend Hitler has encouraged him to believe that Jews are nature’s monsters, but Elsa looks alright. As they talk more and more Jojo trusts his imaginary friend less and less. But with the Gestapo at the door what is Jojo to do?

Waititi’s film works on a number of levels. At its most superficial it is a very entertaining comedy drama about a difficult subject. But there is much more going on here and you don’t have to dig very deep to find yourself being asked some awkward questions. Aren’t we all a little like Jojo these days having our prejudices confirmed by our imaginary friends on the internet without asking too many questions? What would we do if we were really forced to come face to face with those prejudices?

Waititi does not avoid any of the big issues. Anyone who knows his work knows that death is an ever present. As in his other films, such as The Hunt for the Wildereople (2016), it arrives here suddenly, unexpectedly and its impact is utterly devastating. It is a game changer and it is a scene that defines the movie.

The performances throughout the film are remarkable. Davis and McKenzie are superb as Jojo and Elsa, and Johansson gives a career best performance as Rosie. I know her role in Marriage Story (2019) is the one everyone is talking about but for me this is the better turn.  Waititi hits the right shade of Machiavellian camp as Hitler, and there is excellent support from Rockwell, Rebel Wilson, Stephen Merchant and a movie-stealing debut from Archie Yates as Jojo’s only – real life – friend.

The sincerity of the performances, the subtlety of Waititi’s direction, and the slyness of the screenplay all combine for an ending which is not only bittersweet but gloriously triumphant. Definitely a film not to miss.

Little Women is an instant classic

It’s one of the fundamentals of screenwriting that structure is a vessel for content; the shape of the vessel dictates the structure of the content and therefore how it is received by the audience. If you can change the vessel you change the movie which I think goes some way to explaining the success of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women.

Don’t get me wrong, this film is superb, and it deserves almost all of the praise that has been heaped on it. However, it is not really the radical reinvention, nor the new, bold post-feminist statement that some are seeing. In fact, apart from one egregious alteration in the ending, Gerwig has done very little to change what is already there in Louisa May Allcott’s classic novel except add some autobiographical details of the author’s life for context.

What she has done is change the structure and the results are remarkable; this 19^th century memoir feels like it was written yesterday.

The story of the four March sisters is timeless. While their father is off fighting for the Union in the Civil War the March girls keep the home fires burning; dependent on the kindness of strangers which they often reciprocate like the good-hearted souls they are.

Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is the eldest and an aspiring writer; it is her version of the March lives that we are watching. Meg (Emma Watson) is quiet and aspires to teach while Amy (Florence Pugh) is the ambitious and headstrong one who feels destined for better things in the shape of a rich husband. The youngest, Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and their mother, Marmee (Laura Dern) are the axes around which the other three pivot.

By my reckoning this is the eighth screen version of this story but it is the first to be told in a non-linear way. Here we meet the Marches first as young women as opposed to the young girls of the more conventional chronological narrative. The story bounces back and forward between past and present with some interesting results.

We know very quickly that Jo will not marry Laurie (Timothee Chalamet) which is the spine of the more conventional telling, and that makes this version so much more dynamic. It liberates Laurie, for example, although I still feel he is underused and feels more like a plot device than a character.

The new structure also hits a major speed bump when the two dramatic high points of the story occur immediately after each other which makes for an emotional gut punch but, for me, slightly unbalances the story.

Nonetheless Gerwig’s ear for dialogue and her gift for characterisation, working from some great source material, makes for a film that fairly soars at times. The performances are remarkable – it seems unfair to single anyone out, but Ronan, Pugh and Dern do some of their best work here. And there is impressive support from the likes of Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper and Tracy Letts.

The weak spot for me again is Chalamet as Laurie. He is written as a louche Rimbaud/Verlaine type of figure and there is a sense that he just doesn’t belong in 19^th century New England. It gives Chalamet lots of opportunities to be idle and decadent, which he does well enough, but that’s not Laurie.

Nonetheless, even if it doesn’t re-invent the wheel, this is a bold and ambitious film which at its best absolutely soars and may come to be seen as the definitive screen Alcott.