Movie Review: The Theory of Everything

The Theory of Everything
Directed by: James Marsh.
Written by: Anthony McCarten based on the book by Jane Hawking.
Starring: Eddie Redmayne (Stephen Hawking), Felicity Jones (Jane Hawking), Harry Lloyd (Brian), David Thewlis (Dennis Sciama), Emily Watson (Beryl Wilde), Simon McBurney (Frank Hawking), Lucy Chappell (Mary Hawking), Christian McKay (Roger Penrose), Simon Chandler (John Taylor), Maxine Peake (Elaine Mason). 

In Errol Morris’ A Brief History of Time (1991), the famed documentarian took the life and work of physicist Stephen Hawking, and combined them to make a fascinating documentary – one that takes Hawking’s ideas seriously, and connects them to his life – including his affliction with Motor Neuron Disease, which slowly took over his body, combing him to a wheelchair, and eventually even claimed his ability to speak. The one thing the disease could not take away from Hawking was his extraordinary mind – and the documentary was remarkable in how it was able to combine his ideas with his life. In James Marsh`s The Theory of Everything, Hawking’s ideas are not really given all that much screen time – there is a lot of talk about how brilliant Hawking is, but very little about why he was so brilliant. Instead, the movie plays like a more typical, inspirational biopic – showing Hawking’s 30 year marriage to Jane Wilde, and how her strength pushed Hawking to keep on going, to not give up on his body, so that his mind could still function. That’s enough to make the movie good – and the two lead performances are great to be sure – but it’s not enough to make the movie great. For that, the movie would have had to delve a little deeper than it does.

The movie opens in the early 1960s, when Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) is a doctoral student at Cambridge, brilliant, but somewhat scattered – he can do all the impossible questions his professor asks him, but has no idea what his doctoral thesis is going to be. He is also blissfully unaware that his body is about to betray him. It’s here he meets a fellow student – Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones), who is studying poetry, and although the two seem like complete opposites – he somewhat shy and awkward, her composed and demure, he a committed atheist, her a loyal member of the Church of England – but of course they fall in love. It’s while at school that Hawking is first diagnosed with ALS (fortunately for him, it wasn’t that – just a disease closely related to it) – and he’s given two years to live. By now, he has hit upon the idea of black holes, circling back time and the Big Bang. If he only has two years left, he wants to spend it working – he tries to get Jane to leave him, but she will not. She loves him, and she is a lot stronger than she looks.

The two lead performances are the reason to see the film. Redmayne has the showier role, and he nails it. He is great as we watch as Hawking’s body slowly betrays him – as he moves less and less, his body slowly becomes more contorted, his facial expression becomes more fixed, and his voice gets slower and slower. It is an immensely physical performance – even more so the less Hawking can actually move. Redmayne gets the big and the little things right. Jones has the less glamorous role to be sure – but she may in fact be even better, showing both the strength and fragility of Jane. She doesn’t make her into some sort of self-sacrificing saint – but rather a woman who loves her husband, and no matter what frustrations loving him entails, she is willing to stand by him. Her relationship with another man is not presented as tawdry – it’s not even sexual for quite some time – but she certainly needs someone to lean on – and she finds it. There are other elements I liked about the movie as well – Benoit Delhomme's beautiful cinematography, full of blue hues, and earthy tones is wonderful, the score Johan Johannsson may underline the emotions a little too much, but is still quite beautiful. They help the two leads performances to be sure – but the performances remain the star of the show.

What’s missing from The Theory of Everything is anything really complex. The movie doesn’t delve very far at all into Hawking’s theories – I guess it assumes you already know them, or else you just don’t care. And the marriage between Hawking and Jane is perhaps the most British marriage I have ever seen in a movie – even when these two fight, they do so without raising their voices, without any harsh words or frustrations. Even the end of the marriage is so quiet that it barely even registers that it is over. The movie is based on one of the books that Jane wrote after her marriage to Hawking ended – one wrote after some time had passed. She wasn’t nearly as generous right after their marriage ended. I’m not saying the movie had to portray Hawking or Jane as the bad guy, or the good. But I do think the movie doesn’t quite get how a long term marriage works – the ups and downs. The movie lacks any real urgency.

 
But the two lead performances are great – and for that, the movie should be seen. It’s just that the life and work of Stephen Hawking could make a great movie – in fact, Errol Morris made that movie 23 years ago, and it easily remains the definitive Stephen Hawking movie to date.

Movie Review: Shadow Dancer

Shadow Dancer
Directed by: James Marsh.
Written by: Tom Bradby based on his novel.
Starring: Andrea Riseborough (Collette), Clive Owen (Mac), Brid Brennan (Ma), Aidan Gillen (Gerry), Domhnall Gleeson (Connor), Gillian Anderson (Kate Fletcher), David Wilmot (Kevin Mulville), Cathal Maguire (Mark), Michael McElhatton (Liam Hughes).

Like Werner Herzog, James Marsh moves back and forth between fiction and documentary films effortlessly. He probably better known for his docs like the Oscar winning Man on Wire (which I didn’t like as much as many) and Project Nim (which I did), but his fiction films including the criminally neglected The King, which was exceptionally creepy (and not in a horror movie way) and his part of Red Riding Trilogy, are perhaps even better. His latest fiction film is Shadow Dancer – about the IRA in the early 1990s. The film has a drab and dreary visual look – it’s always raining in Ireland – which matches the somber tone of the film. But what the movie really lacks is tension. Here’s a movie about a woman from a family or IRA members, who becomes an informant for MI5 putting her life in jeopardy from both sides, and yet the movie is never really all that tense. It just kind of sits there.

The best thing about the movie is the performance by Andrea Riseborough. She plays Collette, who in the opening scene we see dropping off a bag in a London Metro station, and immediately being arrested. Her interrogator is Mac (Clive Owen) who gives her two options – spend the rest of your life in jail, lose custody of your young son, or become an informant. Although she hesitates, she eventually agrees to become an informant – which will mean ratting on her own family – since two of her brothers are in the IRA. This makes her even more guilt riddled than before – as a child, she sent her younger brother on an errand she was supposed to go on, and he got killed in the crossfire between the Brits and the IRA.

Strangely for a movie about the IRA, the movie is almost devoid of politics. The IRA and the Brits are heading towards a ceasefire – this time, perhaps permanently, and yet the movie never offers any opinion of the politics involved – either in sympathy with the IRA or against it. In fact, the movie doesn’t even really mention any of the issues at play – or why the leadership of the IRA wants to take the deal, and why those on the ground, including Collette’s brothers, are dead set against it. I suppose you could argue that any watching the movie already knows the issues – and already knows what side they’re on – but the complete lack of politics in the movie seemed like a strange choice to me.

The movie still could have worked without the politics of course – as long as the human story was compelling, which I don’t think it was here. If the movie is supposed to be a thriller, than it lacks any real tension, despite all the plots twists the movie throws at you – and the constant state of fear Collette is supposedly in - the enforcer for the IRA suspects she has turned informant – and will kill her if he finds out for sure. But aside from a few quiet conversations, this doesn’t really go anywhere. On the flip side, Mac trying to figure out the truth behind MI5’s motivations – particularly those of his boss (Gillian Anderson), and why they seem to be trying to undermine him also doesn’t make much logical sense – except, of course, because the movie cannot reveal its secrets until its convenient to the plot.  There is also the issue of the forced romance between Collette and Mac – there isn’t much there beyond long, meaningful looks, but since this goes nowhere, I wonder why it was included at all. The ending of the movie also seems completely illogical.

I liked the visual look of the film for the most part. This is a visually drab movie – everything seems to be a shade of grey – which is appropriate for the film since the characters are equally depressed as their environments, and perhaps because the movie takes place in the moral grey zone. The performances match the look, and are appropriate for the characters – especially Riseborough who manages to make Colette sympathetic, despite being a downer to spend the entire movie with. Owen does what he can with Mac, but it’s an underwritten role. Perhaps the best performance in the movie is by Brid Brennan as Collette’s mom – who is quietly excellent throughout. No one else really makes much of an impact.

What we’re left with is a thriller that lacks tension and has an illogical ending, a movie about the IRA devoid of politics, a romance that doesn’t go anywhere, and a character study of drab, boring people. I’ve probably made Shadow Dancer sound worse than it actually is – but there is no doubt that coming from Marsh, this was a disappointment.

DVD Review: Project Nim

Project Nim *** ½

Directed by: James Marsh.

I couldn’t help but think of the summer blockbuster Rise of the Planet of the Apes while watching Project Nim. If ever there was a monkey with a valid cause to start an uprising, like Caesar does in that film, it would be Nim. Born in captivity, he is ripped from the arms of his mother when he is just two weeks old. A Columbia University professor wants to study Nim and see what the effect would be to raise him with a human family to see if he can be taught language. So, he places Nim in a family in New York, with many kids already, and Nim seems happy. But, the family has no rules, no boundaries, and it wasn’t conducive to scientific study, so he takes Nim away, and moves him to a large house, and brings in various teachers. He places a 19 year old student, who he is sleeping with, in charge. Again, Nim seems happy there for a time. He is picking up hands signals and learning sign language. He spends all of his time around people, and none around other chimps. After 4 years of this, the professor decides his study is over, and ships Nim back to the monkey research facility where he was born. Although Nim was never human – he remained an animal, despite all his contact with humans – he is now in a place where he knows no one, and is much smarter than the other monkeys. He tries to use his sign language with them, and he gets nothing but blank stares. Of course Nim becomes depressed. And that’s just the beginning of his ordeal.

Directed by James Marsh, Project Nim is a heartbreaking documentary. Anyone who has ever had a pet knows that animals have real feelings and develop real attachments to those they are around day in and day out. To first rip Nim away from his mother at just two weeks old was cruel. To rip him out of the hands of the family he was living with, and getting along with, was also cruel. To train him to communicate, use him for purely scientific research, and then dump him back with other chimps, ripping him away from everything he knows, is crueler still. That Nim became depressed was inevitable. That later on, he could sometimes become violent, is understandable. He’s a powerful animal who was let down by everyone he ever loved.

What was the purpose of all of this? To test Hebert Terrace’s theory about nature vs. nurture. If the chimp could learn to communicate, to overcome his nature, by his interactions with humans, it could prove a lot. Did it? No. The results were inconclusive, essentially confirming what you or I could tell you without subjecting a poor chimp like Nim to this cruel treatment – that although chimps share much in common with humans, they are not humans. Bravo! I think that many of us accept the idea of animal testing, although we are uncomfortable with it, because it helps to save human lives. But what exactly did this project accomplish? It didn’t help humans out very much, except to prove what we already knew, and didn’t help poor Nim out at all. It’s just cruel.

The film was directed by James Marsh, whose last documentary was Man on Wire, beloved by many (although personally, I thought it was completely over rated). Here, Marsh makes no attempt to try to be neutral and unbiased. With his somber score, he is trying to pull on your heartstrings, and he certainly manipulates you into thinking a certain way about Nim’s story. I don’t mind that – all documentaries do this to one degree or another, Marsh is just more up front about it. And it’s impossible not to feel for poor Nim. I’ll you something, if the monkeys ever do rise up against us, it won’t be without cause.

Movie Review: The Red Riding Trilogy

The Red Riding Trilogy ****
Directed By: Julian Jarrod (1974), James Marsh (1980) & Anaud Tucker (1983)
Written by: Tony Grioni based on the novels by David Peace.
Starring: Andrew Garfield (Eddie Dunford), David Morrissey (Maurice Jobson), Mark Addy (John Piggott), Paddy Considine (Peter Hunter), Peter Mullan (Martin Laws), Robert Sheehan (BJ), Eddie Marsan (Jack Whitehead), Warren Clarke (Bill Molloy), Sean Bean (John Dawson), Sean Harris (Bob Craven), Maxine Peake (Helen Marshall), Rebecca Hall (Paula Garland), Anthony Flanagan (Barry Gannon), Berwick Kaler (George Greaves), Chris Walker (Jim Prentice), Daniel Mays (Michael Myshkin), Gary Whitaker (Jim Kelly), John Henshaw (Bill Hadley), Ron Cook (Clement Smith), Saskia Reeves (Mandy Wymer), Shaun Dooley (Dick Alderman), Steven Robertson (Bob Fraser), Joseph Mawle (The Ripper), Tony Mooney (Tommy Douglas), Michelle Dockery (Kathryn Tyler), Gerard Kearns (Leonard Cole), Hilton McRae (Clive McGuiness), Catherine Tyldesley (Tessa), Cathryn Bradshaw (Marjorie Dawson), Beatrice Kelley (Mrs Myshkin).

David Peace’s masterful four part literary series about corruption and violence in Yorkshire region in Northern England over the course of a decade has made its way to the screen in this trilogy. The movies cut out one of Peace’s books (1977), and has shortened down the other three, yet have perfectly captured the spirit of the novels. The Yorkshire region was crawling with corruption between 1974 and 1983. It didn’t matter if it was the Yorkshire ripper killing women, or an unknown murderer of little girls, the police and the media used these to mask their own corruption that is rotting them for the inside out. Every time someone tried to step in and expose the truth, they were treated to a series of escalating events that ultimately led to their lives and families in ruins, before climaxing in their own deaths. And perhaps they were corrupted along the way themselves. The movies, which make up about 5 hours of running time, have a huge, epic scope, dozens of speaking roles, and paints a picture of massive corruption. The Yorkshire Ripper acts as a good study of the area at the time – he may be murdering women he considered to be “unclean” (ie prostitutes), but all the men in these movies are essentially do the same thing to the women in their lives, but not in such a direct way.

The first part of the trilogy, 1974, centers of Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield), a young reporter from the Yorkshire post who has moved to the area from down South, where things are done differently, When a little girl goes missing, he sees similarities to two previous cases – one in 1969 and the other 1972 – about two young girls who disappeared in a similar manner, but were never found. He probes deeper and deeper into the investigation, especially when the latest girl is found is a drainage ditch with swan wings stitched to her back. His investigation brings him into contact with the police, and a real estate mogul, John Dawson (Sean Bean), who seems to be protected from on high. His life slowly starts to unravel when he gets involved with Paula Garland (Rebecca Hall), who has ties to Dawson, and is also the mother of one of the missing girls. Someone, perhaps a lot of someone’s, do not want him to find out what happened, and the movie ends in a blood drenched shootout.

The second part, 1980, centers on Peter Hunter (Paddy Considine), a police officer, also from the South like Eddie was. He was brought in 1974 to investigate the shootout that ended that movie, but never got to finish his investigation. Now he is brought in to oversee the Ripper case, which by then has stretched on for more than five years, and now has more than a dozen murders to investigate. He is not only tasked with finding the Ripper himself, but also to look into the investigation itself, and see if the police had screwed up anywhere. Like Eddie, the more he uncovers, the more complicated his life gets, as his relationship with his wife is threatened, and his affair with an fellow officier (Maxine Peak) becomes public knowledge. Like Eddie, there seems to be no way out for Peter.

The final part, 1983, focuses on three different protagonists. One is John Piggot (Mark Addy), an overweight, disgraced attorney, with a dead cop for a father, who is asked by the mother of the mentally challenged man convicted of the child murders that took place in 1974, to appeal the decision, which draws even more attention when another little girl goes missing. As he digs deeper, like Eddie and Peter before him, he doesn’t like what he finds. Another character is BJ (Robert Sheenan), who we met in both previous chapters. He is a young male prostitute who seems to access to all sorts of information involving the child murders, the Ripper and the shootout at the end of 1974, but he has become increasingly paranoid about his own safety (with good reason), and has mentally snapped. But the movie mainly focuses on Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey), a senior police officier we also met in the previous installments, but always hung in the background, his huge glasses not giving anything away. Unlike the other characters in the movie, he knows firsthand about the corruption that has gone on – he has been involved with it since the beginning – but his conscience is finally catching up with him.

These characters are just the tip of the iceberg of the people that cycle through these three movies. There are many others – most memorably Martin Laws (Peter Mullen), a Reverend who always seems to be around, offering comfort and guidance to the victims of the crimes right before either the police of the newspapers appear on their doorstep.

The three movies are definitely part of a whole – and the cumulative impact of the three are much greater than anyone would have been – but they have been directed by three different men, who bring distinct visual styles to the films. In 1974, director Julian Jarrod seems to be heavily influenced by Martin Scorsese (there are direct visual references to both Taxi Driver and New York, New York), and creates a Yorkshire where it is always raining, unless its overcast and about to start. James Marsh, who directed the second installment, prefers bright, white lighting for the scenes indoors – the institutional setting of much of the movie is blinding, and inky, murky darkness for the scenes that happen at night, which is many of them. Finally, Anaud Tucker, who directed the third film 1983, is the only one who gives us any glimpse of sunshine – it’s always coming through windows in blinding streaks, appropriate, because in this installment, the corruption of the previous decade is finally seeing the light of day. The three films definitely do feel like a part of one series, but the directors make them distinctive from each other.

I think what the series essentially boils down to is the racist, and particularly the sexist attitudes of the men in the movie. Only one character has the guts to spell it all out, but Sean Bean’s John Dawson does in 1974, because he knows he is untouchable. When he says “Your Paddies, your wogs, your niggers, your fucking gyppos, the poofs, the perverts, even the bloody women. They’re all out to get what they can get. I tell you, soon there’ll be nowt left for us lot”, he isn’t just speaking for himself, but for pretty much all the male characters in the movie. For the two characters from the South, the challenge is to remain distant from this attitude, but we see signs of both Eddie and Peter falling victim to this feelings as their respective movies progress, which maybe why they almost seem to welcome their fate. They know where they are heading, and don’t like it at all.

All the women in the movie are chewed up and spat out in one way or another. If you’re lucky enough to not be killed, you end up either slowly going insane, or just raped and forgotten. There are many mothers without children, crying, trying to get someone, anyone, to listen to them but they are pretty much ignored. The men in this movie have no time for women, unless they are using them for their own personal goals.

The Red Riding Trilogy is epic in its scope, and yet minute in its details. Through the course of the movie, we get the entire picture of Yorkshire over the course of this decade, where few survived unscathed. Red Riding is the movie event of 2010 so far.