Between the Reels

reviewed by James Cheetham
jamescheetham.jcc@gmail.com
written for the Kensington & Chelsea Review

While the title of Polanski’s latest cinematic endeavour may be one of chaos and impromptu madness, the kind of carnage Polanski pelts the characters of his films through is always one of precise manoeuvre and forced bravado. So comedy may seem a somewhat odd or at least unexpected change of pace for the man who is best known for his tightly handled horrors and thrillers.

His was the hand that controlled Catherine Deneuve’s psychological break down in Repulsion, the mind that visualised the creeping horrific realisations of Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby. But with Carnage it comes as a surprise to see just how well he shuffles himself into the role of comedic director, while still staying true to the themes that regularly crop up in his films. An adaptation of French playwright, Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, which began its run in Paris, Carnage plays it small, trapping two polar opposite couples within an enclosed space and focusing upon their interactions with each other.

Because of this, Carnage allows Polanski to explore his favourite themes albeit in a less extreme and more realistic manner. You’ll find no satanic witch covens or political war criminals here, but instead the parent you may bump into in the school playground while waiting for your child to finish school. That vague face who you’ll share a moment’s brief small talk with while pretending you’re the best of friends. Cast in the roles of the carnage makers are Jodie Foster and John C Reilly as the Longstreets, with Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz as the Cowans.

The film begins on a brief moment of open expanse and shows the child of the Cowans hitting the Longstreet’s son in the face with a stick, in the exaggerated words of Penelope Longstreet (Jodie Foster) “disfiguring her child.” As mentioned early on in the film however, “we’re all decent people, all four of us”, god forbid that when these adults meet up to discuss their sons’ behaviour they would end up bickering just as ridiculously as their 11 year olds.

Except they do, these upstanding citizens of Manhattan letting their superficial maturity wane as issues of class, gender and profession crop up making it less of a civilized get together and more Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Keeping the action within the small environment of the apartment allows for Polanski’s well known motif of claustrophobia to come into play, with cinematographer Pawl Edelman’s angles and close ups of the characters and the apartment conveying a homely environment as a cage.

It transforms it into an arena for the combatants to build up to their eventual outbursts, whether this is projectile vomiting, the throwing of bags or the decimation of tulips. So, while the comedy of Carnage may be a different approach for Polanski, similar themes keep it attached to his previous body of work. For example, Ewan McGregor’s writer stuck within the confines of the Prime Minister’s cold and uninviting safe house in The Ghost Writer, or the claustrophobic rooms and corridors of his ‘apartment’ trilogy; Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant.

The character breakdowns in Carnage may not be quite as unnerving as these examples but this allows for a different element of voyeurism to take effect. We know these characters, at times we have been these characters, so unlike some of his other films, Carnage is more accessible and relatable for the audience. It instils a sense of guilt as you watch them argue and attempt to subtly put one another down, knowing on some macabre level you have probably given into your inner indecent compulsions and acted similarly.

The sense of claustrophobia and the unleashing of one’s inhibitions is something Polanski constantly returns to and could be seen as a result of his private life. With Carnage being his latest film since his house arrest in Switzerland, the ability to tap into the idea of continually being shut in yet so close to a possible escape is something he is clearly fascinated with.

This is seen with the Cowans as they edge towards the front door, eventually make it out to the elevator twice, and giving into their impulses to retaliate, find themselves back in the four walls of the apartment to argue their points further. Christoph Waltz fares the best out of all the actors as the high flyer lawyer continually breaking up the conversations by taking his business calls and infuriating his wife. He is also the one with some of the best put downs, always delivering them calmly. His performance and direction from Polanski harkens back to Chinatown and Jack Nicolson’s portrayal of J.J Gittes, the two characters both set in their unwavering view of the world and the subsequent witty uncaring dialogue that comes from this, making Waltz and Nicolson the cowboys of their Polanski films.

Despite his controversial private life, Roman Polanski will always be celebrated as one of the auteurs of modern day cinema. His scripts thrive off a collection of characters that may appear ‘decent’ at first glance but ultimately end up giving into their animalistic inclinations.

We’ve seen this with Rosemary’s husband in Rosemary’s Baby, the well to do actor who cares for his wife whose selfish motives are revealed by the end like the collective neuroses of Carnage’s cast. And while some say Carnage is a break from Polanski’s usual cinema, he has never been one to tie himself down with one particular genre despite his most recognised films being of the horror persuasion.

His adaptation of Oliver Twist and The Pianist see him harkening back to his orphan childhood, while Chinatown and his altered ending of the original source material reflected his unimaginable turmoil of the tragic loss of his wife. Carnage may be one of Polanski’s first forays into outright comedy but it still manages to link in with his previous work instead of being a break from form, and like many of his films it manages to reflect particular events of his personal life at the time. A reflective yet orchestrated kind of carnage.

reviewed by James Cheetham
jamescheetham.jcc@gmail.com
written for www.subtitledonline.com

Rare Exports, while technically a horror film, is your quintessential Christmas movie, a term that manages to conjure up images of bearded rotund men and a cherub chubby child out to discover an important life lesson – and it achieves all this. Just with an added bit of spice in the fact that Santa Claus is a horned devil man far more hell bent upon punishing the wicked children than ever bothering to shower gifts upon the good.

Making a merry stand against the coca cola created image of the Santa Claus we have these days, director Jalmari Helander makes a brave attempt in tearing down this accepted jolly creature and instead replaces him with a far more sinister character who’d have far more in common with the beasts found in the Grimm Brothers’ original fairytales.

As a man who quietly climbs atop our roofs and climbs down the chimney to enter our children’s bedroom solace, it would seem Santa Claus should have always been a character to fear and this is what happens to Pietari Kontio (Onni Tommila), the young Finnish boy-hero of Rare Exports who decides it is his duty to stop the evil ascension of Father Christmas.

Read the rest of the review at: http://www.subtitledonline.com/reviews/rare-exports-a-christmas-tale-2

reviewed by James Cheetham

http://www.subtitledonline.com/special-features/top-10-soul-crushing-films-in-world-cinema

Reviewed by James Cheetham
jamescheetham.jcc@gmail.com

http://www.subtitledonline.com/reviews/the-skin-i-live-in

The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodovar’s lat­est cin­e­matic tale, is his usual genre bend­ing and gen­der twist­ing affair that weaves through a nar­ra­tive of a some­times myth­i­cal, other times all too human, scope that pounds through its run­ning time like only a mae­stro film­maker could orches­trate.

With a plot that can be dis­sected into three con­cise parts, which ini­tially fail to offer much of a link other than the cen­tral char­ac­ter, but then ulti­mately and dis­turbingly clash into place, The Skin I Live In charts the unset­tling dynamic between Anto­nio Bandera’s Madrid based scientist/doctor and his mys­te­ri­ous patient, Vera (Elena Anaya). It becomes evi­dent that Robert Ledgard (Ban­deras) has been using Vera as a human spec­i­men to uncover the depths sci­ence can reach in the field of face trans­plants and skin graft­ing, and events reach a frenzy when the son of Ledgard’s maid (Marisa Pare­des) makes an unwel­come and over-due appear­ance.
As the hulk­ing brute of a man intim­i­dates his way into the lav­ish home of Ledgard, which also houses his lab­o­ra­tory and Vera’s room/prison, rev­e­la­tions are unleashed as a con­se­quence of a har­row­ing sequence of vio­lence. This then leads us into an Almod­ovar sta­ple, a lengthy flash­back to six years prior which grad­u­ally unfolds the his­tory of Ledgard and Vera, even­tu­ally lead­ing back to the present day cat­a­stro­phe that becomes their rela­tion­ship…

Almod­ovar shows us once again that he is a mas­ter­ful sto­ry­teller, the nar­ra­tive tick­ing along immac­u­lately and fail­ing to bore for one sec­ond, as ele­ments of the plot slowly but beau­ti­fully unwind at a pre­cise pace. It allows room for the viewer to piece plot threads together, but still gives room for the shock of the final out­come, when it finally reveals itself. He imbues the film with a fan­tas­ti­cal ele­ment, in parts liken­ing the film to fairy­tale imagery. When the Zeca, the maid’s son, barges in and man­ages to tear at their dys­func­tional fam­ily unit of doc­tor, patient and maid, he is dressed as a tiger (hav­ing come straight from a car­ni­val) and trans­forms into the fero­cious beast rip­ping his way through the idyl­lic home and becom­ing the evil cat­a­lyst for what will soon develop.

Fur­ther con­no­ta­tions can be pulled from gothic lit­er­a­ture, with The Skin I Live In dis­play­ing obvi­ous par­al­lels with Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein, evolv­ing the film into a mod­ern day telling of the exper­i­men­tal crea­ture and his/her bat­tle with iden­tity and the need to have his/her love rec­i­p­ro­cated. In true Almod­ovar style then, The Skin I Live In becomes a story that toys with the bar­ri­ers of sex­u­al­ity and iden­tity, the issue of gen­der becom­ing the ulti­mate back­bone of the film dur­ing the final act.

Com­plet­ing the film is Almodovar’s usual grace­ful con­trol of the mise-en-scene, skewed angles, blaz­ing fires, cor­ri­dors back dropped with beau­ti­ful yet fore­telling colour­ful paint­ings. The room in which Vera resides is an art­work within itself, the walls scrawled with dates, times, mus­ing and draw­ings. Naked female forms etched onto the plain walls bare their gen­i­talia as they lack faces and instead have small houses placed on their necks instead of heads, an intri­cate detail that show­cases Vera’s inter­nal con­flict; a home­less indi­vid­ual whose main solace is a bro­ken mind. The music accom­pa­ni­ment is of impor­tance also; at times, reach­ing Hitch­cock­ian lev­els, as strings unset­tlingly wire through the score, the music coaxed in dur­ing moments when it is absolutely nec­es­sary and work­ing as part of the film, rather than sim­ply tacked on because it has to be.

While you could com­plain that it may not be a change of pace for Almod­ovar, as it fits into his usual for­mat of film­mak­ing and dances with the same themes that are found in his past efforts, The Skin I Live In is still a majes­tic film. At times, it becomes one of his most genre pieces, as it tus­sles with themes the genre of hor­ror is famous for, such as man’s for­age into the depths of what he can manip­u­late the human body into, but he always grounds it with a level of real­ism that skews it to the realms of a drama/thriller. Each char­ac­ter has a dif­fer­ent moral com­pass, and when you think you have found the vil­lain of the piece, fur­ther plot devel­op­ments cause judge­ments to be altered. Due to this, when the con­clu­sion arrives, it is bit­ter­sweet — you can sym­pa­thise with each char­ac­ter but also demor­alise then, mak­ing for a frus­trat­ing yet hyp­notic cli­max.

This sense of bewil­der­ment must also be attrib­uted to the cast, Ban­deras’ and Anaya’s efforts are as effec­tive as the script in cre­at­ing char­ac­ters who dove­tail through a sea of ambi­gu­ity — in the wrong hands, this would have come across as unbe­liev­able and far­ci­cal. Elena Anaya stands out espe­cially, saun­ter­ing through moments of tragedy and mis­trust, her eyes the mag­netic tether between the audi­ence and her char­ac­ter — a stand out scene being a flash­back to her wear­ing a black skin tight suit and a plas­tic mate­r­ial face mask, the only vis­i­ble fea­ture being her eyes as they mani­a­cally stare out as she attempts an escape.

As a film that skips between gen­res and isn’t afraid to lash out a bit of crim­son gore when needed, The Skin I Live In is not nec­es­sar­ily going to be a film that suits everybody’s tastes. It has a few graphic scenes that shock and plot points that shock even more, but any estab­lished fan of Almod­ovar is going to come away pleased, as will film fans who enjoy to be pulled along on an intel­li­gent and some­times mad­den­ing ride.

5/5

Reviewed by James Cheetham

jamescheetham.jcc@gmail.com

Keeping up with the modern trend of social media, something that seems to have rapidly afflicted our society and become an obsession, horror films of recent years have quickly begun to encompass these mediums of communication to create new methods of terror. Chain Letter is one of the latest editions employing this stance on horror, attempting to expand upon the simple formula of a hack’n’slash film to incorporate the device of an internet chain letter which works as effectively as scrawling a big red X on each one of the victims foreheads.

Taking a page out of The Ring’s rulebook, a film that can be seen to be one of the most influential horrors of recent years, Chain Letter abides by similar conventions, with the only escape from a painful, gruesome death being the passing on of this chain letter via email. It is an interesting idea that, with a bit more effort put in, could have resulted in an intriguing film, the premise of signing away a friend’s life by clicking the mundane ‘send email’ button to save your own skin playing into darker themes of guilt and sacrifice for personal gain. Unfortunately, Chain Letter doesn’t make too much of an effort to explore this side of things, and decides to focus more upon the killer, a hugely scarred man who has a fetish for metal chains.

This means the premise of the film, the chain letter, is put on the back burner and instead the camera focuses in upon this monster who, for no reason explained, decides to slay a handful of high school teens. Unlike successful villains of classic horrors, such as Freddy Krueger and Hannibal Lecter who inspire a real sense of villainy due to their lack of motivation, the villain of Chain Letter is lacking in any kind of depth to give this absence of reasoning to his chain letter killings any sinister sway. Eventually he turns into more of a comical figure as you see this hulking mass of a serial killer perched over a computer screen looking on facebook, evolving Chain Letter into a parody, unwittingly poking fun at the idea of films that merge together elements of horror with social media platforms.

Being a horror film that takes more delight in the gory death sequences rather than focusing upon the interesting aspects of its initial premise, Chain Letter becomes just another entry in the teen horror catalogue, setting up a stereotypical cast of high schoolers, and then picking them off one by one with gruesome aplomb. The directing doesn’t bring anything particularly original to the table, with the opening scene being the most memorable which sets up a particularly gory sequence that any one of the various Saw sequels would be proud of. But the promise this opener gives is dashed as Chain Letter becomes bogged down with the building mountain of amputated teen limbs.

What starts off as an exciting idea with a brutal opener, Chain Letter quickly devolves into a murder by numbers horror that is neither original nor interesting, a fact made more frustrating as the narrative device of the chain letters could have allowed room for a wealth of twisted themes and characters.

2/5