INTERMISSION ***
DIRECTED BY John Crowley
STARRING Colin Farrell, Shirley Henderson, Colm Meaney, Cillian Murphy
Ireland 2003 105 mins.
THE MOTHER *
DIRECTED BY Roger Michell
STARRING Anne Reid, Daniel Craig, Cathryn Bradshaw
UK 2003 112 mins.
By Preston Wilder
AND so we cross the Atlantic (for once), going for that rare event – a Great Britain and Ireland double bill, part of the invaluable European Film Festival (another English-language film, The Dreamers, ends tonight). The Brits are still underachieving a bit when it comes to film production – they ought to be as big as Hollywood, with English as the world’s lingua franca – but the Irish have become a force to reckon with in recent years, helped by a government that’s pumped money (mostly EU money) into film initiatives. InterMission is a very Irish comedy, for better and for worse.
Irish readers will no doubt write in and call me an eejit, but there often seems something cruel and callous – a strain of gallows humour, verging on sadism – in Irish culture. Is it a history of poverty and isolation that’s made people ‘hard’? Is it all the Catholic (and lapsed-Catholic) guilt floating around? Hard to say – but let’s take some examples. The General (1998) had a man nailing another man’s hand to a pool table. Roddy Doyle’s novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993) has a battered wife and an often battered 10-year-old narrator. These are both comedies. InterMission starts with Colin Farrell flirting with a shop clerk – then suddenly punching her in the face, breaking her nose, and stealing all the cash in her till. This too is a comedy.
It takes a while to adjust to the film, mostly because its detail is so unpleasant. Bosses are obnoxious, salesgirls have a bad attitude, kids are juvenile delinquents; everyone uses “fuck” as all-purpose punctuation; there’s a cop who’s worse than the villains he pursues, and a man-hating girl whose last boyfriend not only stole her money but also tied her to the bed and “did a poo on her chest” (!) before departing. This is not a world you’d want to spend much time in.
Yet, when they’re not effing and blinding, the characters talk like Joycean scholars. “You’ve just sent me into a state of turmoil,” our hero tells his friend, so upset he can’t even finish his wholesome dinner of two brown-sauce sambos and a pint of Guinness. “Instead of mobility, I’ve increased perception,” explains a wheelchair-bound old man down at the pub. Even the nasty cop confesses to “a fondness for Celtic mysticism” – and even Farrell, as a thoroughly bad apple, has his literate moments, planning a heist that has “many a quid’s potential” or explaining the importance of being organised: “This shite, you’ve got to be Stephen fuckin’ Hawkings.”
You might say the film unites two old Irish stereotypes: the loud, boozy scrapper and the silver-tongued blarney-man with the gift of the gab. Advance word billed it as an edgier Love, Actually – it has a similar structure of overlapping stories, most of them dealing with troubled or unrequited love – but it’s actually closer to a Guy Ritchie crime caper with real people instead of comic gangsters. You can turn up your nose at the mix of comedy and violence, or you can laugh along. All in all, it makes more sense to laugh along.
Maybe the real key to Ireland is a lack of pretension. There’s an egalitarian, all-in-this-together vibe about InterMission, as proudly working-class as its pub grub and lusty punch-ups. When a Hollywood star like Tom Cruise joins an ensemble movie like Magnolia, it’s understood he’ll have the flashiest role and generally keep his Hollywood-star dignity – but when Colin Farrell, currently one of the biggest stars on the planet, returns to his homeland for a ‘small’ film like InterMission, he happily mucks in with the others, plays a total scumbag and sings ‘I Fought The Law’ (off-key) over the closing credits. Says it all, really.
Across the Irish Sea, a different culture prevails. Not that England doesn’t have its breezy working-class comedies – but there’s also the pained middle-class drama of The Mother, directed by Roger Michell of Notting Hill fame. This one is a bit like that one, taking out the laughs (such as they were) but keeping the self-loathing Brits and neat, morose style. If this were a house, it might be one of those cramped-yet-expensive Victorian row-houses in a smart part of London – Hampstead, or St. John’s Wood – with a small back-garden, books all over the place and a faint smell of bad plumbing. It’s prestigious, but also rather dull.
Actually, it’s worse than dull. Anne Reid is the Mother, newly widowed and having to lean on her two grown children. She’s middle-aged and rather stolid, unable to comprehend (for instance) why her daughter is talking to a therapist: “Why can’t you talk to your hairdresser like everybody else?” Their relationship is generally tense, and I guess a lot will depend on whether you find the daughter justified in her increasingly hysterical rage against the mother (“I never felt valued!”), or just a selfish, insecure woman with a fragile ego and diet of New Age platitudes. If the former, the climactic violence will feel cathartic; if the latter, immature.
The film is a story of Empowerment: the Mother starts off as a frumpy old lady but gradually becomes her own woman, liberated and also sexualised, even if the sex scene combines self-conscious ‘honesty’ with billowing white curtains and soft violins (it’s that kind of movie). Unfortunately, she has to be a Victim – and suffer humiliation as a punishment for her previous life – before she can be free. See her blossom at a younger man’s attentions! Gape as he turns on her in a coke-fuelled rant, breaking her heart! Cheer quietly as she sets out on her own, beaten but unbowed!
It’s not that the film is bad, exactly. It’s not even that it’s manipulative, though it is – and all the more annoying for being shot in a low-key, scrupulously ‘realistic’ style. It’s the smallness of vision that grates – all these needy, selfish people and their little grey lives, and the absence of connection or transcendence. Mike Leigh, in films like Life is Sweet and All or Nothing, mixed the miserablism with absurdist comedy and exaggerated characters, running the gamut of emotions; Michell dutifully slogs through the plot, but it all feels rather petty. The film’s currency are dank, subterranean motives like resentment, lust and self-gratification. Sometimes the effect is striking, as when the mousy heroine starts to turn into a predator; more often, the characters seem locked in predictable, rather seedy patterns of behaviour.
Those in Nicosia can check out InterMission on Wednesday, then go back to the Cine Studio for The Mother on Thursday. Both films have their fans, but together they add up to a strange snapshot of Britain and Ireland. What kind of topsy-turvy culture makes its comedies as violent and unpleasant as possible, then makes its dramas limp and lacking in drama? No wonder Hollywood moguls are sleeping soundly.
NEW DVD RELEASES
Rapidly becoming a near-weekly feature – and why not? – here’s another look at titles released on DVD in the US and UK over the past few weeks (most are also out on VHS). Some of these may be available to rent from local video clubs, or you can always order over the Internet: dozens of suppliers, but http://www.amazon.com (for US) and http://www.sendit.com (for UK) are among the most reliable, if not necessarily the cheapest. Note that US discs are ‘Region 1’, and require a multi-region player.
NEW FILMS
BEFORE SUNSET: Wondrous sequel to a magical romance is, quite simply, one of the best films of the year. [US]
GOZU: Cult Japanese director Takashi Miike does his take on Alice in Wonderland: lactating women, a minotaur and a climax I’m unable to divulge in a family paper. [UK]
SHREK 2: Everything that’s wrong with kids’ cartoons in one handy package: in-jokes run amuck in the film itself, then the main bonus feature is a Pop Idol spoof called ‘Far, Far Away Idol’, with Prince Charming singing ‘I’m Too Sexy’ for the benefit of animated judges. Fun, but instantly dated. [US/UK]
THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL: Semi-documentary about Mongolian camel herders, shot in the Gobi Desert. [UK]
OLD FILMS
LIVE AID: Not quite a film, but still a must-have for Those Who Were There in 1985. Sting, Queen, Dire Straits and oh so much more – just in time for Christmas… [UK]
JOHN CASSAVETES: FIVE FILMS: One of the DVD events of the year, an 8-disc set (!) from the deluxe Criterion Collection. Five films by the celebrated maverick – from Shadows (1959) to Opening Night (1977), plus the feature-length documentary A Constant Forge. Stunning. [US]
SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (1954): Another winner: utterly delightful MGM musical starring the late Howard Keel, in 2-disc edition with behind-the-scenes doc and commentary by director Stanley Donen. [US]
DIFF’RENT STROKES, SEASON 1: Family sitcom from the 70s: “What’choo talkin’ about, Willis?” [US]
MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY, SEASON 5: Family sitcom from the 50s: can you believe the kid’s name is ‘Rusty’?!… [US]
