dsh26 Reviews

Red Road (2006)

Interesting start, but good acting can't compensate for the missing complexity

[5/10 · 19 April 2007]

** No specific spoilers, but I discuss the narrative shape, and hint at some plot elements.** This film comes on as a psychological suspenseful mood-piece, but delivers all too much dark mood and not enough psychological insight. I was rooting for Red Road for a while-—I liked the dread and creepy voyeurism (in a rough part of Glasgow). But I felt the film, despite its earnest attempt to deal with a woman's grief, was fairly banal. And, more importantly, it does not integrate the two biggest plot elements thematically.

The film doles out small bits of information about why Jackie is disturbed and begins to track Clyde, a recently-released criminal, and to misuse some of her powers as a tracker. This works well for a while, but then gets a bit tedious.

Disappointingly, the use of surveillance is not united with any larger thematic concern. For a film which begins steeped in the technology of watching and recording--even quotidian doings come to seem ominous—-the surveillance aspect is part of entirely personal plot, with very little wider cultural implications. This may be because the UK has more surveillance than the U.S., so the filmmaker was simply using it as a given, whereas in the US it would generate more societal questions (though the use of cameras is surely growing in the US).

The other big thematic problem is why Jackie chooses her particular form of revenge. It's an extremely provocative choice, but it's not tied to what happened in the past. Again, her personal reasons (her loneliness, her revulsion/attraction to a dangerous but compelling guy) are interesting, but her technique is a culturally relevant issue which the film has nothing to say about.

As Clyde, Tony Curran has haunting moments. His physicality, even the way he walks, is a memorable portrait of a man caught between studly swagger, haunted emptiness and attempted recovery. As Jackie, Kate Dickie has a tougher task, playing the repressed pain but hinting at someone capable of inflicting revenge. But she's good too.

In the end, though, it was not enough for me to like this film. The movie feels rather small, and a not-too-original spin on other films which have dealt with similar matters.

3 Needles (2005)

It will sting, but it is worth it.

[8/10 · 19 March 2006]

There is a lot of sadness in this film artfully rendered, and a measure of grace too, which feels hard-earned. The writer-director Thom Fitzgerald, at the NY screening, said that the reality he encountered while researching it was probably even worse than he could bear to show. (Amazingly, the renowned Dr. David Ho was also present at the screening, which added another hopeful touch: HIV/AIDS progress is being made but, as the film shows, funding and education are still lacking in poor countries, and attitudes are often still messed up in rich ones.) There is a didactic purpose in 3 Needles, but fortunately Fitzgerald has the storytelling skills and the director's talent to bear the load. You may not buy everything in it, and you may be angry at him for some of the tough images and choices, but the human emotion and pain, the weakness and strength are gripping and undeniable. And many of the secondary observations, about characters and place, feel sharp and well-observed.

The prologue is a perfect example of a warm, vibrant image giving way to a shocking one: Teenage boys of an African tribe cover their bodies with a pale paste, un-self-consciously helping each other, though they are naked. It is an ancient ritual and they appear eager, joking around but purposeful. Later they are to be circumcised, the passageway into becoming men. The image of the knife, for reasons which will be instantly clear, is uniquely jolting. Surprisingly the movie manages to sustain the intensity, asking questions while shining a light on different corners of the world.

The acting and cinematography are uniformly good, the latter especially considering the low budget. Most of the South Africans were non-actors, including tribespeople who had never even seen a film. Fitzgerald called this version "the director's cut" since his Canadian distributor previously showed a much different version which cut several scenes, and jumbled the stories together. This might have made sense in another movie, but with the stories on 3 different continents, this version, with each played discretely, seemed much better. Also, Fitzgerald said he shot a 4th scenario which he cut, probably for length. See this on the big screen and it will very likely stay with you.

The Holy Land (2001)

Awful

[1/10 · 7 August 2003]

If you're not Jewish or have not been to Israel and you're looking for a film that will give you a flavor of either, skip this one entirely. Not only is it full of clichés and stereotypes, but it's simply incoherent. And not in a good way.

Why does this film have distribution at all? It has a juicy one-liner which makes it easy to advertise: "Orthodox yeshiva boy falls for Russian prostitute..." And because there's a whiff of controversy and some T&A, I'm sure some festival judges and distributors were taken in. Don't you be.

The writer-director has nothing to say except that Israel can be a crazy place, and no technique with which to say it. The acting is mostly horrendous. The woman who plays the prostitute is interesting, but since there's hardly any character development or narrative arc she's treading water most of the time. The rest of the cast is unbearably amateurish. Not a single element of the setting is believable--not the Jewish home, the Yeshiva setting, or the Jerusalem bar. It's all low, low budget (though that's never an excuse not to have vitality) and hermetically sealed from the real world. I could list the inconsistencies and improbabilities, but why bother? What an enervated mess.