One man, one job, one objective: capturing images of the film star Robert Barker on camera, preferably in an awkward, embarrassing and intimate occasion. This more or less summarises the life of paparazzo David Pillard (Gudmundur Thorvaldsson), who leads a lonely, empty and obstinate existence in the futile hope of eventually making big money through his morally-questionable job.
Chasing Robert Barker is a dark and yet strangely charming tale about life as a celebrity photographer in London. David encounters people of questionable character in his work, and a prostitute is often the most reliable emotional comfort that he can find. His boss Olly Clifford (Patrick Baladi) is a pedantic and manipulative womaniser. One day David loses his camera during a small altercation with his much-coveted subject Robert Barker – triggering sentiments that will change both David’s and Ollie’s life forever.
The London in Chasing Robert Barker is teeming with celebrity and people aspiring the high life, but it’s still a very somber and oppressive place. The camerawork deftly captures the glitz and the moral decadence of the British capital nowadays, supported by effective actors. It has some hints of Antonioni’s Blow Up: plus 50 years, minus the murder and the sexy girls prancing around. Chasing Robert Barker does not celebrate the photographer’s career and flare; quite the opposite.
Inspired by the revelations brought up by the Leveson Enquiry, the script was written by Daniel Florêncio and Nefeli Zygopoulou. Both authors are running for the Festival’s Accession Award, which this year focuses on recognising outstanding screenwriting.
Daniel Florêncio is a budding Brazilian filmmaker based in London – you can find out more about him by clicking here. He commented: “The premise of Chasing Robert Barker is that paparazzi photographers and tabloid journalists have become the source of great tragedies and drama. I’m thrilled to have the film screened in London. The city, with its colourful accents, dark winter nights and crowded loneliness is very much a living part of the movie.”
Simone Kirby took the challenge to perform without making use of her voice. Instead, she had to move her body and lips to K7 recordings from the 1980s, in Notes on Blindness (Peter Middleton/ James Spinney, 2016). The film is a vivid account of a man losing his sight. The debutant British directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney first pitched the film four years ago, after reading the memories of John Hull. Kirby is best known for her recent role in Jimmy’s Hall (Ken Loach, 2014).
The most extraordinary aspect of Notes on Blindness is that the directors used the original material in the film. The intention was to evoke authenticity. Actors Dan Renton Skinner (John Hull) and Kirby (Marilyn Hull, John’s wife) do not use their voices. They learnt how to lip sync the original tapes.
It is very common for actors to dub recorded footage, or for singers to lip sync. Here we see something different: an actress performing to prerecorded, authentic voices – and this is almost entirely unprecedented.
This is an extraordinary achievement of dramaturgy for an actor to rethink how to express feelings and intensity having to lip sync the actual voice of your character. She got deep into Marilyn Hull’s verbal stream of consciousness. As someone who shared her life with a theologist who lost sight after marriage, she sometimes thought he would disappear in a world she could not follow. The outcome is moving rebirth.
Here is our interview with the talented Irish actress:
DMovies – Was there an audition? Did you have to lip sync?
Simone Kirby – Yes, there was. I couldn’t meet the casting director, Amy Hubbard. I think I was shooting something else; so I sent in a self tape. I had been sent two audio clips. One of Marilyn speaking about John, and another of a conversation between the two, as they are driving in a car. I had to learn them and record myself miming along to the audio tapes. It was a challenge, not only to make it seem like my voice, my breath, my thoughts, even, behind the eyes when it was someone else’s, but also to re-enact a scene being spoken about in the past tense but with the idea that we were, in fact, reliving that moment.
DM – Tell me about the experience of playing a role of someone who is alive and involved in the production. I suppose Marilyn was in touch with the directors?
SK – Marilyn and John had formed a close bond with the writers and directors, Pete and James. But the guys never coached me on how to play her. They were able to answer any questions I had, but none of us knew until we started shooting what the challenges were going to be. They aren’t used to working with actors and this experience was new to me, too.
So I watched a documentary made in the ’80s about the Hulls, and listened to the audio tapes and got a sense of who she was. Marilyn only visited the set once while I was there, and I was immensely relieved to find that she was indeed, the generous, smart, funny, practical, earthy, warm person that I had been playing.
Dan Renton Skinner as John Hull in Notes on Blindness
DM – Marilyn says that the film is about loss, not blindness, as John was not blind at birth. Sadly, John didn’t live to experience the film. When John Hull died, was the film finished? If not, did it affect it somehow?
SK – John died a couple of weeks after filming began. We were supposed to meet him, Dan and I, a couple of weeks later, so when I did finally meet Marilyn it was shortly after his funeral. I think it did affect all of us, and Pete and James especially, of course. But there was a sense, I suppose, that this film would be part of his legacy, and I think we all wanted to get that right.
DM – The quality of the images Notes on Blindness is very surprising. It is mostly extremely dark or blurred. Sometimes it doesn’t focus on the characters, but on details of objects. At times it shows an intense light. During the shooting, did you follow the work of the cinematographer Gerry Floyd?
SK – Gerry is amazing, and very open and accommodating. He had to shoot things in a way that was unusual and challenging but he was so gracious. And the result is beautiful. Between James, Pete and him it’s quite a stunning achievement.
DM – Finally, what did you learn with this experience?
SK – In terms of the technique, it reminded me how the voice is a huge part of the character. How Marilyn speaks, affects how she breathes, affects how she moves… and so on, until you get an insight into how a person thinks. It was a very unique experience trying to merge my instincts with hers, essentially.
But more importantly, I learned a lot about John’s journey, and his story is very inspiring. His family are beautiful, a real credit to him and Marilyn and their ethics and beliefs. And I think the film is very hopeful because of that.
Population explosion, excessive consumption and limited resources — the future of our planet does not look bright. Film director Valentina Canavesio (Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart, 2014) presents cases from Philippines, Mexico, India and Islamic countries in order to shed light on issues like water consumption, birth control, family planning and rubbish.
In January 2013, the city of Cairo held the Conference on Sustainable Urban Growth amid Transition and Uncertainty. It became clear then that businesses that used to support public institutions and invest in sustainable growth can no longer rely on stable government relationships. One solution is for business to invest in quality education and women’s empowerment.
That said, it seems that the solution is very easy to achieve. The problem is that women need permission from their partners in order to plan their family, in most of the countries with high population growth rate. They do not have access to anticonceptive methods for free.
Religion plays an important role in that process, too. In Islam, for example, it is easy to find the “pill of the next day” and in Footprint Islamic religious leaders say that it is up to the family to decide how many children they want to have. But more conservative Islamic leaders have openly campaigned against the use of condoms or other birth control methods, thus making population planning in many countries ineffective. Islam is strongly pro-family and regards children as a gift from God.
In the Philippines, the majority of the population is Catholic, and today still the Vatican has an enormous influence on family planning. During the Conference in Cairo the Vatican threatened to stop helping the poor if a bill concerning family planning was approved.
During Indira Gandhi’s government in India, many women were sterilised without their consent. This is because many Indian families won’t stop having children until they have a male heir.
In wealthier countries, there are other concerns. The US produce two million water plastic bottles every five minutes. A visual artist went to Midway Atoll, about halfway between the US and Asia, in order to raise awareness of the problem. The islands are known for its “plastic beaches”, nicknamed “the Pacific Garbage Patch”. He took photos of the skeleton of albatrosses on the island and created a huge screen with them. They reveal an unfathomable amount of plastic inside their carcasses.
The writing is on the wall: people need to act now in order to keep the planet alive — the film succeeds to convey the message. It both reinforces the zero population growth campaign in poor countries and highlights the urgency of cutting down consumption in their richer counterparts. On the other hand, the soundtrack can be a little vexing, perhaps resembling a TV reality show.
This feature was part of Sheffield Doc Fest this week and it is currently seeking a distributor.
India in a Day is the cinematic testament that ordinary people with ordinary film equipment (such as smartphones) can capture profound beauty, colours and sentiments in motion. The production team received over 365 hours of footage from all over the country, all filmed in a single day: 10th October 2015. The movie captures the lives of Indians from sunrise to sunset, seemingly chronologically. Ridley Scott is the film’s executive producer.
The result is a very intimate – and never exploitative – portrayal of life in the most varied urban and rural corners of the second most populous country in the world. This is the ultimate insider’s view into India, as seen by locals without external interference. The eye of the filmmaker here is the eye of the ordinary Indian, and the subjects of their choise. The images are genuine and intimates – you can almost smell them. Cities and the countryside gently blend together in their melancholy.
The charm of the mundane is a central theme throughout the film. There is urgency in the simplicity of brewing tea, of an “autorickshaw” selling chocolates, newspapers and even phone calls, of a fisherman toiling and even of the pickers working in an enormous garbage landfill (although you probably rather not smell this one).
For these people, life is a fast-moving, boisterous and vibrant daily journey. And in this film, the small actions and gestures acquire an extra dimension; they are individually celebrated. India in a Day is perhaps the film equivalent of the album ‘Words and Music’ by British band Saint Etienne – this musical work is a lyrical celebration of the routine actions in a Londoner’s daily journey, also recorded chronologically from dawn to dusk.
A particularly touching moment is Pryia’s confession and realisation that she will be neither a Bollywood director nor Miss Universe, and finding contentedness in her life. There is also some strange allure in acts which would be frowned upon in the UK, for health & safety reasons, such as the adrenaline-fueled reckless driving inside a rickshaw or a child crawling on the rail tracks.
The film also remarkably captures life inside the only transgender community of India, where more than 1,000 people live.
The country portrayed here is invariably full of joy and positivity. Google and director Richie Mehta decided to show the world an India devoid of problems. Perhaps a scintilla of the social woes would have given the film a nice touch, as those too are an integral part of daily life, and there is no reason to believe that October 10th 2015 was a day when all the problems disappeared.
At times, the film feels a little foreign in its post-production. This is particularly true of the soundtrack, which often sounds like from a David Attenborough nature documentary. This does not affect the authenticity of the images, and the film is definitely worth a watch – whether you have been to India or not.
Take an extraordinary journey into “a world beyond sight”. Notes on Blindness is a vivid account of a man losing his sight and also conscious about the importance of living in the reality and not in nostalgia.
The debutant British directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney first pitched the film four years ago, after reading the memories of John Hull. Hull was a theologist who lost his sight completely in the 1980s. His iris was severely traumatised in previous surgeries and he then began to register his memories and accounts into K7 tapes. In total, he registered 16 hours in a tape recorder. Middleton and Spinney had access to this material and decided to use it to make a film. Hull died last year.
The most extraordinary aspect of Notes on Blindness is that the directors used the original material in the film. The intention was to evoke authenticity. Actors Dan Renton Skinner (John Hull) and Simone Kirby (Marilyn Hull, John’s wife) do not use their voices. They learnt how to lip synch the original tapes.
As a teacher, Hull felt the need to understand what was going on with him. He was intrigued by what happens to that affected part of the brain when optic nerves stop functioning. Middleton and Spinney had to translate into images Hull’s anxieties as well as his sensorial perceptions of the world around him. The cinematography and the sound play important role in the movie. Everything around Hull is an audible environment. A simple rain is broken down into various components: the rain on the window, the rain on the wood, the rain on the roof, etc.
Notes on Blindness is a singular cinematographic experience, and you will never see another film like this (pun unintended). Middleton’ and Spinney’s view of cinema transcend what is shown on the screen; it is pure discovery. It’s a movie you can almost touch: a virtually tactile trip.
The film was shown this week at the Sheffield Doc Fest, where there was a long stand-by queue of enthusiastic doc lover hoping to enter the screening. Alongside with the feature film, there was an interactive experience based on John’s sensory and psychological experience of blindness. It won the Alternate Realities: VR jury Award yesterday – click here for more information about the event.
It will be on general release in cinemas throughout the UK onJuly 1st. There are also a few preview screenings in case you don’t want to wait that long!
If you were an adult in 1990, during the First Gulf War, you probably have very solid views on terrorism, Jihad and the role of the UN, the US and the British troops in Muslim countries. It is quite an exercise to come to the screening of The Confession neglecting your pre-conceived ideas on the issue. Not judging is a necessary step to live an immersive art experience. This is the biggest challenge of The Confession: to influence the public opinion regardless of widespread media coverage. The film portrays the testimony of Moazzam Begg, who was imprisoned in Bagram and Guantanamo Bay for an alleged contribution with Al Qaeda. Despite the film title, Begg has never confessed any wrongdoing.
Begg was a Muslim teen living in Birmingham when the War started. Because of his Pakistani background, he encountered racism at key moments when he tried to fit it. In 1998, he quit his job and “became fully Islamic”, as he says. In that same year, 213 people were killed in the Nairobi blast, and Osama Bin Laden became the most-wanted man in the world.
Moazzam Begg had a shop that sold books such as the Koran and some of his friends were facing terror charges. Eventually he too was arrested. Because there was no evidence against him, he was set free. As soon as he saw himself on the streets again, he flew to Afghanistan. Begg declares he “wanted to live under the Taliban”. He also says that it was not true that the Taliban forbid women to go to school.
At this point, it is clear to everyone which side the documentarist is. Audience is able to listen to Ghadial questioning Begg why he kept going back to Kabul, since his family was not there – they were in Pakistan instead at the time. Begg declares he supports Jihad, but has never joined Al Qaeda, or ISIS, because he didn’t agree with killing civilians. The documentarist challenges him, calling the interviewee a hypocrite. Views are left to decide in who to believe.
The intention of the filmmaker is to document a crime confession, but this never materialises, and Begg does not even fall into contradiction.
This is not the first film to interview alleged criminals, but it is singular in many ways. It is different from El Sicario Room 164 (Gianfranco Rosi, 2010), in which a Mexican hitman speaks of his role in the cartel in Ciudad Juarez. He describes, in astounding detail, his life of crime, murder, abduction and torture. On the other hand, in The Confession, the interviewee compares himself to Malcolm X. His resistance, he believes, is a virtue. He was held for three years in Guantanamo, where he was forced to sign two confessions of being a terrorist for Bin Laden. When finally UK authorities intervene in the case, he was sent back to London – only to be interrogated again in a police station in Paddington.
The documentary is very critic of its subject, stressing Begg’s determination to get into trouble. His next steps are related to Egypt insurrection and Benghazi attack in Libya in 2012.
This is a first-hand account of the impossibility of dialogue. There is hate and there are dogmas from both sides, thus understanding is unfeasible. The psychological differences between Muslims and non-Muslim Westerners have raised to the point that the Islamophobia turned into an uncontrollable tendency in Europe and in the US. The meaning of Jihad has been corrupted, and it originally meant the noble struggle to build a good Muslim society. This struggle is still a reality, but means have become very violent.
“We are the people that you do not see. We drive your cars, clean your rooms and suck your cocks” – this is how illegal immigrant Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) describes his presence in the UK. Stephen Frears’ classic Dirty Pretty Things is a tale of disdain for asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants, and how their lives are destroyed by the mistaken belief that they are bloody parasites.
Okwe is often questioned about the reason why he came to the UK: “You never told me why you are here in this beautiful country, where u come from”. In the film, as in real life, many people believe that the UK, particularly its capital is the most coveted place in the world and the ultimate goal for these illegal being. In reality, Okwe escaped prosecution in his country, where his wife was murdered. The film suggests that such immigrants come to the UK because they have no other choice, and not because they want to experience the high life.
The UK painted in the film is not a rosy one. It’s a ugly and oppressive country where immigrants keep hiding from the police and submit to the most repulsive jobs without complaining. London is far from ydillic; it’s more like hell or purgatory for those already fleeing a horrific predicament in their homeland. This is not place for redemption and conciliation; it’s purely for working and surviving.
Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things is very mainstream thriller in its format and content – complete with hectic police chasing, constants twists and romance with a charming female. It is also a tearjerker. On the other hand, the film a colourful and shocking allegory of the plight of illegal immigrants – this is a very powerful social statement, and not very common for commercially successful directors.
Okwe is an undocumented alien from Nigeria who works as a cab driver also as a hotel attendant. He shares living quarters with Turkish émigré Senay (Audrey Tautou). Working late one evening, he finds a prostitute standing by a toilet that’s clogged with a human heart. This leads him to the hotel manager Juan (Sergi López), and he soon uncovers an organ trafficking scheme. Because of his illegal status, he is then forced to become part of the dirty system.
Dirty Pretty Things superlatively exposes the vulnerability of illegal beings, who have no rights. The concept of an “illegal person” is very troublesome per se. Objects and actions can be illegal, but how can a person in their mere existence be so? Xenophobes conveniently vilify human beings regardless of their background and their situation, stripping them of their humanity. This toxic thinking stigmatises and endangers the lives of those purely seeking to survive.
Part of OUT campaign for the EU referendum has now escalated their xenophobic vitriol, sometimes disguised as a purely economic argument. Brexit would inevitably stigmatise EU citizens living in the UK, supported by the flawed view that immigrants – legal or illegal – are the root of all of our problems. The banalisation of the alien is a very facile and dangerous argument in favour of very devious and morally repugnant actions, the history of Europe has shown.
Frears’ movie is very remarkable because it allows audience to identify with the illegal immigrant, to see the world from the point-of-view of the most vulnerable and marginalised people. Viewers want Okwe and Senay to succeed. Okwe is a very noble human fighting against a very corrupted system. Even the most ardent xenophobe and rightwing militant would have – many for the first time – humanise these dirty illegal beings.
Of course this is not say that all Brexiters are racists, and that EU citizens will end up like Okwe if the UK leaves the EU. Spaniards tomorrow will not have to demonstrate their oral sex skills in order to stay in the country; the French will not have to sell a kidney for a job; Germans will not have to climb to the rooftop when the home office knocks at their door; and Poles will not be forced to chew on illegal herbs in order to stay awake and work all night. Fortunately, the UK still has some respect for some EU countries – if still selective and discriminatory.
What will happen if the UK leaves the EU is that people from EU countries will eventually climb down a work and moral ladder, and they will be placed in a different category from British citizens. Stigma will inevitably follow, as much as OUT campaigners refuse to recognise.
British people are not morally flawed people, many people instead and naive and blissfully ignorant and what it is like to be an immigrant. In Dirty Pretty Things, the British are not unscrupulous. In fact, they hardly appear in the movie. Brits don’t even witness and get their hands dirty with illegal immigrants. It is no wonder the bad boss Juan is a foreigner himself.
Yet, just like the Brits who do not appear in the film, the OUT voters tacitly legitimise the exploitation of immigrants. Their silence is essential to the functioning of the corrupt system.
You can watch Dirty Pretty Things on demand by clicking here, and you can also watch the film trailer below:
“I am proud to be a man who loves transsexual women”, boasts Wayne Mahon. It took 43 years of his life for the film director to voice his passion for trans women, thereby leaving his alter ego Vogue Moran behind, which he created in order to suppress his sexual preferences. This featurette is a autobiographical documentary that works as a cathartic confession and unveils the difficulties of feeling as a “straight man” who loves male-to-female transsexuals in a traditionalist small town of East Coast in Connecticut, US.
The writing is on the wall: let’s talk about, overcome and embrace our differences. It starts when Mahon adopted Vogue Moran’s identity and moved to LA in order to become a big superstar. In the film he shows footage of this period, including a very amateurish “video script” scene he sent to the big studios and Mickey Rourke. These experiences probably helped him to create the film narrative. But the Vogue Moran bit was just an escape for a lonely eccentric guy who wanted to be accepted.
Leaving Vogue Moran feels naive at times, but still genuine and pertinent. It concentrates its narrative on telling Mahon’s history from comic buff to dating… well, we all know at this point…But does his family? This is the largest moral conflict of the film. Mahon is afraid of losing his father’s love by confessing his sexual preferences. And yes, the audience can expect a coming out scene to his father. There is plenty of suspense in the air as how his father will react.
This is the type of very personal film that can change the director’s life forever, and it can also inspire others to do the same. Its candidness is fascinating. On the other hand, it does not explore the lives of the transgender women that the director meets in depth. Perhaps Mohan still has a lot to learn about these incredible females, well beyond their sexual appeal.
Cinema is a powerful weapon of personal liberation, whether it’s for coming out “of the closet”, or breaking out of a silent shell. The featurette Life, Animated (Roger Ross Williams, 2016) revealed an autistic boy who was only able to communicate through films. The stories are very different, but in both cases cinema is instrumental in improving communication with family members. Click here for our review of the film.
You can view Leaving Vogue Moran on demand by clicking here, and you can also watch the film trailer below:
What happens when eccentric 75-year-old Ivy-League professor Andrew Garrod travels to Kigali, Rwanda, in order to bring together orphans of the 1994 genocide by casting them in a stage production of “Romeo and Juliet”? The first feature documentary Rwanda & Juliet, by the Canadian Ben Proudfoot, has the answer.
The first part of the film is centered on the white professor, who wants to make a difference in the lives of the struggling people of Rwanda. His intention is to bring Shakespeare into countries that suffered genocide (right now he in Bosnia). He joins forces with the community leaders before he approaches the young people. They wisely decide to set the play in three languages: 60% in Kinyarwanda, 20% in French and 20% in English.
The auditions revealed that boys and girls are technically unprepared but they realise that the play “will be something huge and forbidden”. Rwandans still find it very difficult to talk about one of the most fulminant genocides in History – in just 100 days in 1994, some 800,000 Tutsi people were slaughtered by ethnic Hutu extremists. For these people, it might be easy conveying feeling of hate on stage, but there is a lot of work to do in order to achieve some professionalism. The company director Andrew Garrod is an idealistic man. In the middle of the project, a sponsor drops out, which makes it impossible for them to pay the actors.
Garrod behaves like most of the company directors: he is a little bit tyrannical. Only three days before the first presentation the Black cast decides to go on strike, claiming that there will be nothing left after the white people go back to the US and Canada. There is plenty of fear in the air.
Proudfoot doesn’t capture the moment when the cast reverts their decision to stop. The film then becomes more engaging because the focus turns to the kids. They are filmed giving their testimonies in the rural areas of Kigali, where they were raised and saw their relatives killed. There are ethical and moral issues at staging Shakespeare at such pace, and reconciling with past.
In the end, experience turns out to be very positive. It seems that the young actors had a chance to make peace with themselves. The young Juliet — the beautiful, passionate and headstrong Tete — chooses to become a professional actress. Rwanda & Juliet is a compassionate film about the power of art. Prodfoot leaves to the very end the revelation of a moving metaphor of people from Rwanda.
The film is showing at Sheffield Doc/Fest, which DMovies is following live right now.
Music is the universal language of mankind, affecting people from entirely different cultures is a very similar way. But when people from completely different cultures get together to make music, then it is a cultural experiment. The Silk Road Ensemble is a band composed by 60 extremely talented musicians who participated in a workshop in 2000 in Massashusetts. The mentor of the project is Yo Yo Ma, a classic cellist who already performed on TV at the age of just seven.
Yo Yo Ma is a Parisian musician, son of a Chinese couple, who was raised in the US. He didn’t pursue the career of musician. He started so early that he doesn’t even consider it a choice. By the end of last century, Yo Yo Ma put aside the classical repertoire that propelled his fame and instead tried something completely new: composing an innovative kind of music with musicians from every corner of the world. The Music of Strangers is the register of the encounter of those musicians, as well as some of their biographies.
Curiously, every musician has had some of tragic experience in their hometowns. The Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor was forced to live apart from his wife for political reasons. He had several relatives and friends killed during the Iranian Revolution. The Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh complains that nobody cares about the war in his country, so he decided to teach music to children in a refugee camp in Jordan. The pipa player Wu Man was the first woman to enter a conservatory soon after the Chinese Revolution, in 1966. She tells that at that time “dreaming was the next music”. Likewise Kalhor, she chose to be an immigrant. Also the Galician bagpiper Cristina Pato, who is very much attached to her family and the traditions of her hometown, has faced some health problems is her family. They all found a safe haven in music whilst preserving some very distinguished musical traditions from where they came.
Yo Yo Ma was the leader of this process. After 9/11, he thought he wouldn’t manage to make a second workshop, or a tour with The Silk Road Ensemble. He even quit writing music for some time. Eventually, he realised that “culture doesn’t end”. He wanted to keep the feeling of the first workshop alive.
The documentary directed by the Oscar winner Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom, 2013) is a proof that creativity comes from the intersection of different cultures. When people join forces to fix their individual pathos, through art, they are able to open up new possibilities. The beauty of their music has its roots in the mixture of backgrounds, in setting up harmony with the sounds of instruments that rarely are heard together. The Music of Strangers is a celebration of differences, and it proudly flies the flag of artistic unity.
The Music of Strangers was part of the repertoire of the Sheffield Doc/Fest in June. It is out in cinemas on November 18th.
London isn’t a pretty place, at least not in God’s Acre. Derelict buildings, rusty windows, old furniture, cracked walls populate the British capital in this new psychological thriller/ horror set somewhere near the canals and abandoned industrial sites in in Hackney.
Former property developer Malcolm (Matthew Jure) has lost almost everything to the recession. He has one remaining property, which represents his only chance of paying his friend-turned-foe Sonny (Richard Pepple) and avoiding a lifetime in debt. He needs to renovate the highly neglected house in which he inhabits, and where he spends most of his time as a recluse and alcoholic. This dwelling is also dirty and disturbing, not too different from the outside.
One day, he begins to demolish the internal walls finding toys, clothes and trinkets apparently belonging to a woman and child, and he is concerned that the two are entombed in there, too. Plagued by nightmares and apparitions of previous tenants Malcolm’s obsession leads to uncharacteristic acts of violence as he attempts to fend for himself.
Beautifully filmed in a constant bluish and somber hue, the film evokes some of the worst fears of Londoners: eviction, strange lodgers, ruthless friends and creepy neighbours. Malcolm seems either delusional or depressed – perhaps both – and Jure does an outstanding job in conveying profound feelings of despair and hopelessness. On other other hand, the film has some loose ends, which render the narrative a little convoluted and difficult to follow. And some of the supporting actors fail deliver the adrenaline that the plot requires.
Eviction is a very constant theme for Londoners, both in real life and in cinema. Earlier this year, the film Hot Property (Max McGill) dealt with a very similar subject, but this time for comedic purposes – click here in order to read our review.
