Tag: bereavement

The Young Arsonists

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

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The Summer of 1987. Nicole (Maddy Martin), Veronica (Jenna Warren), Amber (Sadie Rose), Sara (Madison Baines); four rural girls on the verge of womanhood, having their periods for the first time. Nicole hasn’t yet got over the death of her older brother Seamus, killed by an accident with a thresher. She’s so wrapped up in this, and in generally being a teenager, that she fails to spend much time with her little brother Brendan.

Her tomboy best friend Veronica spends her time bunking off household chores demanded by her hard-drinking, authoritarian father Gavin (Joe Bostick) and seems to be constantly pushing boundaries. Plus-sized Amber seems timid and easily frightened, and is subject to sporadic bullying by Veronica, yet is a dark horse capable of a shocking practical joke or unexpected, anti-social behaviour.

We never find out that much about Sara beyond that she’s embarrassed by her conservative, aerobics-obsessed mum (Measha Brueggergosman). She’s most definitely the fourth character with Nicole as the main protagonist, Veronica as the second and Amber as the third, in that hierarchical order (was it that way in the script?) And while Veronica’s father Gavin remains largely a dark, troubling figure in the background, we see quite a bit more of Nicole’s family life and parents.

Her dad Dale (Aaron Poole) is out of work and can’t seem to find a job anywhere, although he appears to be actively looking, at least some of the time. Dissatisfied with her husband’s lack of progress on this front, wife May (Miranda Calderon) goes out and gets a job with the company building homes in the area, Happy Haven Development – much to Dale’s disgust.

Meanwhile the four girls (initially five, but one has a run in with Veronica and walks away early on) move in to Nicole’s family’s former home, now abandoned and dilapidated. This is a summer childhood game rather than anything with any legal standing, and at various points they find the front door and windows boarded up with Happy Haven warnings of private property, impending development and no trespassing, which signs are cheerfully pulled down by the bravura Veronica and others.

It’s also an excuse for Nicole to move into her late brother’s room, where she frequently sees and talks to Seamus (Kyle Meagher), who never talks back, asking him questions like, what’s it like to be dead? This aspect of a teenager dealing with sibling bereavement is nicely handled, even if it at one point tips over into the conceit of seeing him standing upside down on the ceiling and her walking up the side of the wall to stand beside him, a competent visual effects job even if one’s not exactly sure what the writer director is trying to say at this point.

That moment is representative of the whole film: it’s constantly going off in different directions and, having established the four girls in their illicit summer property, throws in myriad scenes and plot strands without seeming to know what it’s about or where it’s going. To have two characters driving around a cornfield in an old car may look good, but it doesn’t seem to take the story anywhere and delivers little more than an excuse to play a striking music track in Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, which doesn’t really add anything beyond immediate, gratuitous, foot-tapping adrenaline rush. Likewise in another scene which throws in Brian Eno’s Babies On Fire. Fabulous music – but why is it here?

This means that final reel attempts to close the narrative feel forced, and even then there are too many such attempts going on at once. A shame that the film can’t make up its mind quite what story it wants to tell (out of several on offer), because the competing narratives are all pretty interesting. Such a shame these problems couldn’t have been fixed at script stage, because the performances have a natural feel while writer-director Pye appears to have genuine vision, albeit unfocused.

As for the title – one character (singular) commits arson towards the end. The is no group of arsonists (plural). Happy Haven or Happy Haven Development might have made a much better title, because all the ideas floating around here seem to relate to the happiness (or otherwise) of the home environment.

The Young Arsonists plays in the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. It is part of the brand new Critics’ Picks strand.

Hope Frozen

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Here’s a documentary with a difference about a family in Thailand. When their daughter Einz falls prey to brain cancer before her third birthday, her parents make the bold decision to have her cryonically frozen at death in the hope that she can, at some point in the future, perhaps in several hundred years’ time, be resuscitated and lead a normal life.

She has a devoted, older teenage brother Matrix who would do anything for her having waited over ten years for a sibling. Their dad Sahatorn is a working laser scientist who starts running experiments on his daughter’s cancer cells in an attempt to fund a cure before the condition kills her. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t find a cure. Eventually, he talks wife Nareerat and son round to the idea of having Einz cryonically frozen.

Upon Einz’ death, within 60 seconds her body has been frozen for delivery to a facility run by a company in Arizona called Alcor. We watch a representative of this company show the whole family round, which tour includes the cylinder at the bottom section of which Einz has been put into cryonic storage. For the family, it feels a lot like visiting a graveside. They’ll probably never see her alive again.

Matrix goes into a Buddhist monastery in order to try and come to terms with his sister’s death. When his parents later have another daughter Einz Einz, there’s speculation on the part of the wider family that Einz Einz is the reincarnation of Einz.

Much is made of the possibility of the human race overcoming death, but completely absent is any notion of income or cost. Clearly this kind of procedure is expensive because not everyone undertakes it. So well off people can be preserved while poorer people simply die. Yet without addressing any of that, this film presents its observations in an economic vacuum which is probably beyond the reach of most of us. That weakness aside, it’s a fascinating study of an area where science fiction is fast turning into science fact with huge philosophical, religious and socio-political implications for us all.

Hope Frozen plays in the BFI London Film Festival on Sun 6th and Mon 7th October (2019). On Netflix in September (2020).

Tides

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

This is one of those films that barely has a narrative (it does have one, but it’s very slender). That’s often a recipe for disaster, but not so in this case. The story, such as it is, is this: a group of four fortysomething friends rent a barge for three days’ holiday on the waterways of Southern England.

From its opening where he sits on the side of a canal staring at images on his mobile phone, Jon (Jon Foster) is struggling to cope with personal loss. He and Zooby (Jamie Zubairi) sign the barge hire contract, go through the basics of safety and cancel rules and regulations, stock up with supplies of booze and food then pick up Red (Robyn Isaac) who can only stay one night as she must attend a wedding. Later, they are joined by Simon (Simon Meacock).

The weather is good and the four (or three, after Red leaves just over an hour in to the 90-odd minute running length) traverse canals, visit pubs, hang out both inside and outside the barge, consume copious amounts of alcohol and other substances and generally chill out with one another, take it easy and have an enjoyable, relaxing time.

Although Felber scripted the whole thing, the helmer got his cast to improvise heavily over the one weekend shoot and the results feel very natural, like you’re watching a bunch of mates spending time together rather than actors acting (although, to be fair, at least some of the characters are scripted as actors). And his pre-scripting has locked down what each of the four characters is about, so that when the cast come to improvise, they know what has to underpin whatever they do. An editor himself with considerable experience in 90 second commercials and the occasional documentary, Felber edited the thing down from a mammoth 15 hours and somewhere in the course of that process has arrived at this remarkable and beautifully paced little movie.

It’s helped no end by superb black and white cinematography by seasoned cameraman Paul O’Callaghan. Actually, black and white isn’t the most appropriate phrase to describe Tides. There is no real deep, dark black. Instead, you will see an incredible range of greys and white, dark greys, light greys and everything in between. Many of the film’s best moments (and there are lots of them) are perfectly captured by his eye… two people talking on deck at night outside a lighted cabin interior, their darkened faces outlined by wisps of backlight… the sudden ducking for an oncoming low bridge… numerous moving boat point of view vistas travelling along waterways between trees on either side.

The results are very different from (and looser than) this year’s earlier, equally impressive Anchor And Hope (Carlos Marques-Marcet) making you wonder if there’s room for a whole new subgenre of independent UK/Irish canal movies because not only are both films terrific and very, very different, but also suggest there are an awful lot more stories to be told and feelings to be conveyed in the milieu of barges and canals. Both feel like they’ve been made by people just getting out there, not worrying about the rules and simply making movies on a wing and a prayer. Both have a freshness to them, so if a ‘canal’ subgenre does emerge it bodes well for independent British and Irish film. Barges and canals can clearly deliver high production values at minimal cost using a wonderful British/Irish natural resource we never realised we possessed. For the time being, though, Tides will do very nicely. Like its subject matter, the film is cool and refreshing. Something of a gem.

Tides is out in the UK on Friday, December 7th, and then on VoD on Monday, December 10th. Watch the film trailer below: