In these days of US-style promotion, branding and media, it’s easy to think of artists as high profile, rich and successful. While some are, that’s not what an artist is: an artist is, quite simply, someone who makes art. (If they’re a good artist, they make good art. Whatever that is.) The subject of Morley’s new road movie is the artist Audrey Amiss (1933-2013) who, although she exhibited her work a number of times during her lifetime, received scarcely any recognition in that period. She suffered from mental health issues and was in and out of mental hospitals throughout her life.
Audrey (Monica Dolan) is regularly visited in her London flat by psychiatric nurse Sandra (Kelly Macdonald). One day, she asks Sandra to drive her to an exhibition which has an open call for artists, as she’s never exhibited and feels the time has come. Sandra first turns her down, but on a later date after some consideration agrees – although she’s somewhat horrified en route when Audrey’s “local” turns out to mean “Sunderland”, the best part of 300 miles North.
Thus, the pair yet out in Sandra’s bright yellow car Sunshine band undergo a series of encounters with people from Audrey’s past. In reality, they aren’t the people from Audrey’s past, but she mistakes them as such in her mind. Just as she isn’t always convinced Sandra is really Sandra or even that she herself wasn’t taken over by an imposter at an early age (following a specific traumatic experience, which the narrative explores in the final reel towards the end of Audrey and Sandra’s journey).
There are many joys to be experienced on the way. A wise vicar (Gary Bates) breaks into a church lavatory after Audrey accidentally locks herself in and, unlike numerous media presentations of clergy, manages to say and do just the right things to help her. A hitchhiker (Issam Al Gussein), who turns out to be another artist, gets thrown out of the car after addressing Audrey as a “freak”. A van driver (Neal Barry), who gives Audrey a lift after a row with Sandra, seems a pleasant chap until he starts trying to take sexual advantage of her (a rare moment when this largely brave and original film lapses into cliché). Eventually, she visits unannounced her Sunderland-based sister (Gina McKee) who she’s not contacted for six years.
Dolan is fantastic as the woman who exhibits both a personality disorder and a talent for expressing herself visually; her performance is ably complemented by short bursts of little sequences showing three or four of Audrey’s works in rapid succession throughout. The role is a gift for an actor, not only because of the wide palette of motion and behaviour undergone by Audrey in the course of the film, but also because she has to interact with characters she believes to be a person from her past when in fact they are someone else she has never met.
Macdonald provides an anchor to Dolan’s out of control persona, while McKee, although she doesn’t appear until late in the story, proves a huge presence in the final reel, a good and generous sister.
There’s a fascinating religious (Christian) subtext to all this, too. Audrey wears a cross and, however messed up her life might be, appears to have a deep-seated faith in God as expressed in the Christian tradition. As well as the aforementioned episode in a rural church building (the name St. Christina The Astonishing can be seen on a notice board inside the premises), there are comforting religious words, there is one in-car conversation about Jesus, there are references to hymns and hymn singing which, as any Christian person will tell you, can carry and communicate great nuggets of spiritual truth, often in a clear and concise, albeit almost subliminal way. Not that the film is proselytizing, or anything like that: far from it.
Morley is far from your typical British director; she tends not to repeat herself, except for the fact that her films are consistently provocative. This new film is well up to par. As a bonus, it has a scene with Morris dancers.
Typist Artist Pirate King premiered in the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, when this piece was originally. Its UK premiere takes place at the 31st Raindance Film Festival. In cinemas on Friday, October 27th. On Curzon Home Cinema on Friday, December 8th.
A background in advertising, directing commercials and music videos for bands such as Massive Attack, Ed Morris’ debut feature, the British set family drama, How to Stop a Recurring Dream (2021), is a road movie that leans towards social realism, with a tone of the surreal.
The already fragile bond between two half-sisters, Yakira (Ruby Barker) and Kelly (Lily-Rose Aslandogdu), is tested further when their parents, Paul (Jamie Michie) and Michelle (Miranda Nolan), announce an imminent split-custody separation. For Yakira, the elder sister, it means moving to the other end of the country with their father. In an attempt to reconnect with her younger sibling, she kidnaps her and takes to the road to visit her mother’s grave.
Morris previously directed the now-banned documentary, This Is Not – An Interview with Tony Kaye (2013), an open conversation with the director of American History X (2013), whose antics branded him a controversial figure in Hollywood.
In conversation with DMovies, Morris discussed his love of films that fuse together the blockbuster and the arty, treating the film shoot as an assault course, and not wanting to get hung up on social realism.
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Paul Risker – Why filmmaking as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or a defining moment for you personally?
Ed Morris – It’s a good question, and it’s one that I probably haven’t gotten to the bottom of, but I can tell you this, I’m not really a film buff. If we sat here and started talking film you’d probably get to realise fairly quickly that I’m not that conversant on it, but I do know what I like. What I’m interested in is storytelling, and the structure of story and writing has always fascinated me.
I came into it that way and through directing all sorts of things, and just wanting a bigger canvas through which to express something bigger. I hope that you think the film is psychological to some degree, or thoughtful, and I hope you’re effected by it because that’s what I’m in it for.
PR – Would you agree with the idea that a movie is different from a film, and if so are you leaning towards the latter?
EM – There’s a huge distinction. I love Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984) and I love Jaws (Spielberg, 1975), whatever it might be. They use certain tricks and they’re deliberately entertaining, and then at the other end you’ve got what you would call arty films, but I like that place in between where you maybe have the work of the Coen Brothers.
I looked at a lot of indie films before I made this to try to set a realistic ambition, because this is a very small film. We’ve been put under a bright spotlight because of Ruby’s emergence into fame with Bridgerton (2020). I looked at Brick (Johnson, 2005), which I thought was excellent, and those films made on a shoe string that are very good, and although you would describe it as a film, it borrows from movie tricks and techniques.
I’m always intrigued by films that fuse the two in some way, or use what there is at hand to make something intriguing. I always like to be surprised, and I remember seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004). [Charlie] Kaufman’s scriptwriting is interesting just for that, and Being John Malkovich(Jonze, 1999), is it a big movie or is it a tiny movie? It found a different voice, or a new skin through which to deliver a message, which is interesting.
PR – Do you think we focus on the opposites of the spectrum, forgetting about the grey in between that’s populated with so many visions, ideas and interpretations of what cinema can be?
EM – Exactly, and I didn’t want it to land in a particular style of film, or be too on the nose. As I was making it I was thinking about social realism and the feel of that, and how it would present itself had I gone headfirst and changed the writing to make it work as a piece of social realism. It’s not what I wanted it to be and the Brits are very hung up on that. It’s either period dramas or seeing kids on a council estate with an alcoholic mom, and I didn’t want to be there. I wanted the film to be deliberately entertaining, and it’s a first film to demonstrate that I am at grips with writing and structure, and being able to put something on the screen that people want to watch. It’s ultimately a feel good movie.
PR – My initial response to the film was that it keeps us off balance with the mix of a road movie leaning towards social realism, alongside the surreal that teases what’s real and what’s not.
EM – The film does fly about, even literally how I edit towards the end, building up through a crescendo of cuts between ‘A’ story and ‘B’ story. You have this family split into two and then Ruby loses Kelly, and so they’re split into two, and then the mum and dad split up. It’s a typical four people together that split up, and then they all come together again.
It has some pattern and shape to it, and what I’m riding is the notion of plausibility, which is interesting, but not giving too much away. Ambiguity is a very powerful thing in characterisation and storytelling, and in life in general. If somebody is completely understandable, they’re often very boring, and so you’re using ambiguity, but you’re using it in a layered way – literally as what’s on the screen, and from moment to moment, what genre am I in? You’re also using that to accentuate what the characters themselves are going through, and I wanted the audience to come out of the first act feeling uneasy.
Yakira goes through a series of rejections and I wanted there to be a very definite unease in the film that’s resolved. … I’m trying to make the film visceral and to demonstrate by feeling to the viewer what the characters themselves are feeling in the moment.
PR – Does ambiguity create a space for the audience to enter a film?
EM – When you’re writing or filmmaking you never want to show exactly what needs to be shown. What you’re showing is a series of reliefs. It’s like drawing, and when you create the shape of a vase or a sphere, by showing the shadow on one side, the highlight is a relief because there’s no actual sphere on the page. You’re drumming around the beat, you’re using tricks and techniques to imply, and I always think what’s implied is much more powerful. The way you engage people is that they’re doing the colouring in, they’re seeing the shape, and so be as implied as you can be.
PR – On the subject of the camera as the filmmaker’s tool, how do you approach its use to capturing your vision for the film?
EM – The DP on the film was Ivan Bird, who shot Sexy Beast (Glazer, 2000). When you’re shooting the speed we had to shoot at with so much to do, we were approaching it like it was an assault course. There isn’t a lot of time to discuss angles, you’re running from setup to setup, and so you need a cameraman who can just land the camera.
Ivan had the good idea to use a monopod because you could just pick it up and move it to change the shot. So there’s movement, but it’s minimal movement, so often it looks very still, and then we went handheld when it was appropriate. We stuck to a simple range of lenses, one or two that we used throughout because we didn’t want to put more pressure on the edit. We wanted to keep things simple for ourselves. We kept to eye-line most of the time, a simple adherence to very basic but good cinematographic rules and guidelines that will keep you on the tracks most of the time.
PR – Would you describe the film as an unfolding journey of discovery as you move through the writing, the shooting, and the editing?
EM – … The process is a long meandering one, and the script is never what you had in your head, what you shoot is never the script, what you edit is never what you shot, and then when you put music on it, it changes it all dramatically again. The music helped bring out some beats that I neglected to shoot, or weren’t quite there.
The score is by Nikolaj Torp Larsen, who is in the band The Specials. He took the title of the film and he just played it as a bass-line: how-to-stop-a-recurring-dream. Now if you go back and watch the film again, the opening scene plays that bass-line and the theme holds the whole thing together, and through some tricky moments because we cut sporadically from ‘A’ story to ‘B’ story. If you watched it without music, you would see how jumpy it was, which was a great concern. The music and that bass-line wrapped it all up and put a thread through it, which worked very well.
The director’s job is to ultimately have a sense of that thread and vision early on. Then you better well bloody stick to it, and be willing and flexible enough to recognise what will contribute to it that you hadn’t thought of as you go along.
How to Stop a Recurring Dream is available on Digital Streaming Platforms
Riding high on its buddy comedy tropes, The Peanut Butter Falcon is a road movie ready to warm your heart in these cold October days. After winning audiences at South by Southwest earlier this year, the movie now arrived in London
The titular character is Zak (Zack Gottsagen) – a young man with Down syndrome who wishes to be a wrestler. He spends most of his days rewatching VHS tapes made by his icon, pro fighter Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church), and devising elaborate plans to escape from the nursing home he’s been put into by the state. When he manages to get out, he crosses paths with down-on-his-luck outlaw Tyler (Shia LaBeouf) and they set out to Salt Water’s school, where he can pursue his dream.
The biggest feat of writer-directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz here is how they build a friendship like Zak and Tyler’s in a way that feels natural, with their similarities coming up gradually during their trip. Both Zak and Tyler are outcasts in their own way and both lack the family structure that could provide them with support.
Tyler, in particular, is deeply scarred by the loss of his brother and is initially drawn to help Zak out of guilt and desire to escape the clutches of local fisherman Duncan (John Hawkes), whose equipment he sets on fire in a rage. When he warms up to his unexpected companion, LaBeouf’s work in bringing these layers to his acting is extremely brave. Gottsagen, whose struggle to become an actor largely provides the real-life backbone to this otherwise fictional story, taps into a larger-than-life version of himself that is a joy to see.
The filmmakers’ background in documentary-making makes the American Deep South as much of a character as the people who populate it. There is a freedom in that green wilderness that mirrors the one the protagonists long for. For them, society, despite being reasonably safe, also feels restrictive – and that’s why they run from it. This conflict is embodied by Eleanor (Dakota Johnson), an employee of the nursing home who gets the task of bringing Zak back there. When she finds the duo, she – and the audience – is posed with a burning question: should we aim for survival or for actually living?
Set to a banjo-heavy soundtrack and with an overall compelling cast, The Peanut Butter Falcon makes the most out of its premise and serves as a reminder of the need for hope in the face of adversity. If you are looking out for a feel-good movie that knows exactly where its heart is, then you know what to do!
The Peanut Butter Falcon premieres at the BFI London Film Festival and then opens in cinemas on Friday, October 18th. On Amazon Prime on Friday, February 4th (2022). Also available on other platforms.
