A Successful Step into March
4/5 - 5/5 - 4/5
Spoilers
The Duke
4/5
I often wonder at what point Jim Broadbent went from being a quirky character actor to a convincing leading man. Obviously, I don't mean leading man in the 90s Hugh Grant fashion, smugly bumbling through 'British' dialogue whilst shamelessly skirt-chasing. Jim Broadbent is the sort of leading man who can be put on the poster of a film and you think "Oh, that's good, it has Jim Broadbent in. I'm sure that'll be worth a watch." During last Friday's visit to the Milton Keynes Odeon with my in-laws, placed in the entertainment jungle that encircles the MK Dons Stadium in a way reminiscent of what I imagine American sports venues to belike, I couldn't help but reflect on this strange career trajectory of Broadbent. He's almost like the Michael Caine of comedy, give or take nearly twenty years.
The Broadbent Guarantee didn't disappoint. When the advert said we'd be greeted with a heart-warming British underdog story with a lovable rogue at the centre, we most certainly were. Broadbent plays the real life character (meant in both sense of the word) Kempton Bunton, who claims to have stolen the portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery. His performance is as his performances always are - engaging, amusing, and sympathetic. Helen Mirren, as his put upon wife, provides a suitable counterweight who masterfully drives the underlying emotion of the film.
The Duke presents interesting questions. On the surface, it plays with the debate over society's treatment of the elderly. Bunton has spent his life, not quite fighting, but quarrelling with the establishment over its social policies. Here, he is arguing for the free provision of TV licenses to war-widows and pensioners. The debate is timely, seeing as the government have done all they can to ensure the BBC cannot afford such a provision, although quickly forgotten in our fast-paced modern world.
But the real core of Richard Bean and Clive Coleman's script is the story of the man himself, Bunton as a campaigner, and the impact of a life given over almost entirely to such exploits on him and his family. A distance has opened between him and his wife, a silence begun through these campaigns but encouraged to widen by the tragic death of their daughter. He has two sons, one of whom has become a habitual criminal, the other desperate to escape Newcastle (and the actual thief in the story). The family rely on Dorothy Bunton's small cleaning pay to stay afloat, as Kempton Bunton fails to hold down work. A moving scene in the bread factory he has temporarily found work in shows him losing his job as he stands up against a racist bully of a floor manager. The film doesn't try to answer the question it poses, allowing the consideration to stay with the audience after the credits have rolled. Where is the balance between changing the world and sacrificing your life and the lives of those closest to you?
The Duke, 2020
Director: Roger Michell
Writers: Richard Bean & Clive Coleman
Composer: George Fenton
Starring: Jim Broadbent, Helen Mirren, Fionn Whitehead, Jack Bandeira, Anna Maxwell Martin, & Matthew Goode
The Mitchells vs. The Machines
5/5
In last week's reviews, I laid out my assessment system for judging animated films. The medium is one full of such potential that you long for any film in that style to vicariously live through the creativity of its creator. An animated film should either present this creativity through its approach to the art (originality or beauty) or through the worlds and stories it can create (the imagination of world building). Sony Pictures Animation, the studio behind Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, teamed with Netflix for this picture (watched, very unfortunately at home), and have continued to prove themselves adept in both criteria.
From the moment the picture screams to life, you are accosted with a visual barrage of artistic styles. This onslaught continues throughout the film, keeping your attention, shaking you at points that would have been slow in other movies, and even making you laugh. We have the standard computer animation model, not-hyper realistic but more cartoonish (exaggerated features, roundness to edges). But then expression lines are presented as hand drawn. A fun idea for creating some over-the-top responses from characters.
The backgrounds are broadly painted to seem like watercolour paintings. In fact, Mike Rianda has been quoted as saying this was the aim. Where most computer animated films now try to recreate nature in minute detail, it was refreshing to see these beautiful landscapes lining each shot. Yet, the most exciting aspect were the changes. Normal scenes were interrupted with either notepad-esque scribbles, adobe flash style animations, or amusing 'live action' sequences. The mix of artistic styles is refreshing and very creative. Although this worked for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the styles utilised here where different and inherently relevant to the story.
And this is where the second strong element of the film arrives, the creativity of the story. The plot followed a standard sci-fi trope, the robot apocalypse, but linked it into much of the modern world with great humour. The robots were designed by an Apple substitute run by a fake, and mistakenly too human, Zuckerberg stand-in. The actual bad guy? A spurned lover of an outdated smartphone voiced with ridiculous hysterics and malice by Olivia Coleman, reliving her greatest The Mitchel and Webb Look acting moments. The powers utilised by the robots, and the fluidity with which they moved, were best served by animation. As with any film remotely linked to producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (of The Lego Movie fame), the film is also very funny. The humour keeps the pace afloat, avoiding too much over-emotional sticky ground, allowing the core emotional content to then land unweighed down, and utilises its comedy as primary plot points. The malfunctioning robots helping them, voiced by SNL members Beck Bennett and Fred Armisen, were second only to the giant evil furby in laugh out loud scope.
With the easings of technology, animation has moved from being a laborious entertainment form, safe only in the hallowed walls of the Walt Disney Animated Studios, to something any old studio can have a whirl at. Where other studios focus on quantity and ticket sales, Sony Pictures Animation are repeatedly showing care and love for their medium. Long may they continue!
The Mitchells vs. The Machines, 2021
Director: Mike Rianda
Writer: Mike Rianda
Composer: Mark Mothersbaugh
Starring: Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Mike Rianda, Eric André, Olivia Colman, Fred Armisen, & Beck Bennett
Cyrano
4/5
I want to make this clear right now, I did enjoy Cyrano. It may come across like I had some big problems with the film, but that is just from the hyperbolic way I will be addressing a key aspect of the movie. I enjoyed myself, I thought it had many strong features, I avoided leaving the cinema to use the toilet so I didn't miss anything, and I came out impressed.
Cyrano has a slightly odd background. As is obvious, the film is based on the 19th Century play Cyrano de Bergerac, which itself is based on a real-life 17th Century person (news to me!) This version began life as a 2018 off-Broadway musical, with a book by Erica Schmidt, starring her husband Peter Dinklage. Joe Wright then picked it up for a musical, adding his wife Haley Bennett as Roxanne. Both were excellent so, sometimes, nepotism pays off I guess.
The big standout is Dinklage. The story has been altered from a tale of an unattractive soldier-poet to that of a soldier-poet with dwarfism. Rather than arrogant but ashamed of his nose, Dinklage's Cyrano is constantly underestimated, even when he is the superior swordsman or wordsmith. The dimensions to this character differ then, his character surprising others against their expectations in most enterprises, rather than simply being ugly, proud, and in love. He works well throughout, balancing a torrent of emotions and bringing you along. Bennett stands out, well matched against his performance and with a beautiful voice to boot.
The production works nicely in the dusty Mediterranean setting. Dusky light filters several scenes. It feels exotic but old in almost the same view. Wright makes good use of the staging spaces to create levels. Well placed tables, cascading steps, a room with a viewing gallery onto the women below, even the balcony scene, find ways of commenting on the character's positions through height and distance.
My primary misgivings, though, were with the music. It isn't bad, and it has a general sweetness that plays pleasantly like the music you may hear faintly in a quiet coffee shop. But, as musical theatre music, music designed to tell a story and captivate, it is fairly bland and indistinctive. A series of songs that follow one another sound like they are either reprises that have forgotten their original melody or new songs that were modelled on the others. The harmonic language is weak, sticking to simple chord structures, with melodies that drift over their plain foundations. A phrase heard in the trailer, with an ear worm of a two bar phrase, proved a disappointment in situ where the rest of the song, aside from those two bars, failed to live up to its promise. In fact, the only song that struck me was the haunting letter song sung shortly before the fateful third act battle. Whilst performances of the music were good, including Dinklage's Tom Wait's like bass, they did not match the potential a musical of Cyrano de Bergerac suggests. At least the music production was more acoustic and less given to the devilish ruinous temptations of the likes of Pasek and Paul.
Cyrano, 2021
Director: Joe Wright
Writer: Erica Schmidt, based on Cyrano by Erica Schmidt, Aaron Dessner, Bryce Dessner, Matt Berninger, & Carin Besser and Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
Composers: Aaron Dessner & Bryce Dessner
Starring: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Ben Mendelsohn, Bashir Salahuddin, & Monica Dolan
The Duke & Cyrano are currently screening in cinemas across the U.K. The Mitchells vs. The Machines is available to stream on Netflix
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