London Film Fest 2010 Day 1 - NEVER LET ME GO

NEVER LET ME GO is a patiently paced, melancholy sci-fi movie that looks like a Merchant Ivory film - BLADE-RUNNER meets THE RAILWAY CHILDREN.  As it opens, Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are children at a picturesque English boarding school called Hailsham. They are good little children - they accept what their teachers tell them about the dangers of the outside world and the importance of keeping well. They are, and I'm sure everyone knows by now, bred as organ-donors. Indeed, the strength of the film is that this fact is taken as read. Far more interesting to avoid petty suspense and to spend precious cinema time examining the ramifications of that fact.  The children know they are donors but also know that they are human - they feel, love, make art - in short have souls - an idea that is deeply disturbing, indeed repugnant, to the society that has bred them.

The sci-fi/pol theory content of the book and film is softened by its immersion in an emotional drama. Kathy (Carey Mulligan) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield) fall in love as teenagers, making Ruth (Keira Knightley) resentful and ultimately destructive.  What could be more human than love and jealousy?  And what is more powerful than confronting people with the consequences of their actions?

But, as with many a London Film Fest Opening and Closing Night Gala, this movie is technically well-made (director - Mark Romanek, ONE HOUR PHOTO) and by no means unwatchable, but it's lacks any real spark.  The pace is too lugubrious for me - the emotions too restrained. Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield are superb as Kathy and Tommy but Keira Knightley is utterly flat as Ruth.  I'm not sure how far this is down to Alex Garland's adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel - in the novel Ruth has more passion to her, more spark - or whether it's just that Knightley is quite simply outdone by Mulligan.  At any rate, by the time the whole thing limped into a final scene with a clumsy voice-over I was rather bored by it.

NEVER LET ME GO played Telluride and Toronto 2010 and was released in the US last month. It open sin Singapore and the UK on January 20th 2011, and in Belgium, France and Germany in February.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Is Mark Zuckerberg a dick? And if so, is it still okay to use Facebook?

Ten years ago, Mark Zuckerberg was an IT student at Harvard. He was pissed off that his girlfriend had dumped him. He was pissed off that his friend Eduardo was getting into an elite club. He was pissed off that he was smarter than everyone but that nobody seemed to notice. So, in a fit of pique, he created a website called Facemash by stealing other students’ photos and uploading them to a photo-ranking site he created, in one evening, while drunk. The site got so many hits it crashed the Harvard network. You get the whole story right there in that scene: the motivations born of insecurity; the disregard for other people’s property; and the insanely brilliant ability.

Mark moves on to helping out elite rowers’, the Winkelvoss twins, with their social networking site, Harvard Connection. He looks around, keeps them hanging on the telephone, and meanwhile mashes the best of their idea (the Harvard exclusivity) with his own talent in creating cleanly designed, functional space. The result is Facebook. They, eventually, sue. (The delay due to being "Gentlemen of Harvard".) The next step is to take Facebook from being a Harvard phenomena to a profitable business. But where Eduardo, co-founder and financial backer, wants to go for advertising and a quick return, Mark is a purist – he wants the site to develop – he wants to know what they have. Of course, this doesn’t stop him being seduced by the charismatic Steve Parker – renegade founder of Napster and Plaxo – taking private equity dollars, and essentially pushing Eduardo out. And when Steve Parker lands himself in trouble with the law, Zuckerberg coolly moves to protect his company again.

When we leave him, Mark Zuckerberg is five years older, some billions richer, invisible no longer. But he's still bitter, insecure, and alone.

In David Fincher’s new film, featuring Jesse Eisenberg in the leading role, Zuckerberg is far more complex a character than I had expected. He’s not a quasi-autistic IT genius who is oblivious to the feelings of the people he screws over, and thus exempt from blame. Neither is he is a mono-dimensional, egomaniacal dickweed, hell-bent on pushing out anyone who dares interfere with his vision for “thefacebook”. Rather, he’s a complex mix of deep insecurity and complete self-confidence. And while he is undoubtedly equivocal with the truth when he needs to manipulate a situation, he’s also as liable to be manipulated by others, especially Justin Timberlake's Steve Parker. He IS an asshole, but a pitiable one at that, and not without redeeming features. He is smart, and creative, and he's usually right.

This is the kind of even-handed, nuanced reading that writer Aaron Sorkin (THE WEST WING) brings to the rather banal, thin source material provided by Ben Mazrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires". Everyone other than Parker gets a fair hearing. Sorkin does this by scrupulously avoiding championing one side or another. Rather every conversation, every action, is shown and then discussed by the people who disagree. We see everything as someone's opinion rather than objective fact - and most things from more than one point of view.  And David Fincher is just the director for this kind of slippery narrative - bringing the adrenaline and excitement of CGI heavy thrillers to what is essentially a movie made up of hacking and depositions. The result is a movie that is fast-paced, emotionally fascinating, and gives us a clear steer on where the film-makers stand:

Sorkin's Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook and no-one else in this movie had the talent to - but he was also willing to brush past obstacles without pity. Eduardo Saverin - the best friend with money - comes across as nice but naive - never assume the lawyers are your own - and truthfully out of his depth on how to take Facebook forward. The Winkelvoss twins are perfectly summed up by Zuckerberg in a throwaway line - they're pissed off and fighting because in their entitled lives this is the first time something hasn't gone their way. Still, as played by Armie Hammer, they have a kind of anachronistic nobility that's utterly charming. And as for Steve Parker, he's a little kid high on phat cash and hype. Yes he uses Zuckerberg, shamelessly, but you also get the feeling that he genuinely gets him too, and wants FB to succeed. Ultimately, I want a movie on Parker, with Timberlake playing him, all on its own.

I find it quite amazing that Sorkin/Fincher were able to deliver a movie about complicated legal wrangles, populated with complicated characters in a world far from the everyday and yet still make it comprehensible and exciting. I think it's because they tapped into the basic emotions: jealousy, greed, insecurity. They get that Zuckerberg just wanted to be noticed, and was protective of his creation. Which is why I'm really upset that they felt it necessary to introduce two rather cheap tricks to top and tail the narrative. First off, the inclusion of a pretty young lawyer (Rashida Jones) who reaches out to Zuckerberg, and is essentially there just to soften his edges and make us think he's less of a dick. Clumsy. And second, and more serious, the introduction of the fictional ex-girlfriend, Erica Albright as the neat motivating device behind the original facemash hack. I get that she's meant to serve as the amalgamation of all the social hurt he's ever felt, but it's just too pat, and why would she have ever dated him in the first place. It makes the movie stronger in a way - partly because of Rooney Mara's great performance - and because of the strength of the final scene - but it's also pretty weak and obvious for a film that, in general, is a lot more sophisticated.

So is Mark Zuckerberg a dick? Yes. Do I sympathise with him? Yes. Am I still going to use Facebook? Yes!

Additional tags: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Jeff Cronenweth, Rooney Mara, Arnie Hammer, Max Minghella, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Aaron Sorkin,

THE SOCIAL NETWORK is on release in the US, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It opens on October 15th in France, Switzerland, Denmark, Bulgaria, Estonia, Iceland, Spain and the UK. It opens on October 21st in Greece, Finland, Lithuania and Sweden. It opens on October 28th in Belgium, the Philippines, Australia, Croatia, the Netherlands, Singapore and Norway. It opens in November in the Czech Republic, Portugal, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Malaysia, South Korea, Russia and Colombia. It opens in December in Brazil, Argentina and India and on January 15th in Japan.

RED RIDING - 1974 - Less slippery and subversive than the novel but well put together nonetheless

1974 is the first of three films produced for television by Britain's Channel 4, based on the "Yorkshire noir" novels of David Peace. Each of his four books, 1974, 1977, 1980 and 1983, is about the corruption of policeman, priests, politicians and businessmen who murder and extort for no reason other than that they can. There never seems to be much money or success to be had from it, other than protecting the status quo. These crimes are posited as endemic in a region crippled with obsolete heavy industry and chippy toward outsiders. The greatest tragedy is to think you can remain an outsider - a cool observer - and that you can affect change. West Yorkshire is a law unto itself, and that law is policed by West Yorkshire's Finest, and spun by the compliant journalists of the Yorkshire Post. David Peace's world is one of almost complete corruption and casual evil. There are no heroes, but there are characters through whom we investigate the world and with whom we come to empathise.

In 1974, that character is a cocky young journalist called Eddie Dunford, newly back from a failed stint as a journo in Fleet Street, and desperate to make a name for himself by proving that someone is serially killing little girls despite the obfuscation of the rozzers; competition from senior crime reporter Jack Whitehead; and the powerful forces protecting a successful local property developer, John Dawson.

The movie is directed by Julian Jarrold, whose previous directorial efforts included the painfully superficial and hi-gloss remake of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. 1974 is a far more successful film. Shot in sepia tones through the perpetual haze of cigarette smoke, the movie feels claustrophobic and sinister - just as it should. There's a superb scene where the camera looks over Dunford's shoulder through the patterned glass to a distorted image of Paula Garland - mother to a murdered girl - and soon to be Dunford's lover. That sums up Dunford: he sees through a glass darkly. And the tragedy of the film is that his eventual knowledge brings no relief. In a pivotal scene, he hands over a bag of documents - the research of his dead colleague Barry Gannon - to the one policeman he thinks is honest. Dunford is relieved - elated - as he drives toward his lover for an escape to the South. What a fool, the film-makers say, to think that he could actually escape the clutches of Yorkshire corruption. What a selfish, naive fool to think he could dump the files and fuck of to the South, where the sun shines.

Andrew Garfield is superb as Dunford - with his performance in THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS - he has become an actor I will go out of my way to watch. Rebecca Hall is moving as his lover, Paula Garland. In John Dawson, Sean Bean finds yet another role that capitalises on his slightly sleazy charisma. But the real strength is the depth and quality of British character actors filling the cast, from John Henshaw as the harsh-but-fair Editor, to Peter Mullan's Reverend Laws.

The resulting film is atmospheric, sometimes like a bad dream, hard to hold on to, unnverving, and very hard to let go of. Tony Grisoni has done a good job in adapting a ferociously complicated novel for a hundred minute runtime, and cleverly compresses characters. What the film looses, however, is the sheer force of its brutality. The novel is hard work, both in terms of language and descriptions of violence and sex. Every time Julian Jarrold cuts away from a blackmail photo or pans away from a scene of torture, David Peace takes you into the mind of the aggressor. And where the worst crime Grisoni's Dunford can be accused of is naivety, and a final loss of temper, Peace's Dunford is a far more ambivalent character. If policemen casually rape whores, then in the novel Dunford treats women as casually and cruelly, though playing, as it were, in the minor leagues.

And, without ruining either, I found the "solution" of 1974 and the closing scenes too neat and twee, where they should've been more slippery and open-ended. Presumably this was the result of the compression of a large conspiracy into a single culprit but the result was that the ending felt rushed and just plain bizarre - the logic behind the killing was almost given as a throw-away line, and significantly undermines the slow build-up.

RED RIDING was shown on UK TV in 2009 and is available on DVD and on the Channel 4 4oD video on demand service.

Some thoughts on THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS is a beautiful, dark, wondrous, mischevious film. Every scene is full of visual delights and rich metaphors. PARNASSUS is film as spectacle - taking us back to the earliest tradition of cinema. But perhaps the most spectacular fact about PARNASSUS is that is was made at all, given the death of its star, Heath Ledger, half way through filming, a fact that evidently floored Terry Gilliam, and had the money-men, always troublesome in a Gilliam production, running for the exits. If the PR surrounding "Ledger's Last Film" gets Gilliam better distribution and audiences than he typically attracts, it's a poor motive, but a good result. Because people should see this film. And not just Gilliam fans, or fantasy fans, or fans of Dickens and Inkheart and the Brothers Grimm. THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS pleases and works on many levels.

Before I get to how it pleases, let's dwell a moment on the fact that it really does work. People who love Gilliam tend to start with an apology for the baggy structure of his films and the crazy, too large worlds he creates. It's as thought they love what he's doing but wish he'd find a stronger producer and editor, and someone to just package him up neatly like a Tim Burton film. Surprisingly, I've even read some reviews of PARNASSUS alleging the same thing - the movie is, to these critics, hard to follow, rambling, jam-packed and simply strange. Well, I have to say, I found it one of the most tightly structured and dramatically satisfying of Gilliam's films. Each episode propels us from the opening conceit to the final showdown. Each is necessary. And each character develops upon the journey. So don't let the patronising apologists fool you - PARNASSUS is a great film because of its rich visual style and wide-ranging scope, but it's also easy to enjoy because it's structurally tight.

As the film opens, an antiquated travelling troupe of players is pitching its stall in the modern-day City of London. Well, modern, yes, with its drunken chavs, but timeless too, with its Dickensian grimy pavements and desolate vacant lots. The troupe is led by Doctor Parnassus - a thousand year-old mystic, devoted to telling the truths of life through stories. Centuries ago, he gained immortality in a wager with the Devil. (Just how his side-kick, Percy, gained immortality is unexplained). When passers-by go through his looking-glass they enter a world of their imagination, where Parnassus and the Devil battle for their souls. If Parnassus loses, his daughter Valentina will be forfeit. Around this larger story of life and death is wrapped a smaller tale of love. Parnassus' has raised his daughter in an atmosphere of magic and wonder, but what she really wants is a normal life in consumer Britain. A young boy called Anton, who has been taken in by Parnassus, wants to run away with Valentina, but she is more attracted to the mysterious Tony - an amnesiac in a white suit who promises to modernise the Imaginarium and make them all more money. But who is Tony? And why did they find him hanging by a noose underneath Blackfriars Bridge?

PARNASSUS works as a touching love story - where the girl is too dazzled by the handsome stranger to notice the honest, simple man who loves her. It works as a moving coming of age drama in which a young girl rebelling against her father discovers that she loves him; and the father who cosseted his daughter learns to let her go. PARNASSUS works as dark and brooding cautionary tale about the inability of escaping the consequences of one's actions. In the world of the film, imagination is not an escape but being brought to account. PARNASSUS works as a memorial to Heath Ledger, and all stars who became icons by dieing young. PARNASSUS works as a sad comment on the Death of Narrative Cinema, insofar as Parnassus stands up for stories, and the modern world has no time to hear them. Perhaps most cheekily, PARNASSUS works as a critique of Tony Blair's Britain - the pre-Credit Crunch Britain of housing market bubbles and conspicuous consumption and relentless "modernisation" - Ikea catalogues and "Norm-porn" - of eroding civil liberties in the name of greater security - of policeman clubbing G-20 protesters - of politicians with genuinely good intentions somehow messing up.

On the most basic level, PARNASSUS works as an old-fashioned fair-ground attraction. It's just delightful to look act, and when the actors are playing their characters as performers in the show, they are simply wonderful. All the big-name actors, from Christopher Plummer as Parnassus, to Ledger, Depp, Farrell and Law as Tony, to Verne Troyer as Percy, are just fine, and Lily Cole holds her own as Valentina. Tom Waits is brilliantly cast as the rogue and charmer, Old Nick. But the person who absolutely steals the movie is the young British actor Andrew Garfield (LIONS FOR LAMBS, THE RED RIDING TRILOGY). Garfield as Anton, the poor boy in love with Valentina, but also the fairground entertainer, is an absolute revelation - and worth the price of entry alone.

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS played Toronto 2009 and opens next week in Bulgaria and the UK. It opens on October 23rd in Spain; on October 29th in Australia, the Czech Republic, Italy and Vietnam; on November 5th in Argentina, and New Zealand; on November 11th in France; on November 19th in Portugal; on November 20th in Iceland; on December 3rd in Slovakia; Switzerland; Norway and Sweden; on December 25th in Canada and the US' on January 7th in Germany and Poland; on January 28th in Russia and Japan; on February 5th in Estonia; on February 11th and on March 12th in Turkey.

Eventual tags: terry gilliam, charles mckeown, fantasy, johnny depp, heath ledger, jude law, colin farrell, christopher plummer, lily cole, verne troyer, tom waits, andrew garfield, jeff danna, mychael danna, nicola pecorini,