www.list.co.uk/film Reviews Film
THRILLER/REISSUE BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFRED GARCIA (18) 112min ●●●●●
Sam Peckinpah’s purest vision of male masculinity and the madness of nihilism is given a long overdue 35mm and digital makeover. Made in 1974, Peckinpah’s misleadingly simple fable of a bar manager’s attempt to claim the reward money for the head of a young man who has misguidedly impregnated the daughter of a Mexican land baron, is surely one of the greatest films of all time. Part road movie, part buddy movie and part visceral western and starring Warren Oates (surely the greatest of all post war US film actors) as the hapless gringo barman and pianist is work of dark humour, surrealism, bleak spirituality and raw animalism that must have had a bearing on the later work of David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Cormac McCarthy, Guillermo Arriago (writer of Amores Perros, 21 Grams and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) and many more. Having watched the film many times on wretched prints over the years what’s
great about seeing it again is how good it looks and how it still maintains the power to shock (the fact that a baby faced Kris Kristofferson is in it as a Hell’s angel rapist is just one of many jolts).
Openly admitting his debt to John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Peckinpah claimed that this was his favourite, most personal and least tampered with (by the studios) film. It’s a real American masterpiece – catch it if you can. (Paul Dale) ■ Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 2 Jan.
SCI/FI/DRAMA THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (12A) 105min ●●●●● BIOPIC CHE: PART ONE (15) 126min ●●●●●
As remakes go, Scott Derrickson’s re-imagining of Robert Wise’s 1951 sci- fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still has more contemporary resonance than most. By substituting the threat of nuclear war for that posed by global warming, the film feels very much a product of its time. But given the optimism it places upon humanity’s capacity for change, it fails to ring true emotionally. Just as in Wise’s original, mankind’s future is placed in the hands of alien visitor Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), who has been sent to judge its capacity for change in the wake of the environmental damage they have inflicted upon the planet. It’s up to Dr Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith) to convince him that they are before it’s too late and he triggers their destruction.
Derrickson’s film adopts a refreshingly restrained approach to the inevitable fireworks that follow, slowly building towards the big bang moments and inviting plenty of thought. But he regrettably fluffs the emotional content by virtue of the fact his humans aren’t sympathetic enough to be worth saving. Smith’s Jacob, in particular, is so precocious that you may well be rooting for Klaatu to teach him a very stern lesson, while Connelly’s Dr Benson could do with some tips on exerting parental control. John Cleese and Kathy Bates also struggle to convince as, respectively, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and a gung-ho Secretary of Defence.
The all-consuming need for optimism in American blockbusters eventually becomes an over-riding factor, too, depriving audiences of the type of provocative finale that would really have left them thinking. But if it’s spectacle you seek, the film does deliver some impressive effects late on, as well as some striking imagery, while Reeves – so often [unfairly] accused of finding acting an alien concept – does convince as the extra- terrestrial Klaatu. For once, then, we have a remake that doesn’t make it feel like time’s stood still. (Roberto Carnivale) ■ General release from Fri 12 December.
At Cannes, Steven Soderbergh’s ‘film diptych’ about Che Guevara were shown consecutively, but British audiences are being asked to spend a month pondering The Argentine (original title) before we see Guerrilla (part two) – a wise move that improves the viewing experience. Soderbergh prefers to show fact rather than get bogged down by trite dramatic gimmicks. This biopic sees life as a collection of incidents rather than a coherent whole with a beginning, middle and end. Three events are used to highlight Che’s philosophy and his penchant for armed revolution – his initial meeting with Fidel Castro in Mexico in 1955; the fighting in the Sierra Maesta mountain regions that ends with the 1959 victory march to Havana; and his controversial 1964 speech to the United Nations. An interview with a journalist in the lead up to this speech is used to hang the events together and provide some biographical information, but this is loose and, crucially, information on the important Camilo Cienfuegos fighters is minimal. Che’s memoir Reminisces of a Cuban Revolutionary War is an important source.
Benito Del Toro is a formidable Che. No one in cinema wheezes quite like he can, which is especially beneficial in the scenes when Che is crippled by frequent asthma attacks. The major dramatic drawback to this structurally magnificent film is that Soderbergh refuses to pass judgement on Che, good or bad, and frustratingly shies away from showing his most brutal excesses or any Hollywood style heroism. (Kaleem Aftab) ■ General release from Fri 2 Jan
DRAMA THE SILENCE OF LORNA (15) 105min ●●●●●
Compassionate chroniclers of those struggling to exist on the margins of society, Belgian sibling auteurs Jean- Pierre and Luc Dardenne return with their first feature to focus on a female protagonist since 1999’S Rosetta. The Lorna of the title is a young Albanian woman (played by Arta Dobroshi) living in Liege, where she dreams of opening a snack bar. To raise money for the necessary bank loan, she participates in a scam organised by petty criminal Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione).
With its Bressonian themes of guilt and redemption, the concentration on symbolic objects (in this case money, keys and mobile phones), the hardscrabble milieu in which a lonely soul rediscovers their humanity – there is no question that this is a Dardenne brothers’ film. But there is more plotting than in their previous works and the supporting characters have a greater significance. The brothers also take more risks in their storytelling, including unexpected developments, which illustrate their perennial concern with misery and sudden change. Their regular cinematographer Alain Marcoen’s work here is more restrained than usual, allowing the spectator a certain detachment from events. It’s also a tribute to the controlled intensity of Dobroshi’s performance that The Silence of the Lorna reveals itself to be a mysterious love story. (Tom Dawson) ■ Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 2 Jan. Read exclusive Dardennes interview next issue.
11 Dec 2008–8 Jan 2009 THE LIST 55