Film adaptations of novels, particularly popular and/or revered ones, are a tricky business. It is logistically impossible to pack everything from a novel into a two-hour film; a completely different medium has a different method of conveying information, and the usual compensation of voiceover narration often fails miserably. So it was with great trepidation that LWLies went to see the film adaptation Never Let Me Go, based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s exquisite novel. His prose is so delicate and precise, not to mention in the first person, that a faithful adaptation of the scope and intimacy of the book seemed a doomed venture.
It was a pleasant surprise, then, that this is one of the best adaptations of a novel we’ve ever seen. This is likely due to a few factors: Ishiguro was heavily involved, the screenplay was written by Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Sunshine), and director Mark Romanek had the good sense to cast Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield in the lead roles. In brief, Carey Mulligan plays Kathy H who, along with Tommy (Garfield) and Ruth (Keira Knightley) grow up in what seems to be a strange kind of orphanage. They have minimal contact with the outside world and are told that they must keep themselves healthy so that one day they can fulfill their roles in society as ‘donors’.
Once they reach adulthood, they leave the orphanage for a kind of halfway house, where get to know the outside world and wait for their time to donate. Kathy has always been in love with Tommy, but Ruth steals him away for herself. As they learn more about the world and where they came from, not one of them questions their destiny. It is not the destination they object to, but the journey. Mulligan plays Kathy with the perfect combination of reserve and quiet pain. Like the destiny she is unable to fight, she is unable to fight against Ruth’s stronger personality; but like her inevitable death, she does not perhaps see the point.
Garfield meanwhile is quite a revelation. His Tommy is a strange combination of joy and rage; when he is happy, it lights up his face. When he is angry, he cannot contain his rage. The two actors plays their characters as counterpoints to each other; they are the two sides of humanity, one that perhaps is too easily accepting, and the other who must learn to adapt to society. The film is as well contained as Ishiguro’s novel; the scarcity and tightness of the prose is reflected in Romanek’s controlled unravelling of the story.
As Kathy, Tommy and Ruth live their brief lives with little freedom or choice, the parallels to reality are obvious, but not unwelcome. Romanek brings his camera in for the intimate moments, concentrating on Mulligan’s ability to convey emotion through the flick of her eyes, and pans out for larger ones, such as Tommy’s run to the boat sitting lonely on the beach. By the end of the film, the audience might feel the same sense of completion as the characters, but the images will likely continue to haunt.
Directed by Bruce McDonald (Roadkill, Pontypool), Trigger tells the story of Vic (Tracey Wright) and Kat (Molly Parker), childhood friends who once had an extreme successful rock band until on stage argument signals their demise. 10 years later, Kat works in the music industry in LA and Vic is still in Toronto. Kat returns home to attend a benefit concert and convinces Vic to accompany her. Through the evening, the two women battle each other and their inner demons. Which of them is happy? Can you go back to where you were or are some bridges burnt beyond repair?
While Kat and Vic both love music, drug and alcohol abuse unsurprisingly take their toll. Kat’s life in LA is seemingly filled with glamour and excitement, having parlayed from her hard rock image to one of commercial music endeavours. Vic has retreated inside herself. As the evening goes on, it becomes clear that most prefer Vic and almost completely snub Kat. Vic is seen as the real genius behind the music, and it is she who might still have a genuine career. But it is Vic’s drug demons that seem greater, looming large (sometimes quite literally) as she fights to maintain sobriety.
The opening scene is shown as a black-and-white fan video looking up at the stage of the band’s final performance, and it takes every cliché of hard rockers (drinking onstage, destroying instruments) and gives it from this perspective a new meaning. Neither woman is perfect, but neither of them is horrible. The film consists mainly of their conversations. These women do not (or perhaps cannot) hide behind the drugs and alcohol anymore; any bitterness and anger must be let out without excuse. Kat may have sold out, but the regret is clear in her determination to remain composed. While Parker warms to the material and lets her usual guard down for brief glimpses into one side of the tragedy of rock music, this film undoubtedly belongs to Wright.
It is said that stars shine brightest just before they go out. If that’s true, then Wright’s performance is a supernova. The Toronto actress died this past spring, and her performance is nothing short of astonishing. She is its anchor and its beacon. The audience will want to both smack Vic and hold her tight at the same time. In fact, the audience will wish the conversations would continue, that they could follow Kat and Vic on their wanderings through downtown Toronto to perhaps catch of glimpse of their strange and beautiful understanding.
In a strange alternative past set during China’s Tang Dynasty, a woman is about to ascend to the emperor’s throne. She has ordered that a great Buddha statue be built in her likeness, and it must be ready for her coronation. But on a tour for a visiting dignitary, a high-ranking official mysteriously burns from the inside out. The soon-to-be-empress, Wu Zetian, tells her most trusted warrior, the beautiful lady Shangguan Jing’er, to bring back Detective Dee, who has been jailed by Wu for daring to oppose her, to solve the mystery.
Thus begins Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, a high-concept kung-fu adventure that includes talking deer, fiery beetles, and some of the best CGI art direction in recent memory. This is not an intellectual film, nor is it meant to be. With a strange combination of Pirates of the Caribbean, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Indiana Jones, the film is both sumptuous and thrilling, with enough action to keep the audience entertained at the same time as keeping the clues rolling to give the audience a chance to guess at the murderer. It’s always refreshing to see women in martial arts films as more than just pretty accessories.
Not that the roles are not in their way stereotypical; Jing’er is an angry woman fighting for a place in a man’s world, and there is naturally sexual tension between her and Detective Dee. But she can hold her own next to the boys in a fight. Detective Dee, played by Honk Kong star Andy Lau, is of course smarter and faster than everyone around him, not believing as many do that the causes of the flaming deaths are supernatural. If there is a fault in the film, it’s that it is slightly over complication. Though the film is under two hours long, director Hark Tsui manages to pack just about anything he can think of to fill up the film. Rarely does five minutes pass without a battle (large or small). But the film is also extremely funny.
The actors seem to be aware of the extremes of the plot and adjust their performances accordingly. While not quite going to extremes themselves, they all give their characters an earnestness that brings the humor out. But this might give the film more weight that it’s due. This is not a weighty film, but popcorn cinema. But there is nothing wrong with that, and it has a good enough plot and enough action and quirkiness to keep its audience interested.
Korean cinema has churned out its fair share of revenge thrillers, chief among them being Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy. Kim Ji-Woon’s I Saw the Devil might not be as good as these films, but it is a solid revenge thriller that abandons any pretence of satisfaction and keeps piling on the tragedy. Choi Min Sik plays a serial killer with a taste for young pretty women. He has been able to get away with his killings for quite a while, until one day he murders and mutilates the daughter of a former police chief and fiancé of a state policeman. The fiancé, played by Lee Byung-Hun, turns extremely quickly to revenge.
But he is not going to just kill Choi; he is going to hunt him down, and each time they meet, he will break a few bones and then send the killer on his way; that way Choi will suffer as long and as much as possible. This quick turn to revenge might seem a little too fast to be believable, but Kim is dispensing with the formalities. The audience is not meant to question the why of Lee’s revenge or in a many ways the why of Choi’s murders. Is Choi crazy just because he murders? His encounters with cab drivers and pharmacists are reminiscent of Anton Chigur in No Country for Old Men, minus the insanity; that is to say, Choi is horrible and evil, but not necessarily unhinged. He just hates people.
Lee seems aware that there will not be any satisfaction or peace for him once Choi is dead; but still he must seek it. As the cat-and-mouse game continues, it escalates in the most vicious ways, each man finding more horrible ways to maim or kill and by extension hurt the other. Choi has no reason to do this other than his nature; without emotional investment his can be as cruel as he wants. Lee is nothing but emotional investment, and so the result is the same.
At almost two and a half hours, the film runs about 20 minutes too long. And perhaps it is not necessary to be as graphic in its violence. But, perhaps Kim is making a point as to the nature and result of revenge. Kim frequently uses extreme close-ups and confined spaces to encourage the audience to think about the faces of these men, and which one is the devil, or if they both are. One cannot help but feel that Choi deserves what he gets, but when Lee’s actions leads directly to avoidable deaths, it indicates that he is not necessarily any better than the devil. Revenge served hot will get you burned.
Toronto International Film Festival 2010 – PART VI (text) by Shelagh M Rowan-Legg is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
