My girlfriend (Spooky Reading Girl) and I had recently decided to go to the cinema, I wanted to see the new Nicolas Winding Refn film, Neon Demon, and Spooky Reading Girl wanted to see indie rom-com Maggie's Plan with the amazing cast of Julianne Moore, Ethan Hawke and Greta Gerwig. As both films were playing at the same cinema at more or less the same time we decided that we would go out to the cinema, split up to watch our respective films and then meet up for something to eat. This worked out very well for both of us. One of Spooky Reading Girl's concerns about Neon Demon was that a review had stated "not for the faint of heart" and she can sometimes be quite faint of heart. I enjoyed Neon Demon a lot. I am big fan of Nicolas Winding Refn, I loved both Drive and Only God Forgives and would have wanted to see his next film whatever it had been about. When I heard the film was going to be about models and the fashion industry I still wanted to see it despite having no interest in either. While I enjoyed it the film it was not an easy watch with some brutal moments and unlike Drive was not a film I could watch again and again, and that's not just because Neon Demon lacked the very easy-on-the-eyes Ryan Gosling who starred in both Drive and Only God Forgives.
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| Ryan Gosling in Drive |
It is an odd thing liking a film but also not particularly wanting to watch it again because of the unpleasant content. Neon Demon reminded me a lot of Black Swan (which I enjoyed but have only watched once) both occasional shocking moments of horror combined with a slow growing feeling that the story was heading somewhere very bad. Both films had a female lead cast where the male characters were only there to advance the plot or as useful props for the women. Usually cinema is seen as escapism and is meant to be enjoyable, however much I admired Neon Demon did I actually enjoy it? And Neon Demon is far from the only film where I have these conflicted feelings.
Perhaps the most famous example of a great film with very unpleasant content is A Clockwork Orange which caused such an uproar and supposed copy-cat violence that Stanley Kubrick had it pulled from release himself. The thing that I find so disturbing in A Clockwork Orange is the violence, which is odd, because often the violence is not very realistic. Near the beginning of the film a fight between two gangs is so ridiculously, and intentionally, over the top as to eliminate any sense of menace. But later, the violence meted out to defenceless innocents is very unsettling, a viciousness and horribleness no other film has matched. I have seen far bloodier, far more gruesome and violent films but the violence has never bothered me. It might be that it is the twisted pleasure that the droogs take in their violence that is conveyed so clearly and it is the intent behind the violence that is shocking and rarely seen. It might just be what happens when a director of Kubrick's quality is given such source material to work with.
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| A Slightly Less Unsettling Version Of The Droogs From A Clockwork Orange |
There are two directors and almost everything they have done consists of films that I appreciate as brilliant but not something I would watch for an enjoyable evening; Ben Wheatley and Mike Leigh. To start with Ben Wheatley he is a relatively new British film director and I have seen nearly all of his films, the one exception being Down Terrace, his first film. The first that I saw was Kill List a peculiar horror thriller with a few intense scenes of extreme violence and amongst others features Michael Smiley who will always be Tyres from Spaced as far as I am concerned. A Field In England was his fourth film and is a very trippy film essentially filmed in a single field which is fine in terms of unpleasantness apart from one scene. In this scene the viewer doesn't even see what happened to poor Reece Shearsmith and the violence or torture he went through was implied by what was heard, but it is not this implied violence rather the deliriously happy expression that is on Shearsmith's face as he comes back on screen.
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| Michael Smiley in Kill List (left) and A Field In England (right) |
Wheatley's most recent film High-Rise is another film where most of it is fine and only a few scenes shock. At one point Hiddlestone's character explains how he ate a dog for food, which is apparently the first line of the book, a bold opening if nothing else. High-Rise is brilliant and probably my favourite of Wheatley's films. It is a film that at times is sickening by the awful decadence and brutal violence that quickly breaks out amongst normally perfectly civilised people who live in what is supposed to be the perfect tower block. Two side notes for High-Rise, if you're rich and throw a party where the theme is to dress as eighteenth century French aristocrats you've only yourself to blame if the poorer people revolt against you and secondly there is an amazing cover of Abba's SOS by Portishead, an incredibly spooky rendition it suits the film perfectly.
Wheatley's third film was the one that was easiest to watch, perhaps because it was, broadly speaking, a comedy; Sightseers. The film was about a geeky couple going on a caravan holiday who ended up committing a string of violent murders. In this film it was not the violence that was hard to deal with it was the tragic quality of the lives of the two central characters, the sadness they endured, and this was before all the murdering started. And that is what bothers me about Mike Leigh films. Many people would probably wonder why I would include Mike Leigh with directors like Ben Wheatley, Nicolas Winding Refn and Darren Aronofsky, known for their violence and unusual subject matter. Leigh makes realistic down to earth comedies not thrillers or horror films. With Leigh it is not the violence, of which there is essentially none, but the tragedy. To be clear, Mike Leigh's films are usually masterpieces and always worth watching but he taps into the tragedy of everyday lives like no one else. The best two examples are Abigail's Party and Nuts In May, both comedies that I think are hilarious and will probably never ever watch again. Abigail's Party was part of Play For Today on the BBC and I think it was criminally irresponsible of them to of a public service broadcaster to put something so life crushing on television. Abigail's Party the story of a dinner party of middle-aged sort of middle-class people brimmed with unhappiness, bitterness and the horrible feelings people who supposedly love each other can have for one another.
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| Abigail's Party - a terrifying glimpse of England in the 1970s |
As for Nuts In May I don't think there is a character in all of film and literature that compares to Roger Sloman's Keith for utter patheticness - a man constantly heaped with failure, frustration and humiliation. Ben Wheatley's Sightseers has been called Nuts In May with murders which is a good analogy. Nuts In May is about a couple going on a camping holiday and their weird middle-class pretensions, getting into arguments with farmers about pasteurised milk and debating how many times you should chew food. While Keith was the pathetic figure his partner was the irritatingly naive Candice Marie advocating the complete disbandment of the British army as an example to the rest of the world. Leigh's great skill is bringing such pathos and sadness to what are typically normal lives. Even Leigh's 2008 film Happy-Go-Lucky about an eternally upbeat woman had moments of terrible sadness showing how no life, no matter how happy it is, is free of tragedy.
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| Candice Marie and Keith in Nuts In May |
Ultimately I am happy that I watched all of these films and even if I don't watch them again they were brilliant enough the first time.
