"This Film Should Be Played Loud"

The first and last line of mother! is “Baby?” Darren Aronofsky is a sick son of a bitch.

For real though, I have not stopped thinking about this movie since seeing it last Friday, so I had to go back for round two. A few things sat a bit awkwardly this time. Like how Aronofsky seems to be making it clear this isn’t taking place in any sense of “proper” reality and yet he still goes to great lengths to keep things grounded in the house/relationship milieu. If you’re going so hard on the metaphor, why the presence of phones? Or like, pots and pans? A washing machine? Is God/Him building this domestic illusion for everyone else to play in, or is it just Aronofsky’s narrative foundation stretched to where the holes are visible? Basically anything that doesn’t have some kind of loaded symbolic meaning feels a bit redundant in that sense. It doesn’t feel entirely thought through and fireproof as a framework. It’s a bit silly.

But all that stuff becomes irrelevant in film’s last hour where the sick thrill of being thrust into such a swirling crescendo of hysteria and lunacy takes prominence over any conceptual nitpicking. It’s like a fucking bungee jump. You just drop and drop and then BOOM you’re jolted in mid-air, left stunned and swaying (the structure perfectly mirrors that exclamation mark in the title in that sense, a deep dive followed by a punch). The film’s last thirty minutes are traumatic in a way I’ve never really experienced before. From the endless invasion that turns into an apocalyptic war-zone to the baby and the beating, the fire and the burnt body, then the ripping out of the heart. Can you believe that after the baby has been eaten and Lawrence has been savaged, Aronofsky even finds room to have her trip down the fucking stairs as she races to the basement? Christ almighty. It just keeps going. It made me feel sick to my stomach. It left me breathless, wordless. A seriously punishing, visceral feat of filmmaking and cruelty that is audacious and committed on a level I’ve rarely encountered before. And I say this as a pretty seasoned movie vet (I survived three August Underground movies). This thing fucked me up good. Twice! I’m playing the long game with this one. Gonna be an all timer for sure.

Also one thing I am obsessed with: What is with that metallic bell (??) sound effect that keeps re-ocurring throughout at key points, especially in Bardem’s office? Is it another Biblical allusion lost on me? I kept trying to figure out if it re-occurs anywhere else. It kind of sounds like the flick of a zippo lighter? But it isn’t quite that. It seems like it should be something hella specific and obvious but I’m at a total loss and dumb. HELP!

Watched at the cinema

“Okay. Ready? Boot it.”

And so begins Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, which proceeds in the form of a dizzying and glitchy POV shot that plunges you head-first into a high-wire robbery sequence before dropping you off the top of a building. Mixing Blade Runner-esque futurism with screenwriter James Cameron’s penchant for tech-noir and the cinematic language of video games, this underrated 90s cyberpunk thriller is nothing less than a masterclass in futuristic world-building.

For all the great movies under Cameron’s belt, I’d definitely wager that this is his best screenplay. Maybe the fact it was co-written by Jay Cocks has something to do with it – the only film Cocks hasn’t written for Martin Scorsese – but I suspect Cameron was freed of any worries of directing it himself and felt liberated to create something more subversive with a harder edge than the kind of film his position as a mainstream, colossal-budget filmmaker would usually allow for.

The central concept of a SQUID device – a program that allows users to record, share and feel memories – is fully explored. Despite the endless potential of the idea, Bigelow and Cameron somehow seem to cover all the bases. The exhilarating thrill is displayed in that first shot, the sexual side is repeatedly addressed and the dark and depraved dangers aren’t shied away from. One of the many elements of the chaotic plot features a serial killer who forces his victims to experience their own sexual assault and death through his eyes by making them wear a SQUID headset synced up to his cerebral cortex. Now that is an incredibly fucked up and vivid idea, executed by Bigelow with suitably visceral nastiness and that stuff really stays with you. This is a film full of ideas – cluttered with them in fact – that are both thrilling and unnerving.

The plot is definitely the least interesting thing about Strange Days and once the murder mystery and political undertones (the police brutality subplot feels like a direct response to the Rodney King incident) give way to a disappointingly formulaic third act, you learn to enjoy the movie for its immersive elements alone; the performances, the production design and the cinematography. Remember when Ralph Fiennes was briefly courted as an action movie star? As Lenny Nero he gets a hell of a lot of mileage out of a shit-eating grin and punching-bag charm. There’s also Juliette Lewis slap-bang in the middle of her fierce 90s mode, channelling not only her gifts as a spiky hellcat but as a future rock star. And if you thought the cast couldn’t get any more 90s, remember this thing also stars Tom Sizemore (that fucking wig), Angela Bassett, Vincent D’Onofrio and Michael Wincott. Oh and you know the central refrain of Fatboy Slim’s “Right Here, Right Now”? Sampled from this movie!

Made in 1995 but set in a then-futuristic 1999, Strange Days works as a fascinating time capsule of pre-Millennium paranoia about technology. The lovely fetishisation of analogue technologies like Mini Discs brings a lot of nostalgia, though with VR tech getting more advanced by the day, the film’s themes feel, strangely, more relevant and vital now than it probably did in 1995. Technically this is a period piece set in a 1999 that never was in the same way that Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales squinted into 2008 from the vantage point of 2006 and created an alternate reality in the process. Bigelow has never made another film this ambitious or fantastic and her exit from contemporary, big-budget genre cinema in favour of gritty, political documents is a massive loss. I also admire Cameron for to turning over the best thing he’s ever written to a female director he knew could do it better than he ever could (and I’m a JC fanboy). This movie rules.

Watched on blu-ray

As much as I loved Skyfall the film’s insistence on slowly undoing all of Casino Royale‘s franchise retooling – bringing Q and Moneypenny back into the game as well as a curmudgeon old white guy into the M role and re-injecting more of the sly humour – seemed to put whatever mission that followed on bad footing. After seeing Spectre twice now I’m even more convinced that those creative decisions were entirely misjudged.

Mendes returning to the director’s chair and the promise of finally seeing a Craig-era take on S.P.E.C.T.R.E and Blofeld was enticing but it becomes pretty clear pretty fast that all the enthusiasm and class Mendes brought to Skyfall has become somewhat exhausted by dedicating up to five years of his life on this franchise. For so much of the running time, this just feels like Bond by the numbers.

The semi one-take pre-credit sequence comes across like hollow showboating; it’s immediately obvious they didn’t actually do it all in one take and it has very little dramatic purpose, so why bother? The thin plotting is made unnecessarily complicated too and there’s just a bunch of dumb moments. At one point a mouse helps Bond find a secret room. Come on! The female character problems that have always plagued the series come crashing back into play after being mostly avoided for the last few films with Monica Bellucci’s doomed widow. She has little narrative use beyond being de-robed and bedded by Bond, making you think aloud “what year is this?” Much was made of her being an “older Bond girl” but even if you had Craig seducing Dame Maggie Smith, the nobility of that decision would still be cancelled out by the underwriting.

More than anything I’m still pissed about the stupid game the marketing team tried playing with Waltz’ casting. As soon as he was announced as “Franz Oberhauser” everyone rightly guessed it was merely an alias for Ernst Stavro Blofeld. First off, what a boring, obvious casting choice. Secondly, didn’t Stark Trek Into Darkness teach these marketing guys anything? Why be coy about it? When they released the first teasers with Waltz in shadow ominously promising Bond he was “the author of all your pain” – confirming him as Blofeld, basically – the teasing was so blatant that I assumed they were playing up to expectations and secretly planning a bait and switch, an assumption I carried throughout my entire first viewing.

As Spectre slowly inched towards its climax I suspected that Lea Seydoux’s mostly unremarkable Bond femme-in-distress Madeline Swan was going to be revealed as the real Blofeld, which made most of my trepidations in the plodding second act tolerable. As a life-long Bond fan, I became incredibly excited about this concept which was totally in-tune with the kind of bold retconning these Craig movies promised all the way back in 2006. Bond having a female arch nemesis over various movies, how cool would that be? So much potential. It would also explain why they cast such a terrific actress in such a thankless role. Alas, as soon as Waltz hams it up and reveals his true identity any hope I had for this regular old Bond movie to morph into something irregular was instantly extinguished.

This is followed by a silly fourth-act involving a ticking clock game of cat and mouse in a bombed-out MI6 (a cool location!) that feels like something out of any other generic spy thriller, a category these movies should constantly be striving to be better than. The schmaltzy “driving off into the sunset in the Aston Martin” tag also feels like it was dropped in from a totally different movie. Not only does it succumb to the kind of classic-Bond nostalgia that worked in Skyfall but should otherwise be avoided at all costs (see Die Another Day), it also goes against the overreaching arc established from Vesper’s death in Casino Royale of Bond being forever doomed to be alone. Also, Craig and Seydoux just don’t have that much chemistry, making the beat land on even more of a bum note. There are whispers that this is setting up the next chapter as a Craig era On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which is certainly intriguing, but given the way this movie totally sidelines dramatic potential in favour of stock beats, I’m hesitant to get my hopes up.

So why the relatively positive rating? Well I still love Craig’s take on this character and the technical side of things almost makes up for a lot of the script’s downfalls. Shot on celluloid by ace DOP Hoyte van Hoytema (stepping in for Roger Deakins who lensed Skyfall beautifully with digital cameras) the film is full of stunning vistas and a chilly colour palette that renders so many stock scenes in alluring shades of shadow and hues. The cast is great across the board too and all make the most out of what they’re given. Let’s just hope the next one – Craig’s last? – gets things back on sure footing.

Watched on blu-ray