Tears Of The Sun

Another lovefilm gem I've finally got around to viewing. I feel as though even if I don't enjoy a film like Tears of the Sun it's at least my moral responsibility to subject myself to viewing third-hand the atrocities there are in this world. Like why people make films and write books about the Holocaust. No, there isn't a bleaker subject. No, it's never 'enjoyable' to read/see stuff about it. Yes, it is necessary to remember and we should be telling people about just how bad events can be. The same goes for Africa and the horror of tribal violence and ethnic cleansing.

An American task force is sent to a Christian mission in Nigeria just as the President is assassinated in a military coup. The new dictator, from the Muslim north of Nigeria, embarks upon religious and ethnic cleansing to 'free' his people. Bruce Willis, when arriving to rescue an American doctor, is compelled to help some Christian Nigerians to the border with Cameroon and safety.

I'm a fan of Bruce Willis and he gives a solid performance as the trooper who doesn't really know how to disobey orders. Having reached extraction point, and got his 'package' away, leaving the refugees to fend for themselves, he experiences a change of heart and heads back to help them. One of his men quietly confronts him, challenging him to explain what they are doing, and what changed in Bruce's head to cause this turnaround. Willis replies: "I'll let you know when I figure it out".

Monica Bellucci overeggs things as the American doctor, and in fact, the film is weakened firstly by how much emphasis they make on whether or not she is American (she married an American, so is entitled to american protection), and secondly by her rather tearful and extravagant performance. For all her stoic nature and strength in the face of adversity in the jungle, she seemed a little too swift, in my view, to weep. The other way in which I struggled with the film was their presentation of the atrocities. Yes, it is important that we see the brutality of tribal violence that we might be chastened, that a lesson may be learned. But at the same time, I didn't feel this presentation tug at my heart strings as it might have done. Am I becoming inured of it? Or did something fall short in the presentation?

The final explosion fight scene and the loss of some of the American soldiers is touching, and filmed fantastically well. The fact that this film does not rely on fight scenes throughout to engage the attention is to its credit, and there are some nice details: the troops have all learnt something of the local patua, so that they can get by; their military precision is at all times obvious; the shift between languages is well managed. We are not faced with bumbling idiots or a more typical Hollywood plot that relies of character mistakes to propel plot. But at the same time, it seemed to me to be a fairly linear plot, and I was not particularly surprised by a final revelation that I suppose should surprise some: it was far too obviously foreshadowed in the opening scenes.

A well put together, cohesive piece, but for my taste, not gung-ho enough to be really an action movie, nor wrestling firmly enough with sensitive materials really to provoke deep consideration or to summon raw emotional impact.

***

Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, Cole Hauser, Eamonn Walker

Dir. Antoine Fuqua

Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's only published novel, receives a spirited treatment in cinemas currently. Dorian Gray didn't particularly strike me as a film that would appeal personally; the trailer suggested that the producers had traded in on striking good looks for vapid teenpleaser and on artistic depth for blockbuster-style impact. But my first impressions were somewhat misplaced.

Ben Barnes did admirably. His first appearance as a young Dorian arriving to the newly inherited family home in Victorian London was clumsy and a rather obvious attempt at 'innocence'. Similarly, his return from his travels of fifteen years to his friends now aged, towards the close of film, challenged Barnes to portray age and experience without actually aging himself. Here again I felt he lacked the gravitas fully to pull off such an attempt. However, despite his opening and closing scenes, in the main he provided a strong performance, impressing me most with the devilish twinkle in his eye as he slid into vice.

He was ably supported by Colin Firth and Ben Chaplin, who, as Henry and Basil, formed something of a devil-angel duo for Dorian's seduction into vice. They both performed excellently, and conveyed much in their exchanged glances of confusion as their creation started to exceed their limitations. Rachel Hurd-Wood as Dorian's first love, Sybil Vane, was sadly unremarkable, and too simpering for my taste. Rebecca Hall's surprise appearance towards the end of the film was also a bit of a disappointment. As Henry's daughter, a supposed change for Dorian's redemption, she performed well enough, but her lines were littered with comments about suffrage, the new-fangled camera and the future for women. It was too much of an attempt at modernising and contextualising Dorian's life and the changes in society to be palatable.

In fact, perhaps it was modernisation that was this film's undoing, or at least caused it to slip considerably in my estimation. The CGI effects for Dorian's portrait were feeble and the addition of groans and growls laughable. Where the novel charts Dorian's fall into vice as a three-dimensional quest for pleasure in all forms, through art, music, theatre and indeed a search for beauty, the film settled on raucous parties, deflowering of virgins and copious amounts of gin. It's true, Dorian does partake in all these things in the novel, but they are not the only things that blacken his soul. It was in this way that the film failed at the last post for me: it was successfully acted, musically and cinematically well put together, but in attempting to do something new it traded in on the beautiful nuances of the original to provide something racy and ultimately unfulfilling on the screen.

***

2009

Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, Ben Chaplin, Rebecca Hall, Rachel Hurd-Wood

Dir. Oliver Parker

Brief Encounter

I finally got around to watching Noel Coward's Brief Encounter that I have recently also seen onstage. It's a piece that I feel deserves to be tip-toed around, simply because it offers to the audience such a heart-breaking and emotionally fragile statement about love, destiny and the choices that we are compelled to make.

Laura (Johnson) and Alex (Howard) are both happily married. She is a housewife; he, an ambitious doctor. But after a chance meeting together as they wait for trains to their respective homes (in opposite directions) they discover a strong connection between them that soon turns to love. It is only on her once-weekly visits to town that they can meet, for lunch, an afternoon visit to the pictures, or perhaps a jaunt to the country. It's an affair, but with none of the sordid connotations that now have come to be understood with that word.

Every single stage of the relationship is charted with exceptional delicacy and attention to detail. Lean does not palm off the viewers with cliches or frivolity; Laura is pained throughout - she has a husband she loves and in falling for Alec, she knows that she is in essence doing something underhand and dirty, however virtuous and 'right' she may feel it is. The twist to the telling is added through a simple device: Laura narrates the entire story, in her head, as a monologue to her husband, Fred. She wishes she could talk to the one person who would give her reasonable and well-considered advice. Of course, he is the one person she can never tell of her love for Alec.

Brief Encounter strikes at such core questions concerning love: do we only have one true love? can we, perfectly happy and contented, fall out of love because of another? is choosing passion over stability intrinsically irresponsible for the modern person? Brief Encounter is built around its time, a time when women's freedoms were very much more restricted, and indeed the idea of divorce far from many couples' minds. But the ideas seem timeless; the risk of falling for someone else, the pressures forced upon us by a relationship, and perhaps most importantly, the unbearable pain associated with love where there are strings attached.

A wonderful, touching, agonising film.

***

1945

Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard

Dir. David Lean