Author: BRWC

The Birth of a Nation begins with a title card reading, ‘A PLEA FOR THE ART OF THE MOTION PICTURE’, a statement arguably apt for a film that, despite pioneering huge advancements in the history of film, has long instead predominantly been associated with mass amounts of controversy over racial and political representations. It is interesting to note that this title card was not in fact added until the second screening of the film and also further continues on to state that the creators ‘do not fear censorship’ and have ‘no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities’, a sadly ironic statement for a film that appeared to do just that for many who watched it.

Birth is a 1915 historical silent film directed by long-described pioneer in both the direction and evolutionary advancement of cinema, D.W. Griffith. Over three hours long in length, Birth tells the story of two opposing families before, during and after the American Civil War when the Reconstruction Era began. Griffith, who in fact had much familiarity with the civil war due to his own father serving as a colonel in the confederate army, co-wrote the screenplay with Frank E. Woods and co-produced the production with Harry Aitken. Birth was based on the controversial novel and play The Clansman (1905), both authored and then theatrically adapted by former white supremacist Thomas Dixon Jr. Arguably most famous for its celebration of the Ku Klux Klan, The Clansman was also claimed to be an influential factor in the group’s later historical revival.

Despite being a revolutionary piece of cinematic history, Birth has spurred countless criticisms of it containing extreme racism and has even been repeatedly scorned as being a tool of political propaganda. Moreover, similar to the original source it derived from, Birth has also been heavily cited as the inspiration behind the second uprising of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920’s and has also further flared outbursts of racial violence and provoked many public protests. Accusations aside, if one were to think objectively, surely this cumulative list of ill-doings is certainly highly impressive in them all being achieved through the medium of film? To perhaps back this musing up, Griffith even answered to the negative criticism given to Birth by releasing another film as a response, the film being cleverly named Intolerance (1916).

Continuing on, the second title card of Birth reads, ‘The bringing of the African to the American planted the first seed of disunion’, therefore immediately presenting the thematic core of the feature to the audience: the hostile divide between races caused by war. In Griffith’s representation of this racial struggle, the film is centred around the Northern American pro-union Stoneman family and the Southern American confederacy Cameron family. Head of the Stoneman family is abolitionist Congressman Austin Stoneman, who is in fact said to be based on the real-life reconstruction era congressman Thaddeus Stevens, even down to such details as appearance. The Cameron’s most prominent character is eldest son Ben, who, although portrayed as very valiant and noble, spurred outrage from audiences by later becoming leader of the Ku Klux Klan and seemingly glorifying the original KKK in the process.

Although there were many directors in the early 1900’s, Griffith was arguably the most well-known due to having directed over 500 films and is now cited as having made the most technological advancements in cinematic history. With a title such as this, one would of course expect the direction displayed in Birth to be full of awe-inspiring innovation and, despite the techniques used in Birth having now become what is to be expected, they were certainly revolutionary at the time.

Amongst its armoury of cinematic innovations, Birth introduced the use of close-ups, panoramic long-shots, colour tinting, iris-effects and night-time filming, all to name but a few. Some examples of the impressive cinematic advancements showcased throughout the film are featured in the breathtaking battle scenes, beautifully orchestrated with well-executed panoramic shots that are able to show the incredible scope of action. Interestingly, Birth was also the first film to use hundreds of extras in order to truly give a more realistic aesthetic, which is further aided by the battle scenes actually being based on historical photographs and lithographs.

The use of colour-tinting was also innovative in how it allowed the film to convey different moods associated with separate colours and consequently also allowed the element of suspense to be created when two opposing colours were used in quick succession. Continuity editing throughout the use of quick cuts between simultaneous shots was also debuted in Griffith’s production, which is now crucial in many modern chase films to convey building suspense.

Moreover, Birth was also one of the first features to dramatise history with fiction, with is arguably best showcased in the incredibly well-produced scene reconstructing Abraham Lincoln’s famous assassination. Griffith filmed the scene on an outside set that was replicated from an illustration of the original Ford’s Theatre where the assassination had historically taken place, allowing for a sense of historical authenticity to be conveyed. The scene also incorporated the use of matte-colouring, which worked incredibly well as a tool to show John Wilkes Booth’s concealed gun by encasing everything else in the shot in a thick black covering.

Alongside some of the impressive revolutionary aspects of the film is also the fact that Birth was the first feature film to include its own original score, which was co-scored by Griffith himself. Some characters were also given their own theme songs, which worked well to associate to the audience the type of personal temperament each character held due to the mood of the music playing.

Despite the cinematic expansiveness of many of the scenes and Birth also paving the revolutionary advancement for the way that films are shot today, a large amount of critique has been placed on the racial undertones of the film due to the way that both the black and white race are each depicted. Birth created such a large amount of  public outrage that several protest groups even argued against it being shown in theatres, including the N.A.A.C.P (The National Association for the Advancement of Black People), who petitioned against it showing in several cities. However, regardless of Griffith himself being criticised for creating a highly racial and offensive representation of the reconstruction era, the acts of vengeance and the black-uprising shown in Birth are said by Griffith to in fact be a ‘historical presentation’ of the time and thus consequently infers that his feature must hold some historically accurate merit.

Although many of the plot elements are, of course, expectantly purely fictitious, Griffith does include various historical facsimiles, stretching so far as to quotes from previous American president Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921). Griffith includes several excerpts from Wilson’s historical book A History of the American People, where Wilson describes how the congressional leaders of the time had a determination to ‘put the white South under the heel of the black South’. Although there is a large amount of racism inferred towards the black race being aggressive and violent, one must acknowledge that, ultimately, the figure-heads exploiting and influencing the post-war black uprising in Birth were dictated by those predominantly of white colour. Furthermore, many of the black characters in the film were in fact played by actors in blackface and, although this was allegedly due to a shortage of black actors available at the time, it was cited that when a ‘negroe’ character was interacting with a white character, the black character was always played by a white actor in blackface. Interestingly also, many of the reconstruction era scenes showing the newly instated black legislature were also said to be based on political cartoons and illustrations, which, if anything like modern times, are often highly satirical and hyperbolic in nature.

In terms of the representation of the black race in the film as being sexually aggressive towards women, a scene that is often described as one of the most ‘horrifying’ is when young Flora Cameron purposely falls to her death from a cliff when being chased by a black renegade named Gus. Despite Gus telling Flora that he ‘means no harm’, she decides that she would rather fall to her death than be touched by him. What makes this scene even more poignant and manipulative to the audience is the fact that Flora’s elder brother, Ben, is tragically the one to find her body. Nearing the conclusion of the film, the mulatto Lieutenant Governor, Silas Lynch, also tries to force marriage onto a reluctant white female character. Here is where the film perhaps exploits the use of audience sympathy again by partnering the aggressive actions of the mixed-race character with a particularly helpless white female character, thus inherently creating more evocative sympathy for the victim and allowing for a negative racial message to be inferred. Building further on the representation of the black race in the film, the blacks of the reconstruction era were also described as being ‘crazed negroes’, whilst the Southern white were described as both ‘helpless’ and a ‘minority’, consequently placing negative connotations towards the first and, again, sympathetic connotations towards the latter.

Another large controversy sparked from Birth’s release was that it was hugely hailed to be political propaganda due to it being cited as being a promotional tool for members of the Ku Klux Klan. During the first showing of the film in Clune’s Theatre in Los Angeles, February 18^th, 1915, members of the clan were in fact said to have rode up and down the street as a means of publicity for new membership. Moreover, there is a famous sceneiBirth in which the KKK rides up to a cabin to rescue a group of white people from a militia of black people, consequently glorifying the KKK to be heroic and valiant in their ideology and then tarring the black race to be aggressive.

To conclude, as we are no longer in the early twentieth century and most likely never were, there is somewhat of a blurred line when judging what is actually factual about Birth and what is intended to be blatant racial material. If we were to take Griffith’s words ‘plea for the art of the motion picture’ and hold them credible against the entire content of Birth, perhaps everything would then become more artistically subjective, rather than everything fictitious becoming completely factual and true. Regardless of the inescapable negative criticisms attached to it, one must remember that Birth was one of the fathering films that now allows the many cinema goers of today to still be awed and impressed by the newest use of CGI and other fanciful technological advancements when visiting the cinema. Due to the inevitable ever-evolving shift in cinematic entertainment, perhaps many modern day film audiences would choose to pass on watching a civil war epic, however, regardless of what century we enter into, Birth still stands as one of the most powerful and influential film masterpieces ever created.

We all remember 2010’s black sheep to the superhero movie fraternity – Kick-Ass.  In a cinema populated with PG-13 Marvel adaptations, Matthew Vaughn gave us the comic book adaptation we all wanted; extreme ultra-violence punctuated with dialogue that would make a sailor blush.

Fast forward three years and the new edition is out, helmed this time by Jeff Wadlow.  Following on from the events of Kick-Ass, Kick-Ass 2 sees a world populated by homegrown heroes inspired by the title character (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) whilst he and Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) are fighting the lethal battles of American High School.  In the style of its predecessor, for no real reason Kick-Ass decides to get back in the game and fight crime, whilst Hit Girl completely checks out in the hope of becoming one of the Plastics from Mean Girls.

This time, however, Kick Ass teams up with an after school club of crime fighters led by Jim Carey’s Colonel Stars and Stripes that he found on Facebook.  Meanwhile, Red Mist, rebooted as nightmare to all print journalism, The Motherfucker (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is bent on absolute vengeance for the death of his father at the hands of bazooka-wielding Kick Ass in the previous film.

What follows is a movie that is not sequel to the original, but carbon copy; just with the action sequences scaled up by a metric-fuck-ton.  Whilst we’re teased by the potential of a great character arc in Hit Girl trying to make it in the real world, the dissolving of Kick-Ass’s family and friends around him as he fights for good, and The Motherfucker’s descent into potential crime lord apprenticeship scheme, it doesn’t deliver on its promises.

Instead, we’re treated to much the same run as before.  Sadly, it seems that Wadlow has taken notes from the Hangover team and just upped the jokes and scenes of the original right up to the line of the acceptable, and then took a leap past it that Greg Rutherford would have been proud of.  Despite the free-worded nature of this article, they are areas that I won’t even dare to cement in text.

Overall?  If you were a fan of the first Kick-Ass it’s worth a watch for the action and occasional jokes and nods to pop culture and comic book lore.  A fun romp in the spirit of the original, but don’t have too high expectations.

Kick-Ass 2 is in cinemas August 14th 2013.

Documentary guru Alex Gibney gives us an very direct insight to the tragic and infuriating world of Catholic priest abuse.

Often when reviewing I write with a fairly sarcastic tone, mostly to amuse me and in the hope that the two of you who read my ramblings might find it entertaining. With a film such as Mea Maxima Culpa, it would seem churlish. I’m sure I won’t be able to resist now and then so let’s see how it goes.

The documentary focuses on four men who attended St. John’s School for the Deaf as boys. Whilst there they were molested by the school’s head teacher who is also a priest. Discussing what happened to them and the steps they took to gain justice the film begins to unravel and display the mass cover ups that go on within the Catholic church to hide these criminals.

On first hearing about Mea Maxima Culpa I wondered about the need for another film investigating abuse in the Catholic church. Over the past two decades it seems we can’t go a handful of months without another horror story of young, vulnerable people being subjected to crimes that would satan weep. Many of these stories have been told to use through feature films, mostly investigative documentaries. It’s hard to disagree with their existence. It’s also hard to watch them. The prospect of seeing another film about priest paedophilia was not one I relished.

Fortunately Alex Gibney is a man who knows the right angles from which to approach a story, he has also brought us some of the most high profile documentary releases of the last ten years; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side and We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks. He is incredibly prolific for documentarian but you never feel he is short changing his subjects. With Mea Maxima Culpa he goes so far as to literally give a voice to the four men recounting their stories of abuse. With each man telling his life through sign language, their voices are provided by actors Chris Cooper, John Slattery, Ethan Hawke and Jamey Sheridan. Their line readings add some weight to the stories being conveyed, but it could be argued that essentially “dramatising” these mens words brings the film into borderline ‘docu-drama’. The first half of the film concentrates on the young men as they attempt to tell their neighbourhood about the priest who abused them. As it becomes apparent that they are hitting dead ends the film begins to focus more intently in the Vaticans systematic cover ups and under-the-rug sweeping of criminal priest. It’s here that the film changes from an devastating personal confessional to a political and sociological study of why pedophiles seem to be so prevalent in the cloth. Academics, theologians and journalists make up the majority of talking heads. All seem to be in agreement. Yes, abusing children is bad. These priests are bad. They should be prosecuted. Sick as it may sound I would have like to have seen some deranged souls attempt to defend the actions if only to see what a real cretin looks like.

Despite it being common knowledge that Pope Benedict XVI, whilst still going by the handle Cardinal Ratzinger, was the chief investigator/cover-up-man of alleged abuses within the church. Gibney seems to take delight in detailing the comfortable lives Ratzinger arranged for Priests. We also get to see a rare moment of anger as the future-Pope is blind-sided by a journalist.

The film’s figurative and emotional climax comes when two of the former students of St. John’s track down the Priest who abused them. Living in a lovely situated home in the country the men film themselves as they attempt to confront their former tormentor. The situation manages to dumbfound and infuriate. Which is main emotions you may take away from Mea Maxima Culpa. But after an hour and half of head shaking and fist clenching Gibney allows hope to creep in as we see how the men have progressed with their lives and continue their fight to seek justice against those who wronged them and so many others.

Hopefully some people who believe that this is not a major issue within the Catholic church will see this film and begin to have a good think about their views. There’s a good chance it could happen but also a good chance that this will be merely be preaching to converted. People who are angered by this subject and will continue to be angered until men who hold more power than they should decide to do something good with it and make the moral choices they should find so easy to make.

This is despair porn. And you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s one of the biggest sub-genres in British independent cinema. Thug violence, thug redemption, the loss of innocence, one person sitting alone in a big empty room, tears from bruised eyes; Tyrannosaur, Fishtank, This Is England. Now add Broken to the list.

Which isn’t to say Broken is bad. It’s good, the three examples I used before it are great, and I do recommend it. I just find it – both the film and the genre – a little exhausting after a while. I get it; they’re cheap to make, there’s no end of new (albeit horrible) stories of human misery out there, and the raw, unflinching material attracts consistently excellent actors, which more often than not makes them a gripping watch. I just wish that despair porn wasn’t synonymous with prestige, because while Broken has all its crying, punching and mental health problems in more or less the right places, the whole thing feels a little fuzzy.

Let’s start with the positives first though.

The performances are uniformly brilliant. Everyone involved grapples with the material to staggering effect, just cramming every scene with nuance, humanity, shades of warmth and colour. Tim Roth, Rory Kinnear, Cillian Murphy, Robert Emms all do great work, but the film belongs to its leading lady. Eloise Laurence is astonishingly good. On paper, it’s just another one of those roles, a coming-of-age tween, with a sparky attitude, type-1 diabetes and a quirky nickname – Skunk. Laurence is just so natural though, investing Skunk with such a rich life behind the eyes that we quickly look past the cliches. She becomes a living, breathing person and this is what makes Broken work. She’s our anchor, a mainstay of hope and innocence in an increasingly woeful tale.

The direction from Rufus Norris is assured as well. You don’t get a huge sense of his signature style from the film, but this allows for a series of well-composed, well-paced scenes, allowing his actors to carry the audience’s attention rather than obtrusive direction or editing.

Through his direction, and the script by Mark O’Rowe, we also find a nice vein of playfulness that runs through much of the film. Touches of witty editing, light moments from the script, or a quick burst of sunlight or colour from the camerawork, add teeny tiny sprinkles of levity throughout.

The negatives now. The film is almost farcically depressing. It starts as it means to go on with Rory Kinnear’s thuggish father of three beating the red out of a teenager with mental health problems. This establishes the threat of violence nicely, creating a palpable dread that lingers throughout, but the film doesn’t really let up from there and the cumulative effect of all the suffering becomes almost ludicrous. I won’t spoil any of it, because I do think it’s a good film worth seeing, but by the film’s closing moments, as woe after woe after woe piles up, it would have actually been more cheerful to watch cameraphone footage of a rabbit being kicked to death by my own dad.

The circumstances get so dire that what once was compelling and emotionally honest, became a touch contrived and callous. The cast sell the absolute hell out of it, and the characters’ redemption/damnation still struck home for that reason, but the film lost me a little in its unrestrained sadness, dampening the triumph/loss felt.

There are also slight structural problems. The film’s not really about much of anything. All the themes are there – fatherhood, community, perseverance, but they don’t develop into something the audience can take home. The plotting’s just a bit slapdash. Things just happen, one after another, in the life of Skunk. This isn’t terrible. They’re all engaging, well-acted things, but they don’t feel like they’re a whole story when the credits roll.

Some characters fulfil their arc by accident, rather than choice, some don’t get one. The film’s got a lot of life to it, but other than us caring deeply about Skunk and wanting her to generally do well, it’s quite tricky to know what the film wants us to feel. Sad, sure, but about anything in particular, or just sad because sometimes bad things happen?

Like I said, Broken is not bad, not anywhere approaching bad, but its filmmaking doesn’t quite match its incredible cast or its engaging subject matter, which, in a thickening crowd of like-minded competition, renders it a slightly missed opportunity, if a very worthy one.

In The House is many things; a dark comedy of obsession, an essay on the importance of story, a hilarious treatise on the state of contemporary art, a satire of the lurid voyeurism of the observant writer, a sly deconstruction – and subversion – of an audience’s expectations, even a writing aid of sorts. But what it isn’t, is easy to write about, not without spoilers of a kind. So much of the film’s excellence is in its execution, its transition from scene to scene, the way the stories within stories are constructed, tinkered with, developed, that to get the most out of it, you should go in knowing as little as possible. Seriously, it’s great. Go watch it (then come back… please..)

In The House (french title: Dans La Maison) is directed by Frances Ozon, whose previous work, Potiche, was last seen by the majority of english moviegoing audiences being given the increasingly unfunny ‘orange advert’ treatment (remember, the one where they did fake subtitles over a French movie that made all the characters look like they were talking about phones? F*** you, Orange). Its plot concerns the mentoring relationship between an ex-novelist literature teacher Germain, and his writing protege. His student, Claude (hauntingly played by Ernst Umhauer), has been writing about the family of a fellow student, the Raphas, infiltrating their home to sate his curiosity about what occurs behind the closed doors of a quiet suburban household – theirs is the house in the title. His writing skills excite his teacher who encourages Claude to embed himself deeper within the family, curiosity slowly turning sinister and voyeurism gradually turning to lustful obsession.

What follows is a somewhat self-aware examination of the complex morality inherent in the act of storytelling, not unlike meta-filmic works Adaptation or Stranger Than Fiction before it. The focus of the drama shifts between the subjects (the Raphas, observed by Claude), the writers (Claude, edited by Germain) and the readers (Germain and his wife Jeanne). As Germain instructs the young writer in various storytelling principles, the film changes, bending as Claude manipulates the family based on Germain’s teachings. As the film progresses into more surreal territory, Germain starts to appear like a ghost in the Raphas’ scenes, making edits on the fly.

You could be forgiven for thinking this sounds like pretentious, self-indulgent filmic navel-gazing, but Ozon is a far better filmmaker than that. A wicked sense of humour stitches all the scenes together, undercutting moments of seemingly-elitist sermonising with savage digs at embittered failed writers, contemporary art in general (scenes in Jeanne’s art gallery are a constant source of laughs) and even the manipulative nature of the film itself. At one point, Claude is attempting to woo/emotionally coerce one of the Raphas, as cheesy, hyper-romantic music starts to play in the film’s score.

Nor does the film avoid holding its characters up to judgement. The actions of Claude and Germain are justly viewed as abhorrent, despite their intentions to create worthy art. While the film proposes that a certain amount of predatory invasion in inherently linking to the act of winkling out the compelling stories hidden behind every closed door, it never shies away from such invasion’s consequences. Even the viewer is held to trial, their place in the audience making them somewhat implicit in the actions of Claude and Germain. After all, it is what we expect, what we demand, that drives their manipulations.

Again, if this serves to make the film sound inaccessible to anyone not majoring in English Lit, it would be doing the film a disservice. It’s a funny, tense, sexy and compelling film, bolstered by wonderful performances from its ensemble cast, in particular Fabrice Luchini as Germain, a pompous yet strangely lovable soul who obsession with the development of the Raphas’ story, slowly drives him to the dark side.

In its best moments, In The House is a fantastic viewing experience, the audience watching a movie twist and turn in the moment to match the rules and regulations of storytelling, like it’s been written and re-written as we watch, the boundaries of what is real and what is a fabrication blurring before our eyes. It can’t quite live up to its self-imposed standards, however, the film becoming slightly confused and a touch sentimental towards its closing moments, but its closing shot is a thing of beauty. A lingering look at a huge wall of windows, each of them containing a different life, a different story. We wish we were inside each one of them, dans la maision, then remind ourselves of the trespass that entails.