So here's the thing,
About seven years ago, filmmaking duo the Daniels released their first film, Swiss Army Man. And there was a lot that I really liked in the film - it was a fascinating exploration of friendship, loneliness, love, and regret, anchored by a fantastic central performance by Daniel Radcliffe. But there was a lot in the film that I genuinely hated - after all, Daniel Radcliffe was playing a corpse that farts all the time and has an erection that works as a compass. The almost non-stop juvenile fascination with toilet humour made the film feel as though it was made by young teenagers rather than two adult men. So while there was a lot of potential in that film, if you had told me that the second film from that duo would be frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar, I think my brain might have broken at that idea.
[Thoughts on Everything Everywhere All At Once, and all nine other Best Picture nominees - The Fabelmans, The Banshees of Inisherin, Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, Elvis, Triangle of Sadness, Tár, Women Talking, and All Quiet on the Western Front - after the jump]
When I saw Everything Everywhere All At Once for the first time, at an advance preview a good three weeks before it came out, I had no expectations. I had seen the trailer and thought it looked interesting, but I definitely was not expecting to see one of the best films of the year. Ultimately I walked out of that screening frustrated because I wanted to tell people to see the film, but at the same time it was going to be a full three weeks before anyone else could see it. Yet in my excitement and enthusiasm for just how brilliant the film was, I never would have expected it to be the frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar. After all, there's no way a film this bonkers, this wild, this unrestrained would ever even get a look in.
The film stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn, a Chinese immigrant running a failing laundromat with her husband Waymond (the triumphant return of 80s child star Ke Huy Quan) who is thinking about seeking a divorce. Their daughter Joy is a lesbian, whose sexuality Evelyn is trying to hide from her elderly father. One day, during a meeting with the IRS about their tax audit, Waymond is briefly taken over by a version of Waymond from a parallel universe, who tells Evelyn that there is a great evil coming to destroy the multiverse but that he can teach her how to tap into the infinite skills of the infinite number of Evelyns that exist across the infinite multiverse - Evelyns whose lives have gone in wildly different directions because they made different choices. And when they come under attack from the great evil, which turns out to have a very personal connection to her, Evelyn has to learn to use the skills of the infinite Evelyns to fight to save all of existence.
So it's an over-the-top multiverse-hopping science-fiction martial-arts family-drama with an absurdist comedic bent. And yet despite everything that's going on, the film never loses track of the real human emotional core that lies at the centre of the story. We've seen a lot of multiverse stories lately, particularly thanks to the major comic book movie franchises, but this is really the only film that feels like it's using the concept of a multiverse as a way of exploring richer thematic concepts about the human experience. We all live with the pain and uncertainty of the paths not taken - what would my life be like if I had asked that person out? if I had broken up with my partner? if I had taken that job? if I had avoided that accident? In this film, Evelyn has made all the wrong choices - she is the greatest failure of every Evelyn throughout the multiverse - and yet despite that, even now she has the potential to achieve incredible things. At the same time, the potential created by the concept of “the paths not taken” can be overwhelming, raising uncertainty about the point of existence - that's the space that the film’s antagonist falls into, as they seek to destroy all of life in every parallel universe out of a sense of overwhelming nihilism, where their understanding of their miniscule place even just within their universe, let alone the multiverse, leaves them feeling that there is no purpose to existence. And maybe there is nothing original about a film that ultimately ends with the message that existence is its own purpose, that love and connection and acceptance are in and of themselves a reason for being here, but the way this film explores these ideas is just so overpowering and invigorating that it becomes a wonder to experience.
Remembering my dislike for the juvenile humour of Swiss Army Man, I was wary when I realised the Daniels had also made this film. And this film still has moments where the Daniels reveal their love of the bawdiest humour - there is a moment where someone is beaten to death with a giant rubber penis just flopping around everywhere, or another moment where two men fight to beat the other to ram a massive butt plug up their arse. (Again, this is a film the Academy nominated for Best Picture! It's the frontrunner!) But whereas in that earlier film it seems like that was the only joke they knew how to make, here these are just small moments sprinkled into the tapestry of a film trying to portray something of the entirety of all experience. It also helps that the Daniels have realised that they can be funny when they're not relying on toilet humour as a crutch, and they display real talent for finding humour and pathos in equal measure in almost unimaginable situations - after all, one of the funniest and most moving scenes in the film is a conversation between two rocks that can't speak, while another now iconic scene involving a universe where humans have unusual appendages is initially hilarious but becomes a weirdly emotional moment.
The film is also extremely passionate about cinema, and I love how often the film would just drop in a reference to a new film genre, sometimes just for a split second, other times for an extended sequence. The film’s love for martial arts films is obvious, especially the films of Jackie Chan (it comes as no surprise that the film was originally written for Chan, before the lead role was gender-flipped for Yeoh). There is an extended riff on Pixar films, specifically the film Ratatouille, even featuring Randy Newman singing a song. Then there are the almost uncountable scenes where we glimpse the vast array of alternate universes, each drawing clear inspiration from one film or film style or another - one moment we're in a wuxia film; the next we're in an absurd recreation of 2001. But to me as a film fan, the biggest delight came in the recurring scenes taking place in the universe where Evelyn left Waymond in their youth and became a major movie star. As Evelyn and Waymond are reunited decades after their separation, I was excited to realise that they were doing Wong Kar Wai, specifically his masterwork In the Mood for Love. That film's themes of regret and longing are perfectly paired for these people who have outwardly achieved incredible success and yet are haunted by a sense of pain and emptiness.
But to be clear, the film is not simply relying on film references as a cheat, as a way of eliciting easy audience connection. In Swiss Army Man, the Daniels had the characters bond over a discussion about Jurassic Park - because in our world, movies and television are the common cultural stories that give us a framework through which we process our existence. Similarly here, with a story that pulls through us through so many worlds, cinema not only becomes our way for us to quickly identify where we are in the multiverse, but it also becomes a way that Evelyn can connect to and process her experiences.
Now, is the film too long? Absolutely - it's just shy of 2 hours 20 minutes, and I really was feeling those last 20 minutes - there is so much in the film that you start feeling a sense of overload. But at the same time, the film promises to be about everything and everywhere, and it's simply not possible in a world of linear time to cover those all at once. And there is such ambition and inventiveness and brilliance in the film that I genuinely can't imagine what you could cut from the film without damaging the whole. And I've seen too many films that are too long without giving me anything to engage with, so I will forgive this film for giving me so much that it just exhausted me.
At this time, it's looking inevitable that the film will win the Best Picture Oscar. Not only does it have the highest number of nominations this year (always a promising sign) but in the past few weeks the film took the main award at all four major guilds (Producers Guild, Directors Guild, Screen Actors Guild, and Writers Guild) - and the four previous films to achieve this all won the big award. And yet, despite this promising indication, I simply can't let myself believe that this film could ever win Best Picture. How does an Academy that only last year gave the prize to CODA, a film as conventional and middlebrow as you can imagine, turn around and one year later award something is chaotic and inventive and new as this film? I hope they do, but right now it just doesn't seem possible.
A film that would seem to be a more normal winner would be something like The Fabelmans. When it was announced that Steven Spielberg's next film would be a semi-autobiographical film based on his own youth, we all knew a big part of the film would be about his parents’ divorce, which was an absolutely foundational event for the young Spielberg and has already made its way into his work in films like ET. And sure enough it is. The film follows Sammy Fabelman, a young boy who adores his pianist mother and is somewhat distanced from his engineer father. As he grows, he discovers a passion for filmmaking, mounting elaborate productions with the local kids, all while becoming the victim of anti-Semitic bullying. Meanwhile, his mother starts to form an intense emotional bond with her husband's best friend and work colleague.
I did find myself pondering just how much of this film is truly fictionalised and how much is just Spielberg showing us what happened but giving the main character different name. After all, the opening sequence has the young Fabelman terrified by the train crash in The Greatest Show on Earth, trying to recreate the crash with his train set, before ultimately trying to capture a crash of his model trains on film as a way of processing his feelings - that's an exact recreation of a story he's told many times. Similarly the final scene of the film (in which he has the opportunity to meet the greatest film director ever - played by another great director - and is given some important advice) is recreated in every detail from the story as often told by Spielberg - down to the lipstick kisses and the almost incongruous involvement by someone in the production of Hogan's Heroes. The actors all look like the real people they are portraying, albeit better looking Hollywood versions. They recreated his childhood home from the blueprints. There's a fantastic sequence that essentially recreates the making of one of Spielberg's teenage films, a war epic called Escape to Nowhere. And the scenes of the young filmmaker are absolutely fascinating, as you get a glimpse into how his mind works to achieve seemingly impossible effects for no budget - poking holes in the film to achieve a gunshot effect, or making mini-seesaws to propel clouds of dirt into the air to create grenade explosions.
The issue I have with the film is that, despite supposedly being a fictionalised story, the movie almost needed more fictionalisation. He may have brought in the talents of Tony Kushner to write the script and give some structure to the work, but Spielberg is simply too close to the story to be able to make his own life work as a movie - there are simply too many scenes that feel like distractions but that were included simply because "the time my mother brought home a monkey" was a particularly memorable moment for the young Spielberg, rather than being a scene that actually has a place in the film. And so at times the film almost seemed unsure of its direction, because there were all these constant distractions and diversions that made it seem as though the film wasn’t entirely certain what it was about. For the most part, I think the film is about a person discovering his passion for telling stories through cinema - that's certainly where the film starts and ends. But there are long stretches of the film where that seems almost forgotten, in favour of other subplots. There are points where I started to wonder if the film was actually supposed to be about his parents’ divorce, but that ultimately resolves itself much too early to be the focus of the film. Similarly, there's the long stretch where we explore his experiences being bullied in high school or being with his first girlfriend, which left me wondering where this film was even going. Now, it's not that these subplots are completely separated from the story of Sammy's love of movies - in fact both of these plots feature fantastic and pivotal scenes illustrating the power of cinema. In one case, Sammy realises his home movies have inadvertently captured evidence of his mother's emotional affair; brief moments that might have passed unnoticed but that are inescapable when examined repeatedly. In the other case, Sammy is able to use his cinematic talents when making a film of a school day at the beach to cause the bullies to see themselves through someone else's eyes. These are both wonderful moments that really do capture something of the power of cinema, the way they can capture and frame reality or construct a new reality, and how this art form played a vital role in the young Spielberg's life. But ultimately these are different subplots that feel like they have been crammed together with insufficient efforts to shape a cohesive whole.
This is not to say that the film is not entertaining. We all know that Spielberg is a master filmmaker, and here, making a film that he's talked about making for decades, it almost feels as though he's spent so long making the movie in his mind that it almost emerged fully-formed. And while he's often criticised as a director who relies too much on emotional manipulation, it feels as though the emotional connection here is perfectly calibrated to the content of the film - moving without trying too hard to elicit the tears. The main thing is that it doesn't feel self-indulgent - I do think that you could watch this film not knowing how closely it connects to Spielberg's own life and be thoroughly entertained. But when you know that backstory, it is fascinating to witness these formative experiences that led to the creation of one of our great cinematic legends. And you can see how important it was to him to have the ability to escape into filmmaking - in one of my favourite moments, having just received particularly upsetting news, Sammy escapes to his room, where he just sits with the clack-clack-clack of the film camera running to provide him with the comfort he needs.
The Fabelmans is a sweet and tender little movie, a reflection on a life long gone, lovingly looking back with sadness. I may have had issues with the film's unclear focus, but regardless the film is a treasure to be cherished.
One of the most exciting films to be nominated this year is The Banshees of Inisherin, which reunites Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson with their In Bruges director Martin McDonagh. Farrell stars as Pádraic, a resident on the small Irish Island of Inisherin. Every day, he meets up with his best friend Colm (played by Gleeson) to go to the pub and drink and talk for a few hours. But one day Colm announces he just doesn't want to be friends with Pádraic anymore; he's decided he doesn't like Pádraic because the man is boring, and he just wants to have nothing to do with him. Pádraic can't cope with the idea, and thinks he can just force Colm to accept him as a friend, which leads Colm to take increasingly extreme measures to demonstrate just how serious he is about ending their friendship.
So I think I was rather lucky when I went to see Banshees. It was an advance screening a number of weeks before the film had its full release, and while I was anticipating the film due to the highly positive response from overseas, I hadn't had a chance to see any of the promotional material for the film. I was therefore horrified when I later saw the poster and trailer that proclaimed the film was "Shudderingly funny" and that made the film look like a hilarious black comedy. The film is certainly funny - Mark Kermode has a "six laugh test" for comedies, and I certainly laughed out loud six times in the film - but never in a million years would I describe it as a comedy. It's a sad, melancholy drama that happens to have the occasional moment of humour to lighten what could otherwise be a tough movie to watch.
Looking at a lot of the commentary around this film, it is astonishing how much thematic richness people are able to draw from the film. It almost seems as though every commentator saw a completely different film with completely different thematic concerns from each other. To me, I found the film most intriguing as an exploration about the relationship between men and our inability and reluctance to express and deal with our feelings. Colm is clearly trying to deal with serious depression, or more - at one point the priest even asks how he's coping with the "despair". He's basically going through an existential crisis, pained at the knowledge that when his time comes to pass away, he will be leaving no mark on the world. It's that knowledge that drives him to reject Pádraic in order to spend his time writing music that will live on after him. But even though that's his claimed justification, it's very clear that he is dealing with much more than just wanting time to compose his music - after all, as the film progresses, his actions prove actively obstructive to his ability to create the music that he sees as his legacy. But that's because that's not really the solution to the depression he's dealing with; his musical outlet is just the way he justifies his actions to himself and that allow him to completely ignore the pain that he's not dealing with. Perhaps if he could find the words to say that he was suffering when faced with the futility of existence, then perhaps it might have been possible for him to find some true resolution. But instead, he just carries on hurting those around him, and in turn being hurt.
But the other thing I found fascinating about the film was the turn that Pádraic takes. There's this one thing that is repeatedly stated about Pádraic - he's nice, he's so nice, he's dull but he is nice. We first see him walking down the path, a beatific smile on his face, the nicest man in all of Ireland. It's almost a surprise when, later in the film, someone actually tells Pádraic that he's not nice. But that's the point - by that point in the film, we've seen some of the direction of travel he’s on, we've seen Pádraic do some bad things, with more terrible things coming, and you realise that it's true that Pádraic is not nice. I think the film is making the point that niceness is not something to be aspired to - it's not a real characteristic of a person. It's easy to be nice when everything is going well, when you're liked by everyone, and you can just sit back and let things stay as they are. The challenge comes when things don't work out in your favour, and you can't rely on niceness to avoid dealing with the situation. Niceness isn't something you just are, but what you do, and it's not niceness that you should aspire to, but goodness. And so much of the devastation of this film comes because "nice" Pádraic doesn't know how to respond when people aren't nice back.
The performances in the film are just an utter delight. Colin Farrell plays Pádraic as someone who is exceptionally sweet but who is nevertheless somewhat dim and oblivious - someone who is driven by a constant need to avoid feeling uncomfortable. You get the sense that Colm has probably been trying to let Pádraic know how he's been feeling for a while, but every time he tries to find a way to bring the subject up, Pádraic starts feeling uncomfortable and redirects the conversation back to whatever he thinks of, even if it's just discussing his little pony’s shite, just to avoid discomfort. Brendan Gleeson as Colm is a fascinating figure to watch - he genuinely feels like someone struggling with an overwhelming burden, and saddened by the fact that he feels it necessary for him to take these actions. Even in those moments where there should be joy – say, gathering together at the pub to play music - there's never any real sense of enjoyment or pleasure. To the contrary, there's a disturbing determination in the character - when he does make his threat to try to force Pádraic to leave him alone, part of the reason why the threat is so convincing is the fact that there is always this tension of potential violence under the surface of the character. Kerry Condon, as Pádraic's sister, felt like a real discovery - I'd never noted her before, but here she really draws the attention. It's a nicely sympathetic performance of someone who is going through very much a similar sense of malaise as Colm - she sees her life slipping away on this island, but she has different options to address that malaise then Colm has. And then there's Barry Keoghan, as the kind-hearted and tragic idiot who has had all of his dreams and hopes beaten out of him until he's barely holding on – it’s a small but memorable role, and he has a beautiful scene with Kerry Condon which might be the best scene of the year.
The Banshees of Inisherin is certainly one of my favourite films of this year, and far and away the best film Martin McDonagh has made. It is a powerful, beautiful, moving film that takes wild and unpredictable turns in direction while never been afraid of shocking the audience. At the same time, it's a rich and deep work that provokes a great deal of self-reflection. I loved this film.
There have been reasonably successful movies released in the post-Covid world, but still, there was a widespread fear that audiences might never return to cinemas. Top Gun: Maverick was the film that marked the first real return of audiences to cinema, flocking to see a film that they had to experience on the big screen. Now, I am not a fan of the original Top Gun. I think it's very much a film that you needed to see at the time, back in the 80s, while I only saw it for the first time about 10 years ago. And although that was a cinema screening, which is absolutely the best way to see the film - despite the obvious problems they encountered at the time trying to film these impossibly fast jets with the limited film technology they had available at the time, it's still a thrill in an era of CG action to see obviously real planes involved in a major set piece - outside of the flying sequences the film just doesn't work, with an awkward structure and bad script held together by the charisma of Tom Cruise.
Which was why I was surprised by just how much I like the legacy sequel Top Gun: Maverick. But I think it's an interesting case where the film is possibly advantaged by the fact that the earlier film doesn't work.
To explain what I mean, let's take a detour to one of the highest-profile legacy sequels - Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Like most legacy sequels, The Force Awakens works to borrow as much as possible from the original film so that it can echo what we love about that film. But the problem is, the original Star Wars is a well-constructed work, and so the mix and match of elements in the sequel leaves certain pieces out on their own. For instance, the map that BB-8 is carrying is clearly intended to evoke the plans that R2-D2 carried, but whereas Artoo's plans were a vital element to destroying the Death Star and the film's resolution, the map that BB-8 is carrying is almost immediately forgotten about and only ever becomes relevant after the climax of the film, once the core conflict is resolved. It feels as though they felt they needed to hide information in a droid, because that's what happened in the first film, but they simply couldn't make it relevant to the main conflict of the film, so it just becomes an extra piece of the jigsaw that's largely irrelevant.
Now, in the case of Top Gun, the original film simply isn't that great, but it is filled with a lot of truly iconic moments - the opening shots of the jets taking off and landing on the aircraft carrier, the shirtless beach volleyball game, Tom Cruise riding his motorbike, the significant death scene, the intensity of the climactic battle, "Great Balls of Fire", or the song "Danger Zone". Add to that the concept of a school to train the most elite of fighter pilots, and the somewhat peripheral and unnecessary romance subplot, and you've basically described both the original film and Top Gun: Maverick.
Except that in this film, it's just done so much better. If something worked well in the original film - you're never going to get a better song than "Danger Zone" - they don't try. But where something really didn't work in the original film, they're able to rework the moment into something that holds together much more - so the climactic battle sequence, which really does come out of nowhere in the original film, instead becomes the focus of the film, the mission that the entire team has been training to prepare for. At other points, they're able to find new spins on iconic moments so that they don't feel solely like retreads - the tragic death of a friend becomes a moment where Maverick loses his sole defender; the macho posturing of the beach volleyball scene becomes a team building exercise game of beach football. Even the romance subpart, which definitely remains the most unnecessary element in the film, is improved by the acting (Kelly McGillis was fine, but Jennifer Connelly is a massive upgrade), and by the quality of the writing, which gives the love interest character much more of a spark, as well as a real sense of long-standing history between the characters that the film does well playing with. And the big thing is that the film knows it's not fooling you, it knows that you know that there is little difference between beach football and beach volleyball, but it doesn't matter because the quality of the film is so high and it knows we are enjoying this experience as a remix of the original.
The other big consideration about the film is the level of practicality involved in making it. We all know how Tom Cruise has increasingly become an advocate for doing things for real is far is possible - most notably in the Mission: Impossible films, but also in pretty much every other film is made lately. And so when it was announced that he would be making a Top Gun sequel, it was inevitable that the actors would find themselves filming while flying in real jets, experiencing what it is genuinely like to be executing these complex manoeuvres at an insane speed. And that devotion to capturing something real makes the movie so much more effective - you can see in the actors’ faces how much they are affected by the G-forces, or by being thrown around as the jet takes repeated rapid turns. You feel the urgency of the flight, because it's printed on the faces of the actors in ways that simply cannot be performed, can only be lived. And that sense of reality makes the movie so much more effective than in most other action blockbusters. If I'm watching a Fast and Furious movie and they manage to make a car perform some incredible feat, I just feel disconnected from that because I never believe that there's a real car there, and I certainly do not believe that Vin Diesel is behind the wheel of that car, because it's all just a mess of CGI. But this film, this I believed, because at some level those actors really were there flying through those valleys, making those turns.
Which brings us to the interesting question about its nomination as Best Picture? Is Top Gun: Maverick really one of the 10 best movies of the past-year. No, of course not, it's an absurd thing to even try to suggest. And yet, I'm really okay with its nomination for the big award. So much of big budget cinema these days is built out of exploiting a franchise, of finding some iconic IP that you can use to make your big hit. And all too often it winds up feeling soulless and empty - witness the Jurassic World trilogy for a start - so it's exciting when you watch one of these films and you can feel the genuine passion and focus on making a truly brilliant commercial film. This is not a cynical film; this is a film that feels as though it was born out of a genuine excitement to make something that people will embrace and genuinely love. And people do love the film - it's a fantastic film. So when you get a film that is a damn near perfect example of the film that it is trying to be, and it does this without giving in to the cynicism of modern blockbusters, then that is something that is worth celebrating.
And if there was any doubt after the success of Top Gun: Maverick, then Avatar: The Way of Water proved that people really will turn up if you give them something to come to.
My dislike of the original Avatar was well and truly expressed at the time. The film is a technical marvel and has fantastic action sequences, but is pulled down by seriously flawed storytelling that seemingly never truly engages with the experiences of the characters. But I was willing to chalk that up to a misstep from James Cameron and was still excited to see his next project. Until he announced that he was planning to make four Avatar sequels. In fact, from memory, I believe Cameron said that he would be able to tell all the stories he wanted to tell through the world of Pandora. And that was seriously depressing to me. Cameron is a cinematic master, a genius at constructing pure action, and every release from him is an important event. The prospect of him getting trapped making endless Avatar sequels just sounded like a major waste of his talent.
Which was why I was shocked to realise that I really liked Avatar: The Way of Water. I've seen the film four times, and even now want to try to squeeze in a fifth screening before it leaves cinemas. The film finds Jake Sully, permanently living in his Na’vi avatar body after events of the first film, raising a family with his wife Neytiri when the humans return to the moon world of Pandora. When it becomes clear that Jake's continuing presence is a threat to the forest they love by drawing the humans to them, Jake and his family leave their home to hide out with a tribe of water people and learn their ways.
I think part of the reason the film works for me is the fact that it is a sequel. If you look at my criticisms of the first film, most of my issues revolve around the setup to the film and the world of Pandora - the fact that they needed our main character to both be paralysed and have a dead identical twin brother to make the story work points to a level of contrivance that is a problem. But making a sequel allows Cameron to skip over a lot of the plotty world-building aspects of the first film and get straight on to the stuff that he's really good at. So we get to avoid the largely exposition-heavy first act, and instead get a first act that is filled with multiple thrilling sequences - the train attack, or the rescuing of the children.
The film does slow down in its second act as Jake and the family join the water clan, and we get to encounter the marvels of the underwater world of Pandora. And here also I think the sequel easily exceeds the original. I never liked the design of the Pandora forests - the fluorescent Day-Glo look only ever seemed garish and ugly, and spending such an extended time in that place never appealed to me. But here, there's a natural softening of colour and calming beautifying that comes with the soft blue wash of water that just makes our time exploring this new environment so much more appealing. So when the film slows down to spend time in this underwater world, we get to just exist in a place that I simply enjoyed more, and I get to find beauty in all of these creatures and the way they move in this space. And there's something calming and peaceful about existing in the aquatic environment that is simply appealing. It's here that James Cameron's earnestness takes full control of the film - the man who made The Abyss and Titanic, and who was the first person to descend solo to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, feels fully in his element, and his love for the water and the incredible creatures that live here, even in this artificial world, are fully on display. Plus there's more of a sense of connection between the characters and the creatures in the sequel. In the original film, for all the impression the film gave about the Na’vi connection to nature, one of the film's major action beats involves Jake trying to catch and forcibly imprint on to the wildlife. While the sequel has equivalent scenes, those moments are more about the characters learning to control themselves and work with the creatures, rather than forcing their will onto the creatures. Plus, it's at this point where we get probably the most emotionally resonant plot in the film - the friendship between Jake's son Lo'ak and Payakan, a whale-like Tulkun, formed as the two bond over their shared status as outcasts from their families.
That bond, and the tragedy that led to Payakan's exile, leads into the films third act, and from that point it's just a masterful execution of action cinema. First comes the "whaling" sequence, where we ride with the villains of the film as they attack a pod of creatures to kill a mother Tulkun and extract a valuable substance from her brain. It's a thrilling sequence, exhilarating in the way it hits the pleasure centre of watching a team of people execute a complex task with pure efficiency, while simultaneously horrifying to watch the abuse of nature on display. But that's the first beat in what essentially becomes a 45-minute action sequence that barely pauses, with Cameron drawing from throughout his back catalogue to compile a greatest hits action scene that completely enthralled. In a lesser film, such an extended sequence with little or no break would become wearying and tiring, but Cameron is a master of action pacing, able to build in ebbs and flows so that the audience can find space to breathe without compromising the urgency of the action. It truly is a marvel to watch.
If the main failing of the first film was its clunky screenwriting by James Cameron working alone, then we see an instant improvement here with the inclusion of other writers. Cameron apparently brought in what is in effect a writer's room to develop the stories of the sequels, and then tasked particular individuals within the team to co-write the scripts with him. The end result is a film that feels lighter on its feet, less leaden, despite its length. The film even finds time for moments of genuine humour - it's a small moment, but dammit if the video of the marine saying "Oorah" doesn't make me laugh every time. And sure, it could be argued that as a waste of time for the brothers to rescue the sisters only for the sisters to immediately be captured again, but it's worth just for daughter Tuk's exasperation at being captured again. These people feel like actual characters with personality, who you enjoy spending time with.
Being the first of four sequels, the film also has a lot of set up to prepare for the remaining films, which it mostly does a serviceable job in achieving. The reintroduction of Colonel Quaritch, the antagonist killed in the first film but reborn here in a Na’vi body, brings with him a nice story of a man being in conflict with his existence and trying to relate with his son, even as his story is clearly one step in a larger overarching storyline - I'm assuming that by the final film we'll see Quaritch come to accept life as a Na’vi just as much as Jake has, but that’s just speculation. Similarly, the film sets up a mystery around Kiri, Jake's adopted daughter with a strange connection to the Mother Earth-style deity of the planet - this is perhaps less elegantly set up, with scenes that have feel like they have little significance for the story of this film. But it’s an intriguing setup and I'm interested to see where it goes.
This also has to be said: the technical work on the CGI is genuinely seamless, and shows a real development in the state-of-the-art, even beyond the miraculous work of the first film. I did see a re-release of the first film a few months before the sequel came out, and all through the film I was in awe at just how much those effects hold up - and then mid-credits they showed a preview of the scene where Lo'ak first meets Payakan, and instantly the leap in technology over the past 13 years was clearly visible. There is not a moment where you are even aware of the fact that you're looking at a bunch of pixels on a screen, because the film just feels real. And I think that's part of the reason why the film has such staying power - it's simply feels like a magic trick, as though we are seeing something impossible on-screen, and it draws us back because we need to understand it. A few weeks ago, I went to a screening of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and it really drove home just how much Avatar is operating at a technical level far above where almost any other film is operating. Like Avatar, Ant-Man also takes place in a world which is largely created is a digital effect, but there was never any point in that film where I believed anything that I was watching. This is not at all a criticism of the effects artists who worked on Ant-Man, but it goes to show the impact that taking the time and money to really develop and perfect the creation of the world of the film. I was completely transported by one film; I merely saw the other. I prefer the first experience.
I don't know that I would ever have predicted that Baz Luhrmann would make a biopic about Elvis Presley, but it's one of those ideas that, once it happens, just seems inevitable. So much of Luhrmann's work is defined by music, so a film about the “King of Rock and Roll” makes complete sense, while Baz's often chaotic visual style is perfect for a figure whose most iconic image involves a variety of garish sequined jumpsuits. If there was any doubt that Elvis was a film from Baz Luhrmann, those doubts would have been dispelled two minutes into the film when a model of the Starship Enterprise (yes, that one!) powered up and took off (yes, really!). From that point on, we were just there for the ride.
As with any film from Baz Luhrmann, there is a lot that works really well and some things set just do not succeed. Unfortunately in this case, the key thing that does not work is one of the main characters. So much has already been said about Tom Hanks' bizarre performance as Elvis's manager, Colonel Tom Parker - in fact the commentary started as soon as the film's trailer released. I was willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt - I've seen performances that seem terrible when viewed as individual scenes or edited into trailers but that work well in the context of the whole film - but watching the film still left me baffled by the choice to give Hanks that accent. The Colonel is inevitably a major role, he's the second lead of the film, the entire film is told from his perspective, and yet every time he speaks I just find myself distanced as I wonder what on earth is going on. I could have forgiven the choice to give the character such an over-the-top accent if that was how the real man spoke, but then you see videos of the Colonel speaking and he sounds perfectly normal, without a hint of the impossible-to-describe melange of sounds that Hanks gives us, and it becomes frustrating. Tom Hanks is a great actor, and Colonel Tom Parker has the potential to be a wonderfully villainous role, so it's frustrating when the performance is saddled with this absurdly distracting element.
And speaking of the Colonel, there's another puzzling choice. As with many Luhrmann films, the story is presented to us by a narrator reflecting on their experiences. Except here, the narrator is the Colonel, the villain of the story, seemingly trying to justify himself and explain to us why he is not the criminal that history has chosen to see him as. Except that no one wants to see a story where the Colonel is the benevolent figure of good that the character would try to present himself as - his exploitation of Elvis is too well documented for that to work - so instead you get this curious situation where he's the narrator, but the story as presented is not the story he would tell. No-one trying to present themselves as a good person would, for instance, ever tell a story where he insists that doctors get a collapsed near-death Elvis onto his feet and on stage to perform. So I was puzzled by the framing device, because the perspective being illustrated was not that of the person trying to tell the story.
Fortunately, the film overcomes its disastrous approach to the Colonel by having an absolutely perfect Elvis. I was not previously familiar with Austin Butler, who apparently came to prominence on the Disney Channel. Here he firmly establishes himself as a talented adult actor. He has all the charisma and the swagger to convince as one of the great music stars, and he even has that iconic voice down perfectly. (Apparently he does much of his own singing, only relying on existing recordings for the scenes later in life when Elvis's voice had been too damaged by drugs to imitate.) But he never feels like he's giving an imitation; instead he brings a great deal of soulfulness and depth to his performance. I found him an intriguing figure, and I'm certainly interested to see where his career leads him.
Baz Luhrmann's typically flashy filmmaking style is fully on display here - at his most heightened, he's positively hallucinogenic, or making use of 70s style split screen effects, or using faux-comic book panels to tell the characters backstory. But even at his most sedate, there's a nervous anxiety and excitement to the filmmaking that I found invigorating. The film feels as though it is aware that something important is happening, and it's responding in kind. And then, when Elvis performs, the film just explodes - and that's when it becomes clear why you need someone like Baz Luhrmann to make this film. We live in a world where songs like "WAP" are major hits, where a massive show like Game of Thrones can feature extended scenes of sex and nudity, and where explicit pornography is instantly accessible to us on our phones wherever we go. In this world, the notion of someone like "Elvis the Pelvis" being seen as scandalous simply because he shakes his hips seems absurd. But Luhrmann knows how to film those scenes and have them edited to transport us back to that time and make us feel just how radical and dangerous this all felt for those observing. Suddenly we find ourselves experiencing those moments as though this is the first time we've seen anyone do anything quite as sexual as shaking his hips - the film itself gasps at the sight. And that is why Baz Luhrmann is the right person to make this film - anyone can make a film that tells his story, but it takes exceptional talent to wipe away 70 years of societal movement and make us feel the true shock and impact Elvis had.
I was also intrigued by the use of music in the film. Baz Luhrmann doesn't just rely on the original Elvis recordings or on Austin Butler's performance for his music; instead, much like his use of modern songs in The Great Gatsby, he makes significant use of anachronistic remixes or covers of Elvis songs by current artists to fill his film. It seems to almost be a statement of purpose, both in bringing a new and refreshed energy to these songs, but also acknowledging the importance of Elvis in the line of essential music figures whose work continues to inspire major modern artists.
The film is very much a celebratory biopic. It acknowledges some of Elvis's flaws - the womanising, the drug use - but avoids dwelling on them as much as possible, while at other times it just elides over other issues pretending not to notice (just how old was Priscilla?). Plus there's the usual oversimplification that often happens in biopics, where true events are simplified to such a degree that they start to ring false - perhaps Elvis's comeback special was conceived as a Christmas special, but how is it possible for the Colonel to not know until the performance that Elvis will not be wearing a jumper and singing about "Santy Claus"? But ultimately the point of the film is to bring a great artist to the attention of an audience that may have forgotten him, and remind those viewers that you have to pay attention to Elvis. And if this film gets people listening to his work, then that's a good thing.
(One last thing: it's a very minor point, barely worth mentioning, but something that really excited the film fan in me was the acknowledgement of one of the great “What If”s of movie history. Elvis' movie career is largely seen as a joke today, and with good reason - he spent a decade turning out dozens of largely forgettable/bad films. Yet when you watch him in something like King Creole, you can see that he has some real acting talent, but he never really got the projects that would allow him to display his ability. Which is why I've always been intrigued by the fact that Elvis was originally offered the Kris Kristofferson role in the Streisand version of A Star Is Born, and he wanted to do it, but the Colonel refused to let him make that film. Now, the Streisand Star Is Born is certainly the least of the Stars, but there's still a lot of meat in the role for a talented actor to explore. So I was excited that the film takes a moment to acknowledge that this was something that was at one point going to happen. It seems odd for a film to devote any screen time to something that ultimately never eventuated, but as someone who wishes he lived in a world where that film existed, it was nice to see.)
I saw one of the nominated films, Triangle of Sadness, at the film festival last year, and I don't have much more to say beyond my comments at the time. The one thing I will emphasise is this: a lot of people have been suggesting that the film is solely about how terrible rich people are. Even Mark Kermode, who I would usually hope to bring a more thoughtful perspective, sees the film in this very clear-cut way. But I think the film is making a slightly more nuanced argument. I think it's significant that the couple at the centre of the film have wealth, but are not rich, and are certainly not the super-rich that make up the rest of the passengers on the yacht. But once they're on the yacht, one of the first things we see the man do is use his power as a passenger to have someone fired. And then in the third act, when the story takes a turn and the power dynamics flip, we see someone who was on the bottom rung eagerly exploiting their newfound position of power and doing everything they can to keep that position. The problem isn't "the rich"; the problem is "people exploiting their power" - for a lot of people, if you give them some level of power, they'll start exploiting that power. It's just that the rich are the people whose power is most visible, and whose efforts to take advantage of their power is therefore most clearly able to be seen.
And that notion of a person exploiting their power is fully
on display in Tár, the new film from Todd Field, with Cate Blanchett playing top
conductor Lydia Tár, the chief conductor of the celebrated Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the first female to have that role. She's a performer and composer of great
acclaim. Also, although she would never see herself as this, she is a predator
- she looks for attractive young women seeking opportunities in her field, and
she uses her position to hopefully use these girls to satisfy her needs. Up
until this point, her misdeeds have been largely overlooked or covered over,
but as Tár is about to achieve a major career milestone, and as she sets her
eyes on a young new cellist, a variety of scandals start to be revealed and the
resulting crises snowball.
Now, first, I should emphasise that this is a fictional story. Lydia Tár is not a person who exists. I say this because there is an alarming number of people online who, for no readily apparent reason, seem to think that this is a true story. Even leaving the cinema after my screening, I overheard two women debating between themselves just how much of the film actually happened. I have no idea where this perception of the film as a true story came from - the film makes no claims to be anything other than fiction - and yet for some reason this is just a lingering question around the film that should be addressed. And now that I've said that,...
I found it an interesting choice to make a film that is so focused on an abusive female. There has obviously been a huge amount of attention lately on the Me Too movement, with women standing up and talking about the abuse they have experienced from men. And that is a good thing - it is right that the Harvey Weinsteins and Bill Cosbys and Kevin Spaceys of this world have their crimes exposed. But one thing that you often hear said is that rape is not about sex, but about power - it's about being in a position where you can take something from someone that you want. And that's why I think it's interesting that Lydia is a female who is a predator. If you make a film about another man taking advantage of young women, then you risk the focus being placed on the sex of the perpetrator - they are male, and therefore their actions are an example of toxic masculinity. But if you want to make a film that is about the power dynamics that lie between the abuser and their victims, then it makes sense to seek to remove the abuser's sex from the equation - hence making a film about a female abuser. And some women do behave in the ways portrayed here - I was discussing the film with a friend who mentioned that they knew someone who had been similarly exploited by a woman with a significant position of power in a creative field.
Similarly, I found the decision to make a film about a conductor to be a fascinating decision. It's a role that is very seldom portrayed on-screen, and yet the control and power they have over the performers is immense - they can have literally 100 people watching their every move, the performers moderating and adjusting performances based on the way they move or the expression on their face. And yet portrayed on-screen that attention can almost become condemnatory - there's a moment where Tár has given this desirable young cellist a massive opportunity, and as Tár steps up to the podium, she can feel every eye on her. It might be that they are all attentive performers watching for her signals, but in that moment she feels as though everyone in the orchestra - including her first violinist wife - knows how she behaves, has seen the patterns, they see her give this opportunity to this one girl, can already see what she is doing, and are silently judging her for her actions. I love the way the film explored this ambiguity - is she someone who commands the focus of attention, or is she someone who attracts scorn from those who know of her actions?
But it's also reflective of the fact that the classical music world has itself been the subject of significance scandal and accusations of abuse that were covered over. There's a moment where one person dismissively refers to what happened to "Jimmy Levine", as though he was treated unfairly. This moment in particular really hit me, because I remembered being shocked when the accusations came out against James Levine. There is clear evidence of a long-standing pattern of sexual abuse of young men dating back 30 or 40 years - and there are reports that it had been known as an open secret in the classical world for decades. Yet it seems there was a willingness to overlook this behaviour, almost as though the experiences of the victims are just sacrifices at the altar of great art.
This was my first time seeing a film from Todd Field -
previously my only experience with the man was as an memorable actor in Eyes
Wide Shut, although I had heard excellent things about his previous two films.
And I'm now strongly interested in seeking out those earlier works, because he
shows an admirable control over the medium. Early in the film, he presents us
with a gripping 10-minute-long single-take in which Tar cruelly destroys a
music student who expresses little interest in Bach because his
"misogynistic life" as a "white male cisgender composer"
made the music impossible for the student, as a "BIPOC pangender
person", to embrace. It's a fascinating scene, because you agree with
everything that she is saying, and yet as the scene plays out there is a
natural escalation until it culminates in a moment of such casual cruelty that
it takes the breath away. And at that moment, you can see almost a look of delight
in Cate Blanchett's face. Rather than taking joy in teaching these students and
getting them to open their minds, she took delight in using her authority and
knowledge to browbeat someone until he is left completely demoralised. It's a
perfectly constructed piece of writing and directing by Field, that reflects
the entire film in a microcosm - Tár is a woman who has cultivated this public
perception of being this great authority, of being this wise mentor, but in
private she is someone who is joyous at her power over other people and her
ability to use her authority to destroy them. Much of the film revolves around
an emerging scandal after one of her victims takes her own life, and the sense
of casual disregard for the effect her actions have had on other people is
deeply upsetting. And it's also intriguing in the way she establishes a clear
hierarchy of music that is and is not worth appreciation - at one point, she
casually dismisses the work of Jerry Goldsmith on the legendary score for
Planet of the Apes, suggesting that she almost views the work of composition
for films or video games as lesser music. Which to me, as someone who
appreciates the work of both Bach and Goldsmith, is somewhat galling, but does
also speak to the mindset of someone who is so focused on the creation of high
art that she is blinded to the potential merits of anything she dismisses. (I
also think it's significant that we learn that she herself does do composition
for the movies - you get the sense that she feels she's elevating cinema with
her presence, rather than the other composers who lower themselves to its
level.)
The film is anchored by a fantastic performance Cate Blanchett, currently viewed as one of the two frontrunners for the Best Actress Oscar. And she gives us some beautifully nuanced work. Appropriately for a conductor whose work is all about precision and silent expression, Blanchett gives a measured and considered performance - it's not a hugely demonstrative performance, nor is she prone to vocalising her emotions, but we find ourselves drawn into the character’s internal monologue through flickers and tiny moments where we can read her thoughts. It's a reliably impressive performance from someone who remains one of our finest actors.
A similarly brilliant exploration of power and abuse comes
in Sarah Polley's effective Women Talking, which takes the reverse point of
view, looking at the victims of abuse and the way they can band together to
take back their own power. For years, the women in an isolated Mennonite
community have been regularly waking to find that they have been violently
raped in their sleep. But the men in the community tell them that nothing
happened, that it's all in their imagination, or that they are the victims of
evil spirits for which they are responsible. But one night, the men who have
been drugging and raping these women are caught and arrested. So the men of the community all
leave for a couple of days to bail out the rapists, instructing the women that
when they return, the women will need to forgive those who have been preying
on them. And so, left alone for a couple of days, the woman gather to talk and
vote on what to do - will they stay and accept things as they are, will they
stay and fight in hope of making a better community, or will they leave and
brave the uncertainty of the outside world. And that is pretty much the film -
it's a collection of conversations and debates between these characters who are
struggling to decide what to do.
I’ve liked Sarah Polley’s work in the past, but here she confirms herself as a filmmaker of exceptional talent and sensitivity. This starts with the way she portrays the crimes - she knows that the audience should already have an appreciation of the horror of these crimes, and she knows that any portrayal of these events is going to weigh the film down, so she delicately but impactfully elides over these events in the first couple of minutes, only ever portraying the crimes through brief glimpses of the consequences, whether that be the severe bruising on someone's leg, or the bloody remains of a miscarriage that may have been the result of someone raped by her brother. Besides, the crimes aren't actually the focus of the film; it's all about the conversations that result, and Polley is very focused on those conversations. And I was impressed with the level of urgency Polley is able to bring to the film - a film that is effectively 100 minutes of people in conversation and debate could begin to feel very circular, to lose some of the sense of a need for action. But Polley understands that these conversations are the action, that it's the way these discussions ebb and flow, that people change their position as different arguments come up, that creates the tension. It brought to mind the film 12 Angry Men, another film that features a limited cast of characters having a conversation in a confined space trying to reach a decision of great consequence. And it's to Polley’s credit that her film lives up to that comparison - there is just as much mastery and skill in her direction, and as much a sense of significance and power in the film, as there is in that classic work. She also understands how to make the film engaging as a piece of cinema - this is a work that could very easily feel restricted and stagebound (indeed, you could probably produce a stage version of this film without any changes to the script), but her approach to cinematography, shot selection, and editing gives the film a cinematic heft that might not be on the page.
During those early introductory scenes, we see drawings being made to represent the three options being debated by the women - in fact, these are then used to vote on the options. But it quickly becomes clear that the reason for these drawings is that most of these women are illiterate - Rooney Mara's character at one point reveals she doesn't even know what a comma is - and so a visual representation becomes essential for the vote. And that revelation becomes a fascinating insight into the degree to which these women have been held down - there's no need for women to be educated, there's no need for women to know how to read. And it's in that context that the title of the film, Women Talking, becomes significant. This film takes place in a community where women have had their power taken away from them, where they have been isolated, where they have been made to think that there is little else that they can do. But they do have the power to gather and talk together, and even that feels like a dangerous action for some of these women.
One thing I love about the film was how effective it was in truly putting you in the mindset of these women. You often hear people talking about victims of abuse, saying that they should have just left, as though it's as easy as that. By putting us in the middle of this debate, where the women struggle to make the right choice, it becomes clear why just leaving is such a challenging prospect for people in this circumstance. To stay would be intolerable, would mean giving up on the prospect that there is any hope that things might get better, to be resigned to a life of abuse. To stay and fight feels like a gamble - if they win, they could secure the better life that they want, but they might lose, and in that case the act of rebellion could make things worse for them than they already are. And so you naturally come to the conclusion that these women should leave - but then the film reminds you that that is not as easy as it seems. There's a comfort that comes with staying - you know what to expect, you know you can survive with things as they are. But to leave means taking a step into a world of uncertainty, a world where you don't have that comfort, where you don't know if you can survive. That's even more true in the case of these women - they've never lived outside of this community, they don't know what to expect, they don't know what the outside world even looks like. The idea of being thrust into an existence that they can't even imagine just feels like an impossible prospect. And then you layer onto that the weight of their religion - several times, different people express concern that they can't leave because of what that will mean for their faith. If the Lord returns, how will he know where to find them if they are not in the community? And for these women, that's a genuine fear - are they giving up eternal life and salvation just because they aren't willing to put up with some suffering in this life? That is a colossal choice to make. The way they grapple with these questions, trying to balance the different considerations and possible outcomes to reach a decision, is fascinating to watch and engage with.
Women Talking is a beautiful and powerful film. It's a shame that its premise and subject matter are such that many people would be discouraged from watching it, because those who give it a chance would find it a fascinating and challenging work.
Finally, All Quiet on the Western Front is a new film adaptation of the of the classic novel about the traumatic experiences of life in the trenches in World War I, as seen through the eyes of a German soldier named Paul Bäumer. Intriguingly, for such a significant novel from a German author about German characters, it seems this is the first time the story has been made as a German film, after several previous American adaptations, including a celebrated 1930 adaptation that won the best picture Oscar - which I've never seen. I actually studied the novel back in high school, and at the time, we also watched the 1979 TV movie, which I mainly remembered for featuring Ernest Borgnine. My memory of the novel has largely faded away to vague recollections, except for two major scenes that imprinted on me - the school teacher delivering speeches rallying his students to enlist, and a later moment where Paul finds himself trapped in a bomb crater with an enemy soldier who he fatally wounds and then spends hours waiting for the man to slowly die. Other than that, I had no real memory of the story, not even whether the main character lived or died - I had some memory of Paul returning home and reflecting on people who didn't understand his experience, but could not have told you whether that was time on leave during the war or a post-war experience.
As a Netflix film, I had to watch the film at home - apparently they did have a very limited number of cinema screenings, but as far as I could tell, none in my region. And that's a shame, because I do think the experience of a film like this is amplified on the big screen. When you see a film at home, it's simply too easy to be distracted, to check your phone, to pause the film and do something else. But the experience of watching a film like this on the big screen, being forced to dwell in the trenches for a couple of hours with no escape, absolutely highlights to some degree what it must be like to live in a place like this for months, where death becomes the only hope for escape.
That said, even at home, as a portrait of life on the battlefront, I did find the film challenging. The moments I remembered from the novel are effectively portrayed - especially the slow death off the enemy soldier in the bomb crater, whose agonised breathing and slow gurgling creates a genuinely horrifying scene. And the film is filled with memorable sequences, starting with an opening moment where the uniform is stripped from the body of a dead soldier, repaired, and sent back home to become the uniform of a young Paul who has no idea what happened to its previous owner. There are moments where the battle seems like a horror, where the giant tanks that roam the battlefield seem like monsters from a nightmare, where people resort to committing suicide to escape. That said, I do find myself wondering just how much of the novel is actually used in the film, and how much is made up from whole cloth. I could easily be misremembering, but I definitely do not remember any actual suicides in the novel, let alone the multiple suicides in the film. Similarly, there's an impressively suspenseful sequence involving a hunt for a group of 60 young soldiers who have gone missing, and who are ultimately revealed to have all died after being too slow to put their gas masks on. It's a skilfully made scene, culminating in an absolutely horrifying revelation, but it didn’t ring any bells for me from the book. And if it is a new scene created for the film, then it's a confusing choice - the novel is already filled with such horror at the atrocities of war that you wonder why a film would feel the need to pad the story out with sequences like this.
I think it's an interesting choice to remove the scenes in the book of Paul returning home on leave. I can imagine those scenes, where we finally get a chance to see just how traumatised this man is by putting him in a regular everyday with people who don't understand his experience, would have had a massive impact when the novel was written. However, in today's environment, we've all seen these moments portrayed - they're in everything from The Best Years of Our Lives to The Hurt Locker (and even in the first Rambo film!) - and so it's a smart decision in a film with limited runtime to save that time to focus on the experiences in the trenches.
Except that that is not what they do. Instead, they constantly cut from the events at the trenches to the politicians and diplomats negotiating a treaty to end the war. There is some bitterness in those scenes - moments when the war could have ended, but these people, separated from the true consequences on the men fighting the war, decide to keep the conflict going out of bloody-minded pride - but for the most part, these scenes simply are not needed. Much like the "soldier returning home", we've all seen enough war films that illustrate the separation between the commanders and the troops giving their lives - everything from Paths of Glory to Blackadder Goes Forth - that it doesn't feel as though it really illuminates anything. The only thing it did was provide us as the audience with a relief from the miseries of the trench that these soldiers themselves never experienced. And to the degree that these scenes did offer some form of respite for its audience, it's a failing of the film.
My second issue was frankly with the ending of the film. [SPOILERS FOLLOW] Whenever I hear someone talking about the end of a war, there is an odd thought that always comes to my mind - there is a person who was the last person to be killed in any given war; one person who if they could have just avoided being killed for a matter of hours would have survived. So when, half an hour into the film, the movie jumps ahead 18 months to early November 1918, I obviously immediately knew the film would be working towards Armistice Day, but also realised the film would probably be presenting Paul as the last person killed in the war. This is not true of the novel - as Wikipedia remind me, he dies towards the end of the war, but doesn't make it to those final few days; the bitter irony of the title is not that it refers to the quiet of an ended war, but that in war people will still die on a day that seems relatively quiet. It's a change that just felt unnecessary and obvious.
My final issue with the film is that I found the characters to be relative cyphers. One thing I do remember about the novel was this strength of connection between the characters; you felt the sense that these people were bonded through their wartime experiences, and that each death weighed on the survivors. Admittedly, it is easier to achieve in a novel, where you have the space and ability to give the characters interiority, than in the condensed form of a movie, but I simply never felt this sense of connection between these characters. Even with Paul, our main character, I felt the film holding me at a distance. I didn't have a strong sense of who this person was; this wasn't his story, he was just the person we were following.
But despite these qualms, overall I did appreciate the film. It's a skillfully made piece of cinema that overall did engage me. And it is nice to see the Oscars continuing their trend in the past few years of acknowledging the existence of films made outside the US. At the same time, there were many better international films released this year, and I am puzzled by the amount of attention this film is receiving.
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