Tyrannosaur (2011)
I had been pretty excited to see this, but on the other hand I was a little worried by it. On the one hand it stars Eddie Marsan who I think is a brilliant and wonderfully versatile actor as well as Olivia Colman who I mainly know for comedy, but who had always seemed like a capable actress and had received accolades for her performance here. On the other hand, this is a film about domestic violence. In order to treat that subject properly it HAS to be harrowing and I don't really like my movies to be harrowing. I mainly look to movies for entertainment, albeit thought-provoking entertainment.
The solution to how to make a movie about domestic violence without making the whole thing a complete misery-fest is to bring in an outside character around which the plot will revolve. A technique is often to give us an outsider who we as the audience can follow, but in this film Peter Mullan plays a character who is similarly hard to relate to. The first thing we see this main character do is get angry and respond to that anger by kicking his dog to death. He clearly cares a great deal about the dog and he feels extremely sad at what he has done, but it's still pretty shocking and makes us realise this is someone we are going to have trouble empathising with. However, it also makes clear that this is a man who has a great deal of regret and the killing of his dog is just one more entry in the list.
He eventually ends up meeting Olivia Colman in the charity shop where she works. Colman is playing a woman who is very religious, but unbeknownst to Peter Mullan's character, is in an abusive relationship. As we'd expect from Peter Mullan's protagonist at this point, his reaction to Colman's religious charity worker is to find excuses to resent her. He accuses her of having a cushy life and of using religion as a crutch. There seems to be no reason why these two characters should come together, so the way the film gets them together is remarkably natural and real testament to Paddy Considine's directing skills (especially in his directorial debut).
Overall this is more of a character piece than anything else and the interactions of the main characters in pretty impressive. However, Peter Mullan's interactions with his neighbours puzzled me a little bit and there are a few slow moments when the film gets started. While the film is very gritty and grimy with grey being the most prominent colour for most of the film, the decision to base the film around an outsider to the domestic violence rather than making the domestic violence the centrepoint was highly appreciated. The way the topic is explored doesn't leave everything on the surface and I can say that there were some genuine surprises. However, in the end I didn't feel that the ending was as satisfying as it might have been - though I'm not sure that any ending was really going to be "satisfying" in a film like this, so with that in mind I think they made a pretty impressive effort.
I'd previously seen Gary Oldman's movie about his childhood experiences of domestic violence: "Nil By Mouth". I couldn't stand that film. It was extremely slow-paced, it seemed to revel in how grimy and horrible everything was and in the end it even seemed to expect us to forgive the abuser. Admittedly though, that forgiveness element wasn't as bad as in "East Is East" where we seemed to be expected to think domestic abuse was perfectly normal. :S
"Tyrannosaur" tackles domestic abuse in a way that makes it very clear just how awful it is, makes very clear the ways people in that scenario think, and by contrasting it with the past of a somewhat mysterious outsider figure we are able to see a wider picture rather than finding the horror of it all gets too claustrophobic. The acting is fantastic, the dialogue is brilliant, there's a real soul to this film and in the end I'm holding this back slightly from the "A+" score for a very simple and predictable reason.... the topic was too harrowing for me. I think if I gave this the highest score I'd be expressing some wish to watch it again and I simply don't want to do that. I'm really glad I saw it once and it was a great cinematic experience, but in the end this is not one that I'd recommend as a "must-see" to people even though I would wish to highly praise those who made it and would make it my first choice for those actively seeking a film with this subject-matter.
A-
P.S. No it doesn't feature a Tyrannosaurus Rex and if you are still intrigued enough to find out why that is the title I suggest you watch the film.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Let me start this review by pointing out that I LOVED the books. I know plenty of people think they are overrated and heck I might not even deny that. I'm not exactly a big reader so there could be much better material out there of which I am unaware, but I absolutely loved the way that the books built up this protagonist who is both a victim and a hero. She is both simulataneously for the simple reason that she has learnt that the only person she can rely on to end her victimisation is herself. The storyline isn't even about her learning to trust others, but rather about the truth coming out and her needing to make use of those who'd consider themselves friends when things come to a head. Lisbeth Salander does not trust authority, so she uses her powerful intellect to find ways to do without it and sometimes that involves using brute force.
Of course, here I'm talking generally about the entire trilogy and this movie is just based on the first book. While I haven't liked recent David Fincher films like "The Social Network" or "Zodiac", I felt that this might turn out to be a return to form. I'd been warned off the Swedish version of this film because apparently the ending wasn't very well handled. The biggest challenge of this film was going to be presenting the inner life of the main character because she is someone who is always underestimated because she doesn't express herself, yet who is extremely intelligent and analytical. I felt that a visionary director would find ways to depict the inner life that we couldn't see. Turns out I was wrong.
There are many points in this film where I felt that Lisbeth Salander (played here by Rooney Mara) was not acting anything like she would in the book. Also the way the film displays these events gives us an extremely misleading view of her character. Lisbeth Salander is under the care of the state and has a guardian who is entrusted with managing her affairs, such as her money. The first we see of her guardian he collapses on the floor in a heart attack and the first clue in the movie as to who he was is when his replacement turns up. He tells Salander that he will be handling her money because that is what the role of the Guardian should be and points to a series of crimes that Salander has been convicted of as his justification. While the music during this scene is ominous the audience simply doesn't have the background knowledge to understand why this Guardian is a bad guy yet, nor why Salander has any right to challenge him. As such, when the next scene shows Salander going into a lift and screaming as the elevator doors close, she just seems like a spoilt brat who's had tv privileges taken away. The audience simply doesn't know that the main reason for her guardianship is because she refuses to speak or react when any figures try to do a pscyhological appraisal on her. In the book, the Guardian sees her in the meeting as being somewhat anti-social and uncooperative and takes that as a justification for his presumptions about her from the paperwork, as well as a sign that it will be easy to assert his power over her. As obnoxious as he is, he genuinely believes that Salander is mentally deficient and irrational and that her guardianship is fully justified. In the film, her guardianship seems more bizarre than ever since Salander comes off as highly intelligent and sensible in her responses and the guardian just comes off as a stubborn bureaucrat more than anything else.
I am now wondering whether Rooney Mara is actually a terribly good actress. She didn't have a big enough role in "The Social Network" for us to judge and I certainly didn't think her performance stood out in that. I've now seen "A Nightmare On Elm Street" where she is a little bit wooden and seems to be mostly carried along by her co-star Kyle Gallner (who was also quite impressive in "Red State"). Here she is playing a character who is mostly withdrawn and she's pretty good at doing the whole withdrawn thing. However, there just doesn't seem to be the level of subtlety that this role demands. Perhaps it's Fincher not directing this character the right way or even being realistic about the extent to which you can portray a character who doesn't make any of her feelings known, but I can't help but feel that her protrayal is SO flat that it might be due to her limitations as an actress.
I must note at this point that the books are a lot of fun and that this film is bleak and miserable from start to finish. The problem here, I feel, is that the most likeable characters aren't important enough to the plot. The book is pretty big and it takes about 200 pages before the plot really gets started. Before that time we are introduced to a number of important characters who won't have a lot to do until the next two books. Salander's boss Armansky who employs her as a private researcher digging up dirt for reports on people has an interesting relationship with her and in the book we told exactly how she came to be employed there. Unfortunately there's no opportunity to tell us this story and it wouldn't tie into the main plot easily so this important piece of background as well as this exploration of a good side-character is left out. Then there's Salander's guardian who was sensible enough to know that her guardianship was nonsense and just let her run her own affairs. He took a long time to get that kind of relationship with her and remains the only authority figure she respects. She only got the job with Armansky due to her old guardian's recommendation. So what representation does he get in the film? He has a heart attack. I think we also see Salander play chess with him as a desperate way to pull him into the story before the sequels, but we don't have any background as to who he is or why Salander trusts him. Basically any nice character seems to be removed from the script and as such the miserableness of the story becomes interminable. But there is one other clearly good character which the film spends a lot of time on: Blomkvist, played by Daniel Craig.
A lot of people have criticised the way that the lead male in the stories, the journalist Blomkvist, seems to be extremely appealing to women, however with Daniel Craig in the role this issue seems harder to justify. Daniel Craig is definitely not a spry figure in his twenties, but there's no doubting that plenty of women would find him sexually attractive. The criticism of the character has generally been that he represents the fantasies of the writer, but I always felt there was another reason. Blomkvist is involved in a consensual extra-marital relationship with his editor, which the husband knows about. He is also reasonably promiscuous to the extent that he has relationships outside of that affair which never really last. None of these elements are portrayed as character flaws, yet they could easily have been portrayed that way if looked at from a different perspective. Blomkvist's love life is a counter-point to the misogyny around him. He is not a womanizer any more than a woman who acted like him would be a slut - and he is consistent enough not to hold women to a different standard. In a story about misogyny, Blomkvist's perspective is vital.
Unfortunately Daniel Craig's first introduction to Salander in the film is extremely poorly-judged. In yet another way that the film misrepresents Salander's character, we see her go to a nightclub and pick up a girlfriend as a one night stand. Salander does have a lesbian relationship in the second book, but it is with a friend who she has known for a long time. Salander has trouble trusting people, so the idea that she would just sleep with someone who she had never met before seems highly unrealistic. The next morning after picking up a one night stand, Daniel Craig turns up at her apartment having received her address from Armansky. he barges in and, seeing that Salander has a girlfriend there, insists that she toss her out. Now, don't get me wrong. Blomkvist barges into her flat in the book too. He is a pushy journalist and he is reasonably angry with her for reasons I won't go into. However, when he insists that she chuck out her girlfriend, he has ceased to be the character from the book. He is now someone who disrespects women.
I understand that "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" was going to be tough film to make, but if you can't do it, don't do it. I'm not giving bonus points for ineffectual effort. This film is shot well, but overall it is not entertaining and it completely messes up both the characters and the themes of the original books on which it is based. If it did something different from the books that I could enjoy, that'd be okay. If it did something that was miserable, but was true to the books, that would be great. However, since this film fails on both counts, I'm really not impressed at all.
E+
