Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Ewan McGregor. Has there ever been a Jedi so willing to flash his lightsaber?
I kid. I kid because I’ve seen his wiener. A lot. This is how you know Ewan’s making a “serious” movie. If he shows the sausage, it’s “serious.” And, since all we seem to hear about this one from those who have seen it is that it’s steamy, sounds like we’ve got a “serious” one here:
Hi Harry,
I read Father Geek's report recently about the Edinburgh Film Festival line-up and saw that the latest Ewan McGregor film Young Adam is headlining. I saw this film a while back but didn't bother writing a review as I didn't think you'd be that interested in what is essentially a British arthouse film. Well, since it's now getting a bit of press, here goes...
Ewan plays a drop-out called Joe, who works and lives on a cramped barge with a couple (played by Tilda Swinton and Peter Mullan).
The first scene, and shot of the movie, shows a corpse floating in one of the Scottish canals that the trio work on. The corpse is a young, naked woman. McGregor and Mullan fish the body from the water and report it to the police.
There is clear tension between McGregor and Swinton which later leads to an affair. However, in the film, this is interrupted with flashbacks to his rocky relationship with his ex-girlfriend Cathy (Emily Mortimer, who recently played an incredibly un-assassin-like assassin in The 51st State, known, I believe in the US, as Formula 51, or something).
I haven't read Alexander Trocchi's book, on which the film is based, but, since they are separate mediums I feel that this shouldn't be a necessary requirement for watching the adaptation anyway.
What made me want to write a review of this film was Father Geek's quote of the Edinburgh festival's director Shane Danielson saying: "It was the obvious choice, much as Morvern Callar was last year, because it is the best British film of the year.”
Personally, I'm waiting for I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, reuniting Get Carter (and Flash Gordon!!) director Mike Hodges with Clive Owen, for their second film following Croupier, a film that really was the best British film of its year.
Well, if Young Adam really is the best British film of this year, we are totally screwed. The film just doesn't seem to start. Ever.
The pace is incredibly slow.
Now, go back and re-read that last line. Not just a bit slow, or quite slow, or even irritatingly slow... No, it is INCREDIBLY SLOW.
The reason for this is the lack of dialogue for what seems like the first three-quarters of an hour. Now, minimalising dialogue isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can be used to heighten suspense, as the master Jules Dassin proved back with Rififi. However, we're not talking a tense heist scene here, we're talking about a love triangle being acted out by three grunting barge-workers. What we get instead are meaningful looks again and again and again. Ewan looks meaningfully at the dead body he has just found, Tilda looks meaningfully at Ewan, Ewan looks meaningfully at Tilda, Ewan looks meaningfully at himself in the mirror. One after the other. A device which eventually sucks any interest/curiosity/energy/will to live from the audience.
The director, Alexander McKenzie is obviously going for a Last Tango In Glasgow with this, but Bertolucci seemed to make points with his film, even if the most basic one is 'life f**ks you up the ass'. McKenzie has missed out having any points, leaving you with a cold film that freezes the viewer as if they were watching it in an igloo with the fridge door left open.
To give it some credit, the film looks the way it should, gritty, grey and dirty, though some shots do fall over into "artiness". But, again, the constant gloom is tiring for the viewer.
The cast however are all excellent. McGregor, Swinton, Mullan. They always are. You just pray that they will be offered jobs that give them something to do, something more than arty sex scenes and sullen staring.
Best British film of the year? Yikes!
Ouch. Then again, that’s about the same buzz I’ve been hearing on this one since earlier this year. Guess we’ll see when and if we get a chance to peek at it on this side of the Atlantic. Until then, thanks for the advance look.
"Moriarty" out.
