Old Yorker

  • Churchill

    Old YorkerFilm review

    Jonathan Teplitzky (2017)

    This is the first of two Winston Churchill biopics scheduled for release in 2017, with Darkest Hour due to arrive in cinemas in November.  You wonder why now.  A year ending in seven is one of the few portions of a decade that can’t be a World War II anniversary.  Churchill’s own dates are 1874-1965.  It’s probably mere coincidence – though you can’t help wondering if it might be Oscar-oriented thinking.  In the last ten years or so, George VI, Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher have all won Academy Awards for the actors playing them, in pictures that have also done well commercially.  The people behind Churchill and Darkest Hour may have reckoned that a central figure more obviously heroic than any of those other three should be a safe bet to deliver the same goods.

    Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky (The Railway Man) and written by Alex von Tunzelmann, Churchill is far from a good film but it’s an odder, more conflicted one than you’d guess from the hagiographic trailer. The narrative, covering the days leading up to the Normandy landings in June 1944, and D-Day itself, begins and ends with Churchill (Brian Cox) walking on a beach.  When he looks at the sea at the start, his imagination turns it to blood.  For most of the film, Churchill is presented as egocentric yet agonised.  The bloody waters reflect his haunted remorse for the deaths of young men in the Gallipoli Campaign of World War I, a campaign waged when he was First Lord of the Admiralty.  Nostalgic for his earlier days of active soldiering, he hankers, even at the age of seventy, after being a military commander as well as a political leader. This combination of personal imperatives leads him obstinately to oppose the Allies’ plans for Operation Overlord – to the mounting exasperation of Eisenhower (John Slattery), Montgomery (Julian Wadham) and Alan Brooke (Danny Webb).  A thwarted Churchill, on the eve of D-Day, takes to his bed and falls into a near-catatonic depression.  (I assume this is a piece of dramatic licence.)

    Field Marshal Jan Smuts (Richard Durden), his old sparring partner from the Boer War and a member of the Imperial War Cabinet, comes to the sick room and, with Churchill silent, starts composing on his behalf the speech the Prime Minister is to broadcast to the nation the following evening.   Accompanying Smuts is Helen Garrett (Ella Purnell), the secretary to whom, in most of their exchanges up to this point, Churchill has been abominably and aggressively rude.  He rallies enough to take issue with one of Smuts’s suggestions and to issue a renewed lament for the terrible loss of life he thinks is bound to take place on the Normandy beaches.  But Churchill is brought fully to his senses by the distraught Helen, who explains her fiancé is a midshipman on one of the Royal Navy ships involved in the planned offensive.  The moment is transformative for the film as well as its protagonist.  When he asks his wife Clementine (Miranda Richardson) what he’ll be when the war is over, she replies, ‘You’ll always be the man who led us through this’.  From this point on, Jonathan Teplitzky subscribes to the same view:  Churchill suddenly turns into what you expected it to be and stops fighting Lorne Balfe’s music – a persistent reminder, from the outset, that the film is dealing with heroic events and actions.  Churchill’s radio broadcast in light of ‘the sixth hour of the sixth day of the sixth month’ acknowledges Eisenhower’s leadership but there are no further scenes involving Ike or Monty or Brooke.  The end sequence on the shore, like the opening one, features business with Churchill’s Homburg but the seawater now runs clear – as if D-Day had somehow redeemed Gallipoli.  The closing legends describe the Normandy landings as a decisive success,without mention of casualties, and note that Churchill is ‘often acclaimed as the greatest Briton of all time’.

    Although its unexpected and erratic aspects mitigate against predictability, Churchill is standard-issue historical biopic in other ways.  Even allowing that the title character keeps harping on the same theme, Alex von Tunzelmann’s dialogue is repetitive, as well as stagy – ditto the stiff set-ups in which Jonathan Teplitzky arranges his actors to deliver their often over-explicit lines.  The first scene in which Churchill meets Eisenhower, in the grounds of the latter’s British headquarters, with Montgomery and Brooke also in attendance, is ludicrous.  ‘If Hitler were to drop a bomb on this little patch, he would destroy the entire high command of our Allied Forces!’ declares Churchill on arrival at the gathering, with a little chuckle at his witty insight.  (You anticipate some kind of wry response from elsewhere in the high command but don’t get it:  the script, whatever its other reservations about Churchill, regards him throughout as an unsurpassable gag-man.)  Eisenhower immediately apologises that Churchill has had to travel so far for the meeting but explains that the venue had to be out of the way:  once the characters start to disagree, still in the open air, the actors, particularly Brian Cox, shout loudly enough to be heard in Berlin.  In a later scene inside his HQ, Eisenhower asks those present to take a seat after they’ve already done so.  There are times when the serious drama of Churchill verges unfortunately on the territory of sitcom (Winnie – maybe plus exclamation mark).  This is especially so when the other characters exchange eye-rolling glances, in a can-you-believe-what-the-incorrigible-old-rogue-just-said kind of way.

    Teplitzky and his cinematographer David Higgs create some impressive images of lone figures in huge landscapes or other settings – Churchill on the beach or standing at vast windows, Eisenhower among the columns of what is recognisably (to this viewer) Calton Hill in Edinburgh.  Showing off the splendid locations sometimes also has unintended comical effects, though.  We get that Clementine Churchill, as her husband’s helpmate/nanny/conscience, is always reliably on hand to sort things out.  Because Teplitzky is keen to emphasise the huge physical scale of interiors as well as exteriors, Clemmie’s instant materialisation in them, as soon as she’s required, is supernatural.

    Brian Cox often looks right – his make-up is designed by Cate Hall, the costumes by Bartholomew Cariss – and occasionally suggests a commemorative statue in the making.  He is too conscious, however, that playing Churchill is a big deal:  I wasn’t convinced that the aura of self-approval that clings to him was part of his characterisation rather than an expression of the actor’s confidence that he’s giving us a masterclass.  A sequence in which Churchill kneels at his bedside to say his prayers is typical.  He soon shifts from petitionary to declamatory mode, preferring the sound of his own voice to communing with God; he ends not with ‘Thy will be done’ but ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep’.  The line may be Glendower’s but Brian Cox gives the distinct impression that Churchill is his King Lear.  Cox doesn’t just imitate Churchill’s famous vocal rhythms – he seems to be speechifying throughout.  As a result, the climactic radio address on the evening of D-Day isn’t as stirring as it might be:  it’s more of the same.

    Miranda Richardson is admirable:  her carriage and gestures give Clementine a welcome individuality; in their verbal skirmishes, she strikes a well-judged balance between a strong sense of duty, exasperation and regretful disenchantment with her petulant, otherwise-engaged husband.   Most of the supporting acting is par for the course although John Slattery and Danny Webb both play intelligently.  I liked Steven Cree in the small role of a military captain who gives the Allied high command crucial weather forecasts for the English Channel.  James Purefoy is a surprisingly imposing and fleshy George VI.  He and Churchill have an interminable conversation in which the latter is eventually dissuaded from having them both embark for Normandy together – and the interminability isn’t down to the king’s speech impediment.

    18 June 2017

  • Hello Destroyer

    Old YorkerFilm review

    Kevan Funk (2016)

    The Canadian writer-director Kevan Funk, whose first feature this is, makes his intentions clear from the start.  Hello Destroyer is set in British Columbia, in the world of ice hockey, minor league.  Tyson Burr has recently become a member of the Prince George Warriors.  In the opening sequences on the ice rink and in the dressing room afterwards, the hand-held camera is close in, stressing the physically uncompromising nature of the sport, the macho power play at work on the rink and off it.  The Warriors’ man of the match gets to wear and whoop around in a Native American headdress.  Tyson and the other rookies are pinned down by teammates to have their heads shaved in a hazing ritual.  The atmosphere is volatile, clamorous and threatening.  It seems Kevan Funk is all set to explore the pathology of male competitiveness and self-assertion.

    It’s no less obvious from the very start who the main character will be.  In the dressing room, Funk quickly focuses on Tyson (Jared Abrahamson) and catches his reactions to what’s going on, whereas the hyperactive camera blurs the features of his teammates.  We see immediately how competitive Tyson is.  His face registers disappointment when he’s not the first player singled out for praise by the team’s coach, Dale Milbury (Kurt Max Runte); the award of the headdress trophy to Harper (Shane Leydon) is enough to rouse Tyson to josh Harper about his excess weight.   In the scenes that follow,  though, Tyson keeps himself to himself, saying little either to the other Warriors or in the house where he and a teammate Cody (Maxwell Haynes) are lodging with Wendy and Bill Davis (Sara Canning and Ben Cotton) and their young son.  Perhaps, we think, Tyson, as a newcomer to professional sport, hasn’t yet learned how to balance imposing himself and playing on a team.  The rare scenes where he’s more voluble or there’s a sudden change of tone understandably stand out.  One night Tyson relaxes and confides to Cody at lights out his fear since childhood of the sound of silence.  Suited up to attend some kind of reception for the Warriors, Tyson is flummoxed trying to tie a tie; Wendy has to do it for him and the unspoken sexual charge between them is palpable.  (If Hello Destroyer had arrived on the scene sooner, this moment might even have merited a mention in Hannah McGill’s ‘Object Lesson’ on the movie tie in last month’s Sight & Sound.)   Jared Abrahamson draws the viewer in.  He has an expressive face.  His distinctive cracked voice repeatedly takes you by surprise.

    Once the pivotal event in Hello Destroyer occurs, however, the film dives.  Tyson is an ‘enforcer’[1] for the  Warriors.  Fired by Coach Milbury’s win-at-all-costs exhortations (‘This is why we burn and bleed – to achieve greatness’) and stung by criticism that he’s not aggressive enough, Tyson overcompensates by grievously injuring an opponent.  When Kyle Ridlowe (Brendan Byman) suffers bleeding on the brain as well as vertebral damage, Tyson is given an indefinite suspension from the Warriors and Bill Davis kicks him out.  Increasingly isolated, the young man returns to his home town and moves in with his parents.  Perhaps it’s possible – if so, it’s shocking – that an ice-hockey team’s management can make an individual player carry the can in such a case.  (Serious injuries in this quasi-blood sport can’t be that unusual.)  But the crude writing and direction make the callous ostracising and buck-passing incredible.  In the first twenty-four hours after the incident, Tyson doesn’t receive any news whatever from the Warriors.  (He discovers the extent of Ridlowe’s injuries from a television news report.)  Milbury assures Tyson the club have his best interests at heart, as the club’s lawyer reads a statement for him to sign, a statement which amounts to an admission of sole culpability.

    Back with his parents, Tyson shows no interest in keeping up to speed with the aftermath to the Ridlowe affair.  This is simply the result of Kevan Funk’s loss of interest in that side of the story, which he puts on ice (sorry) until Tyson is summoned to a preliminary court hearing that triggers the movie’s climax.  The hearing raises the possibility of criminal proceedings against Tyson.  He drives back to his parents and, outside the house, commits suicide.  He might as well have killed himself a screen hour earlier:  like its protagonist, the film really has nowhere to go once he’s suspended from the team. Having complained a few days ago about the determined gloom of The Levelling, I now feel I was unfair to Hope Dickson Leach, whose work is atmospherically supple beside Hello Destroyer.  Kevan Funk’s statement on the film’s website includes the following:

    ‘The culture of violence is maintained and sustained by passive societal approval in the form of indifference and ignorance, on a general level and among people in positions of power.  … Systemic issues such as these are commonly hierarchical, something that this film is interested in examining, as well as the circular cycle [sic] in which these sorts of enabling attitudes and behaviors are predicated upon [sic].’

    It’s hard to take that seriously but if he really did mean to examine such issues, Funk failed.  He merely piles up illustrations of misery – so determinedly that the effect is sometimes almost comical.

    Tyson gets part-time work in – guess where … a slaughterhouse.  When not surrounded by carcasses and mopping up blood, he helps his father break up the derelict house that once belonged to Tyson’s late grandparents.  Mr Burr (Paul McGillion) is coldly uncommunicative, except in a tirade that follows Tyson’s spending a night in the police cells: the father yells at length about the shame his sporting notoriety has brought on the family.  (The parents’ feelings would surely be more complex than straightforward shame.  In this small, ice-hockey-following community, wasn’t Tyson a local boy made good until his fall from grace?  Isn’t the awfulness of what’s happened compounded by disappointment?)  In spite of this, Tyson’s mother (Yvonne Vander Ploeg) seems kindly sympathetic towards her son.  Because she is, Funk minimises her time on screen.  Perhaps the most contrived piece of miserablism occurs when things appear briefly to be looking up for Tyson.  He makes the acquaintance of Eric (Joe Dion Buffalo), an affable man who invites him round for a beer.  Eric explains that his wife walked out on him but insists that you ‘gotta stay positive’.  You wonder why, therefore, when Tyson mentions the house-clearing job, Eric asks what Tyson’s grandfather died from.  (It’s not the natural question to ask in the circumstances:  the answer could well be advanced old age.)  You don’t wonder for long, though.  Eric asks the question so that (a) Tyson can reply throat cancer and (b) Eric can recall in detail the gruesome condition of a man with throat cancer in the bed next to him when (c) Eric spent months in hospital, as a young child, after an accident that put him in a coma.  A rare surprise of the film in its second half is that Tyson doesn’t top Eric in this me-too exchange with, ‘I’ve just put someone in a coma’.  This scene is the last we see of Eric.

    I know these strictures will cut no ice (sorry again) with cinéastes who consider film-making a matter of technique; credible character motivation and plot development – even when the story being told is set in a supposedly real world – as no more than means to the end of a visual and sonic composition.  Hello Destroyer does have a particular look but Funk’s limited style draws attention to itself and away from the meaning of his images.  Benjamin Loeb’s persistently dark cinematography ensures that plenty of those on screen remain literally obscure to the audience.  Even when the light is sufficient, Funk and Loeb sometimes show a person in the foreground in soft focus or present them from some way away, through half-open doors.  Funk’s camera pays more definite attention to a piece of dodgy plaster in a ceiling or a long crack in a wall – in other words, to things unequivocally bleak.  The soundtrack is somewhat more eloquent.  The explosions of noise – during, for example, Tyson’s bouts of lung-bursting physical exercise – are disturbing.  Tyson’s fear of how loud silence can be is in your head whenever things go quiet, even though he doesn’t appear to register unease at these moments – until, near the end, when Funk actually turns up the volume of the silence, into a disorienting buzz.

    I saw the film as part of the ‘Canada Now’ programme, showcasing ‘New Canadian Cinema in London’ at Curzon Soho.  The administration of the audience feedback questionnaires was excellent!  This isn’t something you can always say about special events at BFI, LFF etc but I’m sorry it’s the best I can say about the experience of Hello Destroyer.  I don’t quite get the title but the writer-director’s surname so perfectly reflects his film’s severely depressed mood that, had I stayed for the post-screening Q&A with him, I’d have been tempted to ask if Funk was a pseudonym.

    16 June 2017

    [1] According to the online Free Dictionary, ‘An enforcer’s job is to deter and respond to dirty or violent play by the opposition.  When such play occurs, the enforcer is expected to respond aggressively by fighting or checking the offender’.

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