Welcome back to the Guardian Film Show, playing the role of earnest Cupid and attempting to
find a suitable match between you and the movies.
Over the next 20-odd minutes we'll be attempting to separate the classics from the cads, the
beauties from the bounders and, to make matters even easier, you can skip to the film of your
choice on the boxes below.
Bring out the eager suitors: Elsa and Fred is a handsome film of mature years that likes
candlelit dinners and Rome city breaks.
On the count of three we're going to get up and we're going to leave.
Are you mad?
We Are Monster, by contrast, is a hot-headed young tub-thumper with a violent streak and
barely two pennies to rub together.
Something's just nasty about him.
Or, will you make a friend of Unfriended? A garrulous and socially engaged affair, that
may just be concealing a dark side.
Let's start though with Far From the Madding Crowd - adapted from Thomas Hardy's Bathsheba
Everdene. Beautiful and capricious and torn between the attentions of three very different
men.
Forced to make a similar choice between Peter, Henry and me, Catherine Shoard opted instead
to go off with the filmstar Carey Mulligan and director Thomas Vinterberg and, frankly,
none of us could blame her.
From now on you have a mistress, not a master. I don't yet know my talents in farming but
I shall do my best. Don't suppose because I'm a woman I don't know the difference between
bad goings on and good. I shall be up before you're awake, I shall be afield before you
are up. It is my intention to astonish you all.
Back to work please.
Hardy, so many years ago, made such a modern portrait of being a woman. I find it very
rich, the way he portrays the struggle it must be for a woman to be both strong and
independent and yet still devote to a man.
Mr Oak, I don't want a husband. If I ever were to marry I'd want somebody to tame me
and you'd never be able to do it.
How did you feel about the line in which she says, er, it's hard to express myself in language
constructed by men to express their emotions, given Hardy..
Given how brilliantly he wrote a woman? Yeah, I mean, I think, erm, you know, it is shocking.
It was shocking to me to read it and for it to be so honest. It's an interesting line
because... because of that, because of all this sort of richness and how real she feels
as a, you know, to a female reader.
Would you like to marry me? I've never asked anyone before.
Aha! No, I should hope not.
I'm joined on the sidelines by Peter Bradshaw and Henry Barnes.
Peter, did the bucolic splendour stir your passions?
Well, I don't know about stirring my passions, there's not much splendour in it. There's
a fair bit of bucolism, as it were.
It's a good film, actually. Er, it suffers inevitably from comparison with John Schlesinger
but having said that, there are things which I think work well and, in some ways, heretical
though it is to say it, it's sometimes slightly better than Schlesinger.
I thought Carey Mulligan was very good indeed. I thought she was actually slightly better
than Julie Christie in many ways. Julie Christie had that open, slightly unearthly, ethereal
beauty, whereas Carey Mulligan's face is much more pinched and concerted - a much more obviously
intelligent face in some ways.
The problem is I think it's a slightly eccentrically cast film and I think the problem is that
Matthias Schoenaerts, bafflingly, has been cast as Gabriel Oak. To be fair, he has a
heartfelt quality and he gives a thoughtful performance and he always occupies the role
and occupies the screen but, basically, he never quite relaxes into the dialogue, because
he is concentrating on speaking English with an English accent. Whereas, if you compare
it with, say, Michael Sheen, who is utterly at home in the role - absolutely organically
at home in the role and again he easily matches Peter Finch in the earlier movie. I think
he's absolutely terrific. So it's a shame - there is lots of good stuff in this film,
lots of good stuff. I mean, Michael Sheen and Carey Mulligan - what a pairing! Really,
really good.
It's an interesting choice for Vinterberg to take on this kind of classic of English
literature.
It is, I think he's said that this is his chance to do a big adaptation where he's working
as part of a team with the producers, rather than doing a Festen-style thing of his own
imagining and you can see that but there are touches in there that are classic, almost
Dogma-esque things. There's a bit where she gets groped over her clothing just before
they kiss, which feels quite raw for the setting.
Yeah.
And it works as well and it's this idea that her sexuality is being unlocked by the other
characters. And also Carey Mulligan is great casting in this, not just because she's a
great actor but because she's made a big thing recently of picking parts that are giving
women roles that have some nuance to them and some variety and actually making them
human beings and she's done that pretty much throughout her career with The Magic Ocean
and Drive.
I mean, the film makes great play of this kind of proto-feminist quality to Bathsheba
but I wondered if, at the end of the day, it's still a story about a kind of free spirit
woman who needs to be tamed, who needs to find the right man to tame her.
Yeah, I wondered that too. I wonder if, both through Mulligan's performance and Vinterberg
as director they're trying to temper that down a bit. I'm not certain why they couldn't
do a radically different version of it but... but they've stuck with text basically.
I think the story of her having to choose between three men feels very... it almost
feels pre-Victorian. It feels almost like something from the Arabian nights. I... I
really like it. I mean, I like the ending. It's a hugely romantic ending. It is a bit...
She is a bit tamed in a way but I think it's a very romantic ending.
And it's also a story as much about shacking up with someone as it is making mistakes and
realising that you can make mistakes and you can try again and, for the time that was revolutionary,
that women could do that and for now it's pretty revolutionary as well, right? This
idea that you can err, learn from that and go on and do something else.
And still be a sympathetic character who does kind of terrible things.
Yeah, in the hero narrative of modern cinema, that's quite right.
And every place where your time was waste will all spread all way through, will all
spread all way through.
Swooning passions and imperilled sheep in Far From the Madding Crowd.
Next up, we have an outlandish horror movie about those people who invade your computer
screens, yakking on and talking trash and distracting you from your daily lives.
We'll be yakking on about that one right after this clip.
Dude, look, look!
Laura?
Hell, it turns out, is not just other people, it's other people in a six way Skype session
with the addition of a malign little gatecrasher who may just be a ghost.
Close your laptops and swallow your tablets, this is Unfriended.
Screams...
Man, what's going on?
What is that?
Dad, talk to us!
Screams...
Peter, it strikes me that for the first time, here is a film that is maybe best viewed on
your phone or laptop.
Do you know what? I have a thought about this: I actually don't agree.
Aha!
Actually, it's best... I hate to be contrarian, I think it's best viewed on the big screen
because you don't get the kind of gigantic, kind of, obscene effect of seeing your computer
screen at Stone Henge level.
And I actually think that it, paradoxically, I actually think that it's better than not
to see it on your...
Then there's full horror.
If you see it the full horror there's something gigantic and horrifying and obscene in those
forms.
What I found was fascinating is simply watching the screen and thinking: "I've never really
noticed all those things before." But now it's kind of up to Rushmore level I actually
could see it.
I think this is the first movie I've ever seen which genuinely has used the web properly.
I've lost count of the number of dull cyber-thrillers I've seen, cyber-voyeur thrillers, often from
very distinguished directors. Demon Lover by Olivier Assayas: terrible. Chatroom: bloody
awful film. Absolutely awful film because, I suspect, they come from a generation of
directors who haven't quite got it in their bloodstream.
Yes just thinking: "What a strange thing, let's make a sort of film about it!"
Let's yes, how weird, yes. Goodness! Like making a film about Ceefax or something like
that, how odd.
Erm, but this is... Also, I should say, somebody who made a decent stab at it, which was I
thought Jason Reitman's Men, Women and Children, not a successful film all round. Not bad,
but of course, it felt that it had to leave the web and go into the real world, whereas
this movie stays on it. It just stays on the browser screen and I think it's the first
film I've ever seen which really has inhabited that world.
Yeah, it's a kind of Cronenbergian thing of the new flesh and this is how we live now.
Yes, exactly. And I think part of it is that the older generation of directors haven't
quite been able to rid themselves of the idea that they are part of an infotainment offering
which is in opposition to social media. You know, I am a man, a man or a woman of the
cinema, I'm trying to get people's attention through the cinema screen and there are these
other people who are, kind of, they're the opposition trying to get people through, you
know, social media and so on. And there's an uneasy truce, whereas there's no truce
to be had in this film, they are just on board with social media and I must say, I really
thought it was a really smart, very ingenious film. There are a few films which faltered
but by and large it had enormous consistency and it used the mechanics and the grammar
of social media and applied it to a pretty trad, a pretty trad concept.
I was going to say, it's a fairly trashy teen stalker movie at the end of the day, isn't
Yes, it is pretty trad. I mean, it's from, as it were, Carrie and I Saw What You Did
Last Summer and all that. But I haven't got a problem with that because it updated them
so cleverly and I love the idea that when they switch to instant messaging their faces
are obscured by the browser window so you can't see what their faces look like while
they're doing it and you can see...
And there's these horrible little pop up ads come up.
Horrible yes, always coming up and you can see them thinking: "Shall I write that? No,
delete, delete, delete. I'll try that. No, delete, delete, delete." And it, it all unfolds
in real time.
I... I must say, I thought it was really impressive.
I'm signing off.
No, no, no. He'll kill you.
I'm all done, do you hear me?
Why's he counting down?
No, no, no!
The teens log out one by one on Unfriended. As for us, we now turn our attention to We
Are Monster - a low budget British drama that charts the run up to a true-life tragedy.
New arrival from Kingfisher: Robert Stewart.
Looks like he's going to be a lot of fun. Sound of body if not mind, eh?
Leeshon Alexander scripts and stars as Robert Stewart, a racist thug inside Feltham young
offenders institution. Stewart shares a cell with Zahid Mubarek,
a petty criminal but he's breaking down, he's hearing voices and the prison authorities
are asleep at the wheel.
Someone's coming.
Peter, this was a story I didn't know anything about so the film, I guess, deserves credit
for shedding light on it. Yes, I think it does. I think that's true. I think it deserves
its place in the ongoing debate about the condition of prisons in Britain and I think
that's true too.
I've got to frankly say though, I found it a very, very unrewarding watch, kind of minute-by-minute,
line-by-line, scene-by-scene, I found it kind of hard sledding as they say.
I found the performance - the performance/performances - kind of very big.
Lots of sort of swivel eyed acting going on.
Yeah, lots of really on the nose dialogue.
Sort of: here's the crazy one and he's got split personality and he's suffering from
paranoid schizophrenia and this is how this works out.
So, basically, he plays himself and his sort of shadow self in the cell, he leads the conversations.
Yeah and he's the guy, I mean, huh! Uh, uh uh and they sort of cut to the other guy who's
leaning back, arms folded, you know, smirking saying: "You know, you understand what you've
got to do, don't you?"
Do you know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of those scenes with Gollum in the Lord
of the Rings. Where he's saying: "get the ring off the Hobbits!" "No I can't get the
ring of the Hobbits!" "Get the ring off the Hobbits!"
And it was just that played out through a whole film.
I thought so, yeah. I think, basically, split personality all.. always tends to look as
if you're trying to get a free ride on that basic efffect - that it's the same actor playing
two people - not in split screen but, you know, in shot/reverse shot and you're trying
to get, kind of, points for something which is a fairly bog-standard effect.
And I found the acting and direction, frankly, pretty unsubtle and unrewarding and I'm not
sure whether I had any real insight.
I mean, it's a very interesting, bold kind of melodrama to that extent but I have to
say I found it... As I say, opaque, unrewarding and, frankly, slightly risible sometimes.
If there's a problem with it, I mean, I suppose the film is setting out to explain and humanise
a psychotic, racist individual. The danger of that is that the victim gets, kind of,
slightly left to one side, you never really know him.
He does a little bit, yeah. He's basically a caricature of a nice guy who probably shouldn't
be in jail and considering this film was presumably made for the Mubarek family and this idea
that people should know more about these failures of the prison system, it does feel a little
bit off.
To me this felt like a docudrama without the docu, in a strange way, it felt like they
just put in the drama elements of something like Dreams of a Life, whereas if they'd actually
talked to the family, talked to perhaps some of the prison guards who'd been involved and
dug into the issues a little bit more it would be a much more rewarding film.
I mean, I think, yeah the acting is pretty ropey across the board. It's not just Alexander,
the prison guards are a little bit shaky as well.
But it looks great and, you know, I mean, that might be a slight thing to say but it
does recreate this atmosphere of prison really well. The flat surfaces, the weird dull colours...
but you can't help comparing it to something like Starred Up where you felt like, first
of all, Jack O'Connell is an immeasurably better actor but also there's a world around
the prison. There's this idea that you actually have real human beings - the other inmates
or even the prison officers that are existing in the space.
With this there's so much weight on his shoulders in terms of one and two performances together
that you just, you lose the thread of what's going on and lose the interest, quite frankly.
Wooo! Shhhh.
Double-headed Leeshon Alexander in We Are Monster. Just time for one final suitor to
end the show on an altogether more gentle note. Make room in your hearts for Elsa & Fred.
Why are old people always so pissed off?
Why, who's pissed off?
Other than you?
I'm not!
Christopher Plummer is Fred - a crusty old sourpuss who's wife has just died. And Shirley
MacLaine is Elsa - a vibrant, free spirit who likes blowing raspberries at the neighbours.
Put them together and the results can only be a hideous serial killing crime spree.
Have you seen the old couple? They were sitting on table five.
Or a tender romance: one or the other.
What do you think?
What can I say?
Henry, I put it to you that you'd need a heart of stone not to love Elsa & Fred.
Colour my heart stone, I guess. Oh God! I felt my soul age to retirement age just watching
this. There's... It's... I guess it's for the audience.. the rather patronising term
of silver cinema, saying that older people these days have the money and time to go and
watch more cinema so you have films come along that cater to that audience - I guess the
best of those being something like Philomena and this being the worst.
In that it's patronising, it's boring, it's not funny, it's got nothing particularly to
say about ageing, or indeed about young people and how they relate to elderly people.
Both actors have played roles like this way better in the past, there's elements of Beginners
Yeah, and he won the Oscar for Beginners, didn't he? He was really good in that.
Yeah and him playing crotchety old man is a real disservice to his skills as an actor
and I don't... you know, I wish he wouldn't do parts like this.
And yet, compared to her he's brilliant in this.
Yeah, because he sits down! He sits down and shuts up and presumably takes the money and
gets on with it. Shirley MacLaine is an old... old-fashioned show, you know, she's show business.
You know, she's the star and wants to light up the screen at every opportunity, which
in an essentially low key drama like this just looks phoney as all hell really.
Yeah.
She comes out doing a marching band style performance.
And there's no pathos to it and surely that's what it's going for?
Yeah, it is going for pathos. It's going for this idea that you're never too old to learn,
I guess.
Or to love.
Or to love but, you know, you could watch films like this for decades, you know, for
the rest of your life and you'd never learn to love them. They're just... it just feels
cheap, frankly, it feels cheap and horrible and disappointing.
Without giving the ending away, the great touchstone for the Elsa character is La Dolce
Vita. She love La Dolce Vita and there's a kind of homage to the film at the end that
doesn't quite work, I venture.
Ha ha ha ha!
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
Ha ha ha ha!
I guess... what can you say? If you're going to set up a classic like that as the film
that you're going to homage in a film like this then you're going to come a cropper.
Yes, that's me when I was young.
It's strange with bad films, isn't it? Because there are bad films that you watch and think:
"Ok, elements of this are funny and elements of this are clever or elements of this are
so cheap that it will get by", and this just doesn't have that.
Well, there's nothing worse than a life-affirming film that just sucks the soul out of you.
The life out of you.
Yearn for death!
Ha ha ha!
Your own and everyone else's, yes.
You end the film just agreeing with Plummer's character that everything is awful, people
are terrible and filmmaking should never, every be done again.
And on that note.
And on that bombshell!
Did you have anything to drink tonight or eat any rich foods? Experience any strong
emotions?
All the above in under two hours.
La Dolce Vita sputters and stumbles in Elsa & Fred and where they go, we follow, we're
sputtering and stumbling too. And all that remains is to thank Peter Bradshaw and Henry
Barnes and thanks to you for watching.
We're back rejuvenated next week.