From the opening shot of Anshul Chauhan’s KONTORA (コントラ), crisply shot with Maxim Golomidov’s sumptuous photography, it’s hard not to be captivated by this elegant and mystical spin on the coming-of-age narrative.
Yet where to begin discussing a film that is so much about discovery? It’s ostensibly about Sora (Wan Marui), a young girl who discovers her grandfather’s Second World War diary and begins searching her hometown for a buried secret.
Then there’s the mysterious mute ‘backwards walking man’ (Hidemasa Mase) who wanders into her town. Following a road accident, he’s taken in by Sora and her often angry father (Taichi Yamada). Without saying a word begins to help them uncover the fractured relationship they’ve been cultivating for some time.
Despite the arty shopfront, KONTORA is an extremely traditional narrative of familial angst, sins of the past, and a youth’s search for identity. Yet there’s also the Backwards Walking Man who throws a bit of a spanner into the works. The enigmatic figure, much like the film itself, can’t tell us why he’s there – and it’s almost not important.
Indeed, the title itself offers both clues and more mystery. Written in katakana, the script traditionally used for foreign loan words, it translates as ‘contra’ as in opposite or against. It might be speaking directly to Mase’s character, in that he walks counter to everyone else, or it may be some deeper form of otherness.
Filled with an almost mystical driver, and blindly focused on a trunk buried in the forest by Sora’s grandfather, KONTORA‘s disparate elements are held together by some lush black and white photography and Yuma Koda score. It becomes difficult here to speak to some of the recurring motifs without giving away too much (so I won’t), but nothing feels like it been placed on screen randomly.
It doesn’t all have to make sense, of course, which is the beauty of Chauhan’s second feature. It remains something of a riddle wrapped in an enigma to the final frame, even while it offers both Sora, her father and their visitor a kind of closure. A striking film that will no doubt appear on a few ‘best of’ lists this year.
2019 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Anshul Chauhan| WRITER: Anshul Chauhan | CAST: Wan Marui, Hidemasa Mase, Taichi Yamada, Seira Kojima, Takujo Shimizu| DISTRIBUTOR: JAPAN CUTS (US), Kowatanda Films (JPN) | RUNNING TIME: 143 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 17-30 July 2020 (JAPAN CUTS)
Read more coverage of Japanese films from the silent era to festivals and other contemporary releases. Plus go beyond Japan with more film from Asia in Focus.
Despite only four credited films as director, Haruhiko Arai has been an important writer and academic in the Japanese industry for over half a century. Beginning with Japanese New Wave film Gushing Prayer: A 15-Year-Old Prostitute (1971), he has continued to deliver important screenplays for other directors, most recently Yukiko Mishima’s Dear Etranger (2017).
IT FEELS SO GOOD (火口のふたり) is Arai’s first directorial outing since war movie Kono kuni no sora (2015). It follows Kenji (Tasuku Emoto) who meets up with his cousin, and former lover, Naoko (Kumi Takiuchi) while in town for her pending wedding. After proposing a one-night stand, their physical relationship becomes a week-long exploration of each others bodies and their shared past.
On the surface, Arai’s film feels like it is going to be tried-and-true exploration of a relationship through sex and physicality. In this sense, it’s a successor to the ‘sex and death’ films of the 60s and 70s that Arai was involved in, picking up where Nagisa Ōshima’s contemporaries left off and exploring the same fatalism for a whole new generation.
Indeed, it’s that generational divide that separates this from its forebears. Like a couple of Kelly Reichardt characters (think: Old Joy), this duo typifies twin aspects of a group growing up with a looming dread of the future. Kenji takes each day as it comes, Naoko operates with a sense of urgency about what she leaves behind.
The film’s title more literally translates as ‘two craters,’ as if to imply that we are looking at the remains of a disastrous impact. In a way this is the literal truth. Like many Japanese films of the last few years, it explores the ripple effects of the 3/11 tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi plant disaster of 2011. Kenji remains underemployed, while Naoko’s unseen husband is a career military man preparing for a pending catastrophe that will set their futures in stone.
It would be a mistake to consider Emoto and Takiuchi’s performance as a purely physical one, even if they spend much of the film in the buff. While many scenes are filled with intensely intimate and often frantic sex, Arai deliberately saves the most revealing conversations for when they are partially covered or clothed.
The final act begins to contemplate the futility of planning in a post-Fukushima world. Tokyo has always lived under the threat of the ‘next big one’ and here that dread becomes tangible within the microcosm of this closed world. Think In the Realm of the Senses without the intense claustrophobia or bloody ending.
IT FEELS SO GOOD is a film that completely envelops you while you are in the moment. Yet like the volcanic forces of Mt. Fuji – arguably the third central character in the film – there is more that lurks beneath the surface. The impact that it may have in the future is yet to be seen.
On the surface, director Pin-Chuan Kao’s film has a lot going for it. Kind of Taiwan’s answer to Japanese cult hit One Cut of the Dead, it’s all about self-referential filmmaking comedy, with a zombie motif and mobsters.
In THE GANGS, THE OSCARS AND THE WALKING DEAD (江湖無難事 or more literally ‘No Trouble‘), two friends are attempting to make a zombie film. Without funds, they turn to a local mob boss who insists on casting his girlfriend Shanny in the lead. When she turns up dead, the duo scramble to cover it up while continuing to shoot.
What begins as a weird spin on Weekend at Bernies soon becomes a more complex comedy of errors thanks to Yi Ti Yao’s dual-role as her own doppelganger. For some reason, Kao decided to make Shanny’s twin a transgender character, adding an element of gender misdirection in the middle of a gangster comedy.
For a film like this to truly work, the laughs just have to be there. Perhaps if I hadn’t seen the documentary Disclosure the night before, an exploration of trans stereotypes on film and television, I may not have been as tuned into the sheer amount of casual homophobia and transphobic jokes that serve as a basis for much of the narrative. Indeed, if you hold up Disclosure‘s checklist – including artificially deepened voices, unsettling breast reveals, violent sickened reactions, award-winning cis actors playing trans – then this film hits almost all of them. One of the local posters even plays on these tropes, featuring a pair of feminine legs peeing while standing.
Even if you can put this all to one side, and you really shouldn’t, there’s just a lot happening here. Filled with unlikely twists and turns, the final act of the film is a series of non-linear plot points that do offer up some genuine (and violent) surprises. So, on a surface level it’s a technically well-made beast, and Yi Ti Yao’s award-winning performance certainly elevates the game.
Compared to other films from the region, parts of it are massively progressive, including the denouement which makes an attempt at redeeming some of the character reactions. Yet TGTOATWD bites off more than it can chew while using a trans character as a central comedy device. It’s 2020, and that simply isn’t good enough.
2019 | Taiwan| DIRECTOR: Kao Pin-Chuan | WRITERS: Birdy Fong, Yi-Ho Tsai | CAST: Roy Chiu, Di-Yang Huang, Yi Ti Yao | DISTRIBUTOR: Taiwan Film Festival (AUS)| RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 9-30 July 2020 (TWFF)
Japanese cinema has been given some well-deserved attention in the last few years, with Palme d’Or winning Shoplifters and Weathering With You providing elegantly constructed crossover hits for wider audiences. Then there’s Shinichiro Ueda’s One Cut of the Dead, a micro-budget indie zombie film that won fans at festivals and online venues across the world through sheer force of will.
SPECIAL ACTORS (スペシャルアクターズ) is his first follow-up feature, his anthology contribution to Aesop’s Game and quarantine-inspired One Cut of the Dead – Mission: Remote notwithstanding. It comes with a similar vibe of anarchistic fun and unexpected turns. A more polished affair to be sure, but it’s also another meta-commentary on film and storytelling within a distinctly Japanese context.
Kazuto (Kazuto Osawa) is a painfully frail soul who dreams of being an actor but has one major obstacle: he has fainting spells whenever he’s confronted with strong emotions. After running into his brother, he discovers the eponymous Special Actors – an agency of who hires themselves out to solve real-life problems. Kazuto’s first case involves a cult with nefarious motives. It’s a chance to prove himself if his nerves can take it.
It’s probably too early in Ueda’s career to start talking about formulas, but he’s rapidly developing a self-aware series of motifs. Opening in a middle of an audition, the film is filled with references to Japanese indie cinema, or at least analogues for the kind of zombie films and dramas Ueda and his contemporaries are associated with. Even Hollywood gets a dig with a recurring character of Rescueman, Kazuto’s aspirational hero.
SPECIAL ACTORS has more heart than Ueda’s previous feature, and despite being a tad pathetic as a human being, Ueda and Osawa evoke genuine pathos in Kazuto. While the script may occasionally meander off the beaten path, with an elongated second act that feels a little bit like filler material, a cast of lively actors consistently gives this the boost it needs.
Filled with a largely unknown cast (to keep the costs down presumably), there’s a fun slice of swirling chaos around Osawa’s performance. While the lead always looks as though he’s about to pass out, there’s a near comatose-looking religious leader, shifty business folk and your typical cross-section of Japanese comedy archetypes. A chaotic scene that takes place at an inn is a particular memorable and effective demonstration of their combined talents.
While not as instantly iconic as One Cut of the Dead, the final scenes will no doubt prompt viewers to go back and watch this all over again. Which might be Ueda’s clearest formula, one in which he keeps the wool over our eyes just long enough to keep us guessing.
Based on a video game of the same name, here’s a film with a specific ready-made audience. A follow-up to director John Hsu’s VR short Your Spiritual Temple Sucks, this psychological horror blends genres and has already seen some box office success.
Like the 2016 game, from Taiwanese developers Red Candle Games, it takes the rather unique setting of 1960s ‘White Terror’ period in Taiwan. Against the backdrop of the suppression of political dissidents and literature, student Fang Ray-shin (Gingle Wang) falls for teacher Chang Ming-Hui (Fu meng-po) as a form of escapism.
What could have been a simple star-crossed love story rapidly shifts genres with the disappearance of Chang. Only a handful of people remember his existence, and the building becomes a residence for evil dead things.
My gaming days are more or less behind me, mostly because I only buy a new console every 12 years or so. Yet even I can totally see the influence here even without knowing the source material. It’s a bit like Silent Hill or similar survival horror games: it’s all about mood and pacing.
The opening sequences work incredibly well, and starts out as a slickly shot and moody thriller. There’s one early sequence where Ray-shin walks down a long corridor, mirroring the side-scrolling aesthetics of the original. It’s not just an attempt at fidelity but a cool screen motif as well.
By the same token, for all of its real-world horrors, the White Terror period of Taiwan is a fascinating setting for a genre film. The lengthy martial law era has been covered in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness (1989), along with the Hollywood formula of Formosa Betrayed (2009). To use it as the backdrop for supernatural horror is clever.
It’s just that the union didn’t always gel for me, resulting in some tonal confusion and occasionally laughable monster jumps that took me right out of the moment. It makes the problematic aspects of the narrative, where one might see the backdrop usage as exploitative, all the more apparent. By having an each-way bet, it’s not completely effective as horror or historical drama.
DETENTION (返校) will undoubtedly develop a cult audience beyond the gamer communities. After all, I’m an unapologetic fan of the Resident Evil film franchise, despite their diminishing quality and my inability to finish a game. At the very least, it’s encouraging to see Taiwan embracing so many aspects of their own history and pop culture to audience-driven success.
2019 | Taiwan| DIRECTOR: John Hsu | WRITERS: John Hsu, Fu Kai-ling, Chien Shi-keng | CAST: Gingle Wang, Fu Meng-po, Tseng Ching-hua, Cecilia Choi | DISTRIBUTOR: Taiwan Film Festival (AUS), Warner Bros. Taiwan| RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 9-30 July 2020 (TWFF)
It’s been a hell of a year for photographer and filmmaker Mika Ninagawa. After crafting the visually arresting Diner and releasing the limited series Followers to Netflix, this adaptation of Japan’s second best-selling novel in Japan (after Kokoro) might be her most unexpected left turn yet.
Osamu Dazai’s novel Ningen Shikkaku has been translated into a feature film at least once before as The Fallen Angel, along with being an anime mini-series, serving as inspiration for the anime Bungou Stray Dogs, and more recently as Human Lost, a truly bizarre nanotech-filled sci-fi version.
Despite being known for her outlandish and lavishly photographed hyperreality, Ninagawa tackles NO LONGER HUMAN (人間失格) like many of her forebears: as a the thinly veiled and fatalistic autobiography of Dazai.
Dazai’s other work has been adapted into films such as Villon’s Wife, Shayo and Pandora’s Box, so filmmakers have been given ample opportunities to explore something more than the boozy womaniser who had a predilection towards death. Here Kaeko Hayafune’s script casts Osamu Dazai (Shun Oguri) as one of Japan’s most popular authors, but his inability to balance his married life, his extramarital affairs, and his alcoholism leads to self-destruction.
With a more literal translation of “Disqualified from Being Human,” the original book has largely been interpreted as being about the impact of post-War western influences on Japanese traditions. Yet this is like many of the film adaptations of Dazai’s work and far more concerned with the women in his life. In fact, the Japanese subtitle for Ninagawa’s film is ‘Osamu Dazai and three women.’
Which is solid and familiar ground for Ninagawa, whose stylish versions seedy affairs have filled the beautifully shot features Sakuran and Helter Skelter, for example. As we whip through one joyless tryst after the next, it’s all (in the words of one character) “booze, women, drugs and suicide.”
Cinematographer Ryuto Kondo (Shoplifters) replaces Ninagawa’s regular collaborator Daisuke Soma for a more realistically toned but no less stylish film. From bright red flower-filled fields to an opera bathed in purple light, Ninagawa drops her trademarks throughout this iconic narrative. There’s one remarkable moment of Dazai entering a red alley full of flywheels and laughing children. Later, the tone shifts blue as we see a literal and figurative deconstruction of the novelist’s life as he goes on a writing spree.
Nevertheless, the overall narrative approach is uninspired. Dazai is a figure who is often impossible to like, but in the original text his wry observations about human interactions come from someone who sees themselves as removed from the race. Oguri plays him as a straight floppy-haired cad, and any chance of exploring depression and alcoholism forgotten in a sea of sexy times.
Which makes this latest version of Ningen Shikkaku ultimately disappointing. If Ninagawa has been accused of style over substance, here it’s too little of either spread thinly over a well-worn tale. Indeed, Japanese audiences have probably see Dazai jump into rivers more times than Martha Wayne’s pearls hitting the pavement of Crime Alley. Yet there will certainly be more adaptations of this in the future, ones that should hopefully find fresher ways of marrying contemporary themes with Dazai’s life.
2019 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Mika Ninagawa | WRITER: Kaeko Hayafune | CAST: Shun Oguri, Yûdai Chiba, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Kengo Kôra | DISTRIBUTOR: Shochiku, Asmik Ace Entertainment | RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 19 September 2010 (JPN), 30 April 2020 (Blu-ray)
Takashi Miike has always been a filmmaker who has erred on the side of quantity, as attested by the fact that this is about his 103rd feature film in the last thirty years. So, it’s pleasing to see that FIRST LOVE (初恋), built on a story by Muneyuki Kii and screenwriter Masaru Nakamura, is arguably his most focused film in years, and strangely becomes more so as it goes along.
Lonely boxer Leo (the multi-talented Masataka Kubota) is told by a doctor that he has a brain tumour. Meanwhile, Monica (Sakurako Konishi) has been forced into prostitution and drug addiction to pay off her father’s debts. When she runs from crooked cop Ōtomo (Nao Ōmori), Leo’s intervention sends them both on a collision course of violence and frenetic action.
Following the alternatively sedate and moody Laplace’s Witch, the aesthetic of FIRST LOVE is a return of the Miike we’ve not seen around these parts since at least For Love’s Sake. Where that film was a musical with random acts of violence (and vice versa), this is two people on the lam with random acts of dance. (A recurring motif of the ghost of Monica’s father, dressed only in his underpants and chaotically dancing, is one of the more Miike indulgences of the picture).
This blisteringly paced bit of yakuza pulp ramps up its insanity for the last 30 minutes, a roller coaster of bloodletting and unexpected animation literally bursting out of walls. Telegraphed early in the film by a disembodied and still blinking head, this is a bit of the old ultraviolence we’ve come to love Miike for. At times these elements are at odds with each other, but it all culminates in a satisfying supermarket slash fest, complete with limb loss that sidles right up to the edge of comedic. (Think: Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the Black Knight).
The whole movie is a live action cartoon, which makes a brief burst of animation – as a car careens through a wall – even more seamless in its explosive entrance. It’s a throwback to Miike’s many manga/anime adaptations over the years, one many have been quick to call ‘Tarantino-esque’ except for one key fact: Miike has been honing this insanity since 1991 and has probably influenced more of this style than aping it.
Fresh off the back of the high-profile Tokyo Ghoul and Gintama film series, Masataka Kubota lends some star appeal to the leading man. He has the unenviable job of anchoring the more outlandish elements that his costars revel in, including newcomer Sakurako Konishi. Yet it’s Shota Sometani, as the increasingly beleaguered yakuza, and the single-named Becky who steal every scene they are in. The latter is a key player in the aforementioned melee, and her joy for killing is a little bit infectious.
Other technical elements, including regular Miike cinematographer Nobuyasu Kita, are all top-notch. While Miike’s film’s can sometimes look more or less like the sum of their parts, there are moments of genuine beauty here. Take a chase sequence of a bridge extending out into the water, as the getaway car is pursued by dozens of cop cars. It’s every bit as impressive as a Hollywood counterpart. Kôji Endô’s score is also appropriately pacey while managing to include random didgeridoo sounds throughout.
FIRST LOVE may not be Miike’s most accomplished film to date, but it’s unquestionably a return to form. Like many of his recent films, and arguably his career to date, he’s never been great at self-editing. Yet there’s fun to be had here in picking through the gleefully chaotic collisions.
CAUTION: In order to have a deep dive into this season, there will be plot points and major spoilers discussed. You have been warned.
Not every TV show is given the opportunity to go out on a high. Superheros on the small screen are notorious for being retired before their time. Just ask Swamp Thing. So, as someone who has literally written the book on Green Arrow, seeing my favourite hero on screen for eight years has been a rare gift. Now that journey has ended.
As the end of the seventh season drew near, two things became apparent. There was a major crossover event on the horizon and everyone’s contracts were expiring. Following star Stephen Amell’s emotional announcement that he would be leaving the show, the abbreviated 10-episode season came in hard and fast by preparing audiences for both scenarios.
ARROW’s Season 7 was, to put it mildly, a little all over the place. Beginning with a prison plot that was loosely based on the aborted Green Arrow: Super Max screenplay, it covered a lot of ground: the introduction of half-sister Emiko Queen (from Jeff Lemire’s comic book run), perpetual flash-forwards to the future of 2040 and a whole lot of foreshadowing of the Crisis of Infinite Earths.
The eighth season was evidence of what would happen if the show had always followed the Netflix model of shorter story arcs. It opens with something of a combination of the classic Hard Travelling Heroes storyline (that is, Ollie on the road) and something that reminded me of a thread from 2007’s Countdown to Final Crisis comic, in which heroes tour the multiverse looking for MacGuffins.
In this case, the search for the totems meant a Monitor-led trip through Ollie’s greatest hits. A comic book finale involving time travel? That’s so 2019. Here he toured Earth-2 (in season opener “Starling City”), Hong Kong (“Welcome to Hong Kong”), Nanda Parbat (“Leap of Faith”), the Russian mob (in “Prochnost”) and, of course, Lian Yu (“Purgatory”).
One of the more interesting episodes delved into two of my favourite things: alternate timelines and time loops. In the sixth episode called “Reset” – directed by David Ramsey (who plays Diggle in the series) – Ollie wakes up in Star City late for an event in honour of the still-living mayor Quentin Lance (guest star Paul Blackwell). Ollie and Laurel are forced to keep repeating various forms of Lance’s death, before it is revealed that it is all part of a test by the Monitor. For a character who has struggled with the weight of the deaths he has felt responsible for, it was a cathartic and emotional episode that was absolutely necessary before the series finale.
Even the future kids get a bit of a payoff, where the 2040 and 2020 Team Arrow finally meet in “Present Tense.” Now some of this is a pure cynical move, setting up a backdoor pilot (discussed below) and capping off a whole lot of loose threads from the previous year. Yet there’s some beautiful moments here, with Mia (Katherine McNamara) getting to confront her absentee father. Ollie’s response to his son William (Ben Lewis) coming out was perfect: “Yeah buddy, I know… we just, well we hoped that you were gonna come out to us when you were comfortable. You clearly didn’t get that chance. And, that’s on me so, I’m sorry.”
The main event was, of course, Crisis on Infinite Earths: the five-part crossover with Supergirl, Batwoman, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow. Many of us assumed that Ollie would bite the dust at the end of the arc, so perhaps the biggest twist came early in the crossover with when he was killed off in the first episode. He’s later resurrected as the Spectre, a kind of DC deity in a storyline that combines aspects of Green Arrow’s history with Green Lantern comic book arcs like Emerald Twilight and Day of Vengeance. Appropriately, it ultimately ends in ARROW’s eighth episode of the season (“Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part Four”) with the transformed Ollie in a showdown with the Anti-Monitor where he dies. Again.
This was a majorly emotional moment for this bearded super fan. It’s not the first time I’ve seen Ollie die (that would be in Green Arrow Vol 2 #101 back in 1995), but it was the deepest cut. Like Iron Man’s demise at the end of Avengers: Endgame, Ollie’s declarative death was not just a hero’s ending for a ‘Hood’ once considered to be Public Enemy #1, but a sacrifice that quite literally rewrote the DC television universe as we know it. While I regretted seeing him go, he sure did know how to make an exit.
Which you think would be the end of a series. Showrunner Marc Guggenheim still had two more trick arrows in his quiver. The first was the aforementioned backdoor pilot, a bottle episode named “Green Arrow and the Canaries.” While series tradition has been to name every penultimate episode after a Bruce Springsteen song, the CW insisted that “Livin’ in the Future” was instead named for the potential spin-off.
Set immediately after Crisis, the show takes us to Star City in 2040 – but with a few changes. Green Arrow is a revered city hero thanks to saving the multiverse. His daughter Mia (Kate McNamara) is now a socialite, now growing up without a father for a very different reason. 2020 era Laurel (Katie Cassiday) comes careening in on a motorcycle and is every bit the Canary we wanted her to be on the main show. Like Dinah (Juliana Harkavy), now a lounge singer, she retains some memories of the pre-Crisis world.
When Mia’s friend is kidnapped, a quick zap from J’onn J’onzz’s ring jolts Mia’s memory of her past life. She reluctant teams up with the Canaries for some badass adventures. Having its cake and eating it too, it’s a ready-made formula that can pick up where Arrow leaves off without changing much of the cast. Sure, we don’t really know why Laurel and Dinah wound up in the future, but does it really matter when the show is this fun? It’s a slick adventure that, judging by the social media reaction, is bound to be picked up in the fall.
So from the perspective of it being a spin-off pilot, it worked flawlessly. As the penultimate episode of the show, it’s a clear indicator of how the Arrowverse might function without Oliver Queen. Which leads us to the actual series finale: “Fadeout.” Penned by showrunners Guggenheim and Beth Schwartz, who have been with the series since the beginning, it addressed the major absence of the season: Ollie’s wife and tech guru, Felicity.
Guggenheim and Schwartz has the unenviable task of giving the show and its fans closure while dealing with the fact that its lead has been dead for two episodes. So, they took a leaf out of the 1993 comic Funeral for a Friend, published after the Death of Superman arc. Reflecting back on the previous eight years through flashbacks (used for the last damn time), we get a perspective on how Ollie has changed within the almost throwaway context of a kidnapping and a final suit-up as the connective glue.
We also got a glimpse of how the multiverse has changed the fates of several characters, bringing back several dead characters along with practically everyone ever associated with the show. It’s a roadmap to how things might progress if they ever decide to fill in the gaps between “Fadeout” and “Green Arrow and the Canaries,” and a coda where Ollie literally gets his reward in some kind of afterlife. (Of course, I’d be remiss to not to mention the bombshell of the long-awaited union of Diggle with a glowing green box from space, one that would imply we may be seeing him in the forthcoming HBO series Green Lantern).
ARROW is over but the universe it spawned is far from it. With five spin-offs and counting, and a multiverse of possibilities ahead, the final season is a blueprint for what is to come. When you think about where the show started, as a dark Batman clone that refused to acknowledge capes, it’s amazing that its final season was built as a lynchpin in an all-star crossover. Here’s to the future of the Arrowverse – the spin-offs, the cameos, and the inevitable Season 9 in comic book form.
2019-20 | US | SHOWRUNNERS: Marc Guggenheim and Beth Schwartz | CAST: Stephen Amell, David Ramsey, Rick Gonzalez, Juliana Harkavy, Katherine McNamara, Ben Lewis, Joseph David-Jones, LaMonica Garrett, Katie Cassidy | DISTRIBUTOR: CW (US), Fox8 (AUS) | EPISODES: 10
To say that BOMBSHELL is a problematic film is an understatement. On the one hand, the timing of the release reflects the international wave of sexual harassment allegations that have shone a light on the unbalanced power dynamics in more than one industry. Yet the high profile of this release also lacks any of the nuance needed to get to the heart of this complex and systemic problem.
Director Jay Roach, working off a screenplay by Charles Randolph, begins the narrative in the lead-up to the 2016 Republican debate. Using the offices of Fox News as the backdrop, the stories of three women are told: news anchor Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), fellow anchor Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), and the up-and-coming Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie). As the Head of Fox News Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) comes under fire with sexual harassment suits, the focus shifts to how Fox deals with the situation as an organisational culture.
BOMBSHELL is a film that’s awfully concerned about surface-level fidelity. Yet this attempt at authenticity never extends to the characterisations of the people themselves. Apart from a few asides, Roach and Randolph never hold Kelly and Carlson to task for their complicity in creating a conversative news media that thrived on fearmongering, xenophobia and often homophobia. As Kelly’s character is told after her one-on-one Trump interview, “Honey, you absolved him.”
Perhaps this was a deliberate choice, as shining that particularly harsh light may have sidled up to the edge of victim blaming. Or maybe it’s simply the result of no women being present in the creative process. The conversations between the leads are functional and perfunctory, completely devoid of subtext. Rapidly changing tone from one scene to the next, with a fourth-wall breaking gimmick that is mostly forgotten after the intro, it’s another instance where the style trumps any substance. Even Ailes gets off far too lightly with this approach.
As such, BOMBSHELL is ultimately a showcase for its lead performers. Theron is uncanny as Kelly, not just physically resembling the news anchor but adopting her vocal cadences and mannerisms as well. It pulls short of caricature, and it’s a testament to her performance that we can see some depth lurking beneath the surface-level script. Yet for the most part it’s a game of spot-the-celebrity cameo, from Josh and Ben Lawson as the Murdoch brothers to Richard Kind as Rudy Giuliani!
While this film is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, perhaps its greatest impact is still in its star power. It remains unlikely that any of the Fox faithful will change their mind after watching this, or even see it if we’re being honest, but at least it becomes a very public conversation about the abuse of power and the dominant male paradigm. It will be interesting to see how history views this era when the retrospective films are made in the decades to come.
2019 | US | DIRECTOR: Jay Roach | WRITERS: Charles Randolph| CAST: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Malcolm McDowell, Allison Janney | DISTRIBUTOR: Studio Canal (AUS)| RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 16 January 2020 (AUS)
Louisa May Alcott’s novels are a curious beast. Originally published in two volumes in the late 1860s, as Little Women and Good Wives (in the UK), the stories have been read as both a coming-of-age story and as a commentary on the unfair “social inferiority” of women in the mid-19th century. The beautiful thing about Greta Gerwig’s smart film is that it manages to be both things and more.
Gerwig maintains the same basic narrative that we’ve seen across seven films and dozens of TV adaptations. We follow the four March sisters – Meg (Saoirse Ronan), Jo (Emma Watson), Beth (Eliza Scanlon) and Amy (Florence Pugh) – as they journey through minor trials, social graces, sickness and romance in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Recognising that the book’s original observatory approach towards ‘simple’ people would not be palatable for younger audiences, and parts of Alcott’s novel are a slog, Gerwig’s screenplay spends more time on the story of the women after they have left home. Structurally this means lots of cutting back and forth between the time periods and ticking off the highlights of the first part of the book in flashbacks.
This allows for a bit of an attitudinal update as well, not exactly modernising the story in an anachronistic way (like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, for example) but instead focusing on those aspects that reflect the beliefs of contemporary cinemagoers. Meg’s quest to be a published writer is a much stronger through-line here, and her various editors serve as totems of the male gatekeepers to equality. Jo and Amy’s stories contrast different expectations, with Watson’s Jo actually articulating that her choice to marry and have children is simply different and not lesser to Jo’s career.
The cast is amazing, especially Ronan as the ostensible lead. It’s like a more confident version of her Lady Bird character came back through time and was placed in Alcott’s Massachusetts. Watson’s performance is far more expected, and while she perfectly suits the role it also feels a bit of a one-note extension of the Hermione/Belle dynamic. Pugh continues a stellar year (following Fighting with My Family and Midsommar), showcasing her versatility. Scalon’s Beth, as with the source material, is mostly neglected save for a few critical scenes.
Laura Dern as the family’s matriarch is fierce, and completely commands her handful of scenes. Meryl Streep as rich Aunt March gives one of her best performances in years. Perhaps the weakest link is social media favourite Timothée Chalamet, with his central romantic figure a little too modern and out of step with the rest of the cast. Other surprises include Bob Odenkirk and an almost unrecognisable Chris Cooper as the two father figures. The latter’s relationship with Beth is both touching and heartbreaking, giving dimensionality to what could have been a throwaway narrative branch.
What’s ultimately remarkable about Gerwig’s LITTLE WOMEN is that it manages to be a faithful adaptation, filled with all the seemingly inconsequential squabbles and social follies of the book, but also a powerful statement for our century as well. The finale has its cake and eats it too, retaining Alcott’s expected denouement while acknowledging a sharply contemporary commentary on ‘traditional’ gender roles through the clever use of a metatextual bookend. It’s not just a great film adaptation, but one of the best films of the year.
2019 | US | DIRECTOR: Greta Gerwig | WRITERS: Greta Gerwig| CAST: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, Meryl Streep, Tracy Letts, Bob Odenkirk, Chris Cooper | DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Releasing (AUS)| RUNNING TIME: 132 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1 January 2020 (AUS)
