BFI London Film Festival: Part One

At some point in the recent past that my memory has cast to the shadows, I completed an application to volunteer at the 2014 BFI London Film Festival. About a fortnight ago, I received a phone call informing me that I had passed their meticulous selection process, perhaps due to my overwhelming flexibility having just completed an MA. Though the position was unpaid - I’m yet to pass any selection process that leads to any form of monetary gain - I did receive a volunteer’s pass which granted me access to the festival’s catalogue of 248 films.  For the first week of the festival, I had an obligation to assist (and had a great time in assisting) at the delegate centre at the BFI’s Stephen Street location. Following that, the festival was my oyster, and I caught fifteen films, many of which I may never have been exposed to if it wasn’t for the far-reaching selection of films on show.

This was my first film festival, and I quickly got into the swing of seeing three films in a day. The first that I caught was the latest offering from Taxidermia director György Pálfi. Freefall, presented under the festival’s Laugh strand, showcases an old woman as she stumbles onto the roof of her apartment building determined to jack it all in. When she hurdles herself from the building only to crash unharmed onto the solid pavement below, though not without damage to her well-worn spectacles, she does what anyone with a determined death wish would do: she gets up, and tries again. The film then follows Auntie (Piroska Molnár) as she climbs once more up her staircase to heaven, diverging from her plight at each floor to offer an episodic satire of contemporary life. The film’s relationship with its soundtrack, comprised of the music of Amon Tobin (who provided an original score for Taxidermia), is astounding in the sense of discomfort and entrancement it creates, especially as the camera dissolves through each door and into the private lives of the apartment block’s residents.

Another film which focuses on the physical struggle of escaping from life is Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild. Rather than ascending a staircase with intermissions from one’s neighbours, however, Reece Witherspoon is set on traversing the Pacific Crest Trail in this true story of a woman looking to escape the interrupting force of her own past. The result is a truly affecting work that stands unrivalled in Witherspoon’s filmography.  Similar to Vallée’s previous film, Dallas Buyers Club, the story is one of survival that, though packing serious emotional weight, is handled with a dexterity that allows genuine humour and hope to rise up from it. It is a sentiment completely at odds, however, with the survival story of Augusta (Brit Marling) and Louise (Hailee Steinfeild) in the disappointingly turgid American Civil War film, The Keeping Room.  Selected in the festival’s Official Competition for Best Feature, Harry Brown director Daniel Barber takes an intriguing script by Julia Hart, only to obscure it through portentous, supposedly atmospheric filmmaking. Each dramatic moment in this Black Listed script is rendered flaccid by the director’s approach, with one scene in particular invoking the titular keeping room arriving completely out of nowhere and to diminished effect. Thankfully, this was by far the worse film I saw at the festival, and though it stuttered in its storytelling, the visual landscape provided an entertainment of its own.

Another equally beguiling landscape is the South African locations used by Dogme director Kristian Levring to establish nineteenth-century America in his Danish Western, The Salvation. The festival was ripe with films that played with genre conventions. The Keeping Room looked to reflect on the American Civil War through the scope of gender identity, the Chinese thriller Black Coal, Thin Ice experimented with narrative and camera placement, and The Salvation  contained a level of invention that elevated it beyond a pastiche of the Western. Speaking after the film, Levring’s love of the Western genre was palpable. Citing Ford, Eastwood and Leone as influences, Levring creates a setting that registers as familiar, though not worn. Populating his frontier, we have the wronged Jon (Mads Mikkelsen), the formidable outlaw (Jeffery Dean Morgan), his ex-footballer henchman (Eric Cantona), and the silenced woman (Eva Green). As intimated, however, twists in the script and remarkable cinematography by Jens Schlosser ensure that the revenge story is engaging throughout, and worth seeking whether a fan of the genre, or not.

Impressive levels of invention in the script can also be found in the solidly-acted, The Drop. Adapted from his own short story, Dennis Lehane’s first screenplay (he also wrote the source novels from which Shutter Island and Gone Baby Gone are based) is as full of grit and intrigue as one would expect from this writer’s pen. Brought to the screen by Michaël R. Roskam (Bullhead) and starring Tom Hardy and the late James Gandolfini, The Drop will provide a real pleasure for anyone with a penchant for crime cinema. Hardy once again shows that he is the master of accents (the transition from Welsh contractor in Locke to a Brooklyn bartender, executed here to perfection) and his character, Bob, is one shrouded in just enough mystery to keep the viewer’s attention transfixed. Add to this the draw of relishing in one last Gandolfini performance, and The Drop is a recipe seasoned for greatness – at least for those who are enthralled by a well-written crime story with a gratifyingly revealing final act.

With that said, if you are looking for an ending that obscures rather than reveals, then the Chinese film Black Coal, Thin Ice may prove more suitable. Having picked up the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, Diao Yinan’s latest offering since the acclaimed Night Train arrived at LFF with a reputation for being of the more puzzling blend of thriller; more in the mould of Michael Haneke than M. Night Shyamalan. Concerning itself with the discovery of various body parts across the country, the film follows a detective (Liao Fan) whose alcoholism and ineptitude are more prevalent aspects of his character than his investigative skills. Containing several beautiful, and some outright shocking, shots, Diao Yinan exhibits a directorial style that is beguiling on a technical level and, as is exemplified in the mysterious last scene, on a narrative level also. It is a film that demands discussion; though don’t expect to arrive at anything close to a satisfactory conclusion.