Wheatley's World: A Filmmaker in England

An article for WAXXX Magazine

In Ben Wheatley’s England, the countryside is a place where the occult lies, thinly-veiled, behind the façade of a bucolic paradise. In his latest film, written by frequent collaborator and spouse, Amy Jump, Wheatley allows his fascination with British folklore, a fascination that can be identified in each of his three other feature films, to take precedence in this tale of an unlikely band of tripping treasure hunters. Beginning in a council house in Brighton, it is possible to trace the evolution of a certain breed of unscrupulous figures as they set about ascribing their own warped sense of morality onto the world through the filmography of this incredibly productive filmmaker. Wheatley’s characters, in essence, can be found throughout British history manifesting at various times as hit-men in Sheffield, caravan enthusiasts in the Lake District, or, most recently, as renaissance men in A Field in England (2013).

Down Terrace (2009) is Wheatley’s first feature in which he introduced audiences to the convoluted logic that his characters often implement to defend their actions. In this film, the director’s presence is felt in his typically untypical approach to the genre he is about to take on. As such, Down Terrace is a crime film in which not an awful lot of crime takes place; that is, not outside of this circle of supposed gangsters. Opening with the image of a father and son, played by real-life father and son Robert and Robin Hill, leaving court after being acquitted for a crime we are never made fully aware of, the film develops into a character study of this blackly comic troupe of criminals and the paranoia that engulfs them. When this paranoia reaches boiling point the family unit, completed by a magnificent Julia Deakin as the omniscient matriarch, begin to wage war on those close to them before eventually turning on each other. Indeed, the scale of their self-delusion can be determined by the way these characters, after murdering the charismatic Michael Smiley, deem the death to have been selfishly brought on by Smiley’s character himself. As the murder toll increases, with Wheatley’s camera leaving the confined space of the terrace house very rarely, the drama becomes focused on the dynamics of this unusual, but in ways wholly recognisable family. One thing that is notable from this first offering is Wheatley’s use of music, with the drama pausing frequently as Bill (Robin Hill) plays archaic British folk songs that chime closely with the songs we hear from A Field in England’s 17^th-century soldiers.

For his second outing, Kill List (2011), Wheatley continues to keep his camera facing toward the British criminal underground that he presents us with in his debut. Where Down Terrace had its grounding in black comedy, however, Kill List introduces us to Wheatley’s distinguishable brand of horror. Whilst comparisons have been made with British horror classics such as The Wicker Man (1973), such analogies only prove partly true. Instead, the film plays out as a triptych of different genres; moving from the close-knit drama of domestic arguments and dinner parties, to the hit-man film draped in realism, before finally dealing in explicit horror made all the more effective by the film’s initial refusal to place its audience in an escapist world where the supernatural is allowed to exist. The result is one of the most intense cinematic experiences you could ask for, with Wheatley’s use of editing and expert handling of the genre allowing him to create a film that, despite including a modern-day cult that harks back to the British folklore, seems entirely plausible and free from artifice. Whereas Hollywood would no-doubt turn such a script into a film that is sold to the viewer as a piece of fantasy, Wheatley creates a film in which the horror seems suited to both the real world and the paganistic days which were thought to be long forgotten. It is a technique which has not been implemented so well since 1999’s Blair Witch Project. Here, however, it is Britain’s dark history and even darker secrets that, in Wheatley’s world, are never too far away from broaching on the present. The result is a very particular and terrifying brand of homemade horror.

Working from a script devised by the film’s stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, with additional material provided by Amy Jump, Sightseers (2012) sees Wheatley combine his love for comedy, one which can be traced through his television career working on shows such as Ideal and The Wrong Door, and his fascination with charismatic murderers. The set-up is entirely British; a pair of lovers set out on a caravanning holiday around the north of England, absorbing the culture of pencil and tramway museums that would drive anybody to mass murder. When the violence does arrive, it is Wheatley’s unflinching directorial style that provides the shock as he refuses to cut his camera away from horrific images in a bid to tap into the YouTube sensibility that he has admitted as being an influence on his filmmaking. The result is a combination of twisted comedy and stark horror that complement each other perfectly and signal once again the ease at which Wheatley is able to shift between different genres. As in Kill List, the vistas of the English countryside prove once more a troubling place in Wheatley’s world. The reason, offered by the auteur in a recent Q&A at Latitude festival, lies in recurring nightmares that he suffered from, born out of an uneasiness induced by the woods near his childhood Essex home. In his latest film, A Field in England, Wheatley traces this uneasiness back to the 17^th-century, a time when an entire class of forgotten people roamed the British countryside searching for, according to this film, an interesting combination of friendship and hallucinogens.

A Field in England is a monochrome Civil War film in which you will find no scenes of battle, connecting it quite interestingly with the criminality of Down Terrace. Evoking the godless symbolism of Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal, the film is guaranteed to etch many a memorable scene in the mind of the viewer; that is, of course, if one is able to keep hold of it. Warnings before the film begins regarding stroboscopic sequences do little to prepare you for the mind-blowing effects created by Wheatley and Jump’s remarkable editing, especially during the hallucination scenes caused by the consumption of some rather suspect mushrooms. If the countryside has been a place of danger up until this point in Wheatley’s career, it has now transcended that as the field in which this film takes place, reminiscent of Kaneto Shindo's terrifying Onibaba (1964), becomes very much a character of its own, warping the minds of this already quite twisted group of deserters led by Michael Smiley (Down Terrace, Kill List) and The League of Gentleman’s Reece Shearsmith. One scene that particularly confirms this film’s long-lasting impression on the viewer involves the scholarly Whitehead (Shearsmith) exiting Smiley’s tent, his face painted with one of the most demonically disturbing expressions that horror cinema has to offer. As well as innovative editing, Wheatley also makes use of the avant-garde technique of tableau vivant, capturing his actors in still motion as a means of cementing even further the absurdity of this truly bizarre trip into Britain’s past. Following on from the comparatively commercial Sightseers, the distributors of A Field in England, under Film 4’s newly revealed creative banner Film 4.0, opted to release the film in cinemas, on video-on-demand, on DVD, and on the Film 4 channel all at once; a suitably interesting distribution process for such a bold film as this. What’s more, the film’s executive producer, Anna Higgs, has confirmed that this release strategy has led to an increased amount of awareness that has actually seen more cinemas requesting the film, despite viewers having the option to watch it at home. Quite rightly so, too, as the film’s tagline promises a ‘trip into the past’ which, on the big screen, couldn’t be more vivid if you were in the field with a belly full of mushrooms yourself; which, on the grounds of this film, you want to steer well clear of. 

Review: The House I Live In

A review for Waxxx Magazine

Beginning with the personal story of Nannie Jeter, the Jarecki family’s housekeeper and friend, The House I Live In explores the destructive nature of drugs on both an intimate and national level. It is a subject matter defined by its capability to ruin the lives of those who have been unfortunate enough to become embroiled in it. In this documentary, Jarecki gives voice to not only the academics that have spent their lives researching the war on drugs, but the judges, police officers, drug dealers and users that have been central to it. Early in the film the writer of The Wire, David Simon, pithily addresses Jarecki’s central message: ‘what drugs haven’t destroyed, the war on drugs has.’ It is this destruction that Jarecki seeks to attack, confronting the way in which the war on the drugs has failed all those involved in it. Initially, the oppressive rhetoric was deployed by Richard Nixon in 1971 with the intention of gaining votes for the upcoming election. Forty years later, Jarecki shows how the so-called war on drugs remains fundamentally rooted in gain, both political and monetary, and not, in fact, in reducing the damaging effects of drugs. The result of this exploitation is what David Simon, who proves an eloquent and knowledgeable speaker, compellingly describes as ‘a holocaust in slow-motion’, were the victims are the lower classes that find themselves confined by the hermetic nature of America’s drug policy.

In an interview promoting the film in Los Angeles, Brad Pitt, who shares producer credits with Russell Simmons, John Legend and Danny Glover, described the war on drugs as ‘a charade.’ Looking at the overwhelming amount of money that has been spent, and more startlingly the lack of progress that has been achieved, it would be difficult to argue against him. In the forty years since Nixon waged an unrelenting attack on drugs, one that has cost one trillion dollars and has seen forty-five million arrests, nothing has changed. In reality, Jarecki suggests that ‘drugs are cheaper, purer, more available than ever before…and we have the largest prison population in the world.’ The documentary begs the question then: who exactly does the war on drugs serve? It evidently isn’t drug users, who are treated and sentenced as severely as murderers for an offence which many speakers in the film suggest should be treated as a public health issue, not a criminal one. Interviews with depleted police officers also reveal that the war isn’t serving their interests, with any faith in the strategy’s ability to take drugs off of the streets fading further the longer it goes on. The true benefactor, the documentary argues, is the capitalist system upon which America has laid its foundations. Since 1971, the number of offenders imprisoned for drug charges has increased twelvefold, yet illegal drug use continues to flourish. As a result, there is a wealth of potential prisoners waiting to serve their role in increasing the profits of the vast amount of corporations, ranging from private Taser gun manufacturers to phone companies, which have been built on the incredibly lucrative prison market.

Ultimately, David Simon acknowledges, ‘capitalism is fairly colour-blind’. Towards the film’s conclusion, Jarecki reveals how increasing numbers of white Americans, largely due to the emergence of methamphetamine, are being exposed to the stern and rigid drug sentences that have crippled black communities for decades. The link between the two communities and their fall into drug use is explicitly exposed in the film as a shared feeling of dejection. With no prospects, no future, and no income, drug dealing and drug use offers escape to lower class Americans that are struggling to find any existential meaning in their lives. By weaving in Nannie’s personal story of loss and frustration amidst the powerful polemic against the war on drugs, Jarecki delivers a thesis regarding the ineptitude of America’s drug policy that is certain to provoke thought. This is undoubtedly what the filmmaker has set out to do: expose the injustices of a futile system that has been operating for so long, and with such damaging effects, under the pretence of ridding America of a drug problem that has done nothing but grow.  

Review: The Place Beyond the Pines

A review for Waxxx Magazine

Derek Cianfrance wastes no time in capturing Ryan Gosling’s mythic abs as he opens his latest film, ambitious and mythic in tone, with the image of a pacing stunt driver confined to his small trailer, the billowing sounds outside those belonging to a funfair. Cianfrance’s camera doesn’t cut. Instead, we see Gosling stab his flick-knife into a wall, pick up his red jacket, slip on a Metallica vest and make his away across the carnival landscape. We follow from behind, the announcer calls the name of Handsome Luke and Gosling mounts his motorbike, the camera still doesn’t cut. Immediately there is a sense of importance, and The Place Beyond the Pines is definitely treated, and consequently feels spectacular and reverent as Cianfrance proceeds to tell a story of fatherhood amidst a cops and robbers narrative spanning over 15 years.

Despite receiving great critical acclaim at Sundance, Cianfrance’s first feature, Brother Tied, failed to pick up distribution. His second, and first outing with friend and subsequent colleague Ryan Gosling, had no trouble picking up distribution when Harvey Weinstein displayed interest. Blue Valentine went on to deliver awards for Michelle Williams in the Best Actress category whilst Cianfrance himself admits that it was the success of this film that allowed him to go on to make The Place Beyond the Pines, a film less about the faltering relationships of a modern day couple and more about the faltering relationships of modern day families. The story unfolds as a triptych. Gosling’s taciturn stunt driver, reminiscent of his role in Drive, is confronted upon his return to Schenectady, an upstate New York town with a name that translates from Mohawk to ‘the place beyond the pines’, by Romina (Eva Mendes) and the news that he has fathered an infant son. He wants to provide for his son, but as a friendly fugitive mechanic played by Ben Mendelsohn tells him, the only way to do so is by using his particular skill set. Unlike Liam Neeson and the deployment of his skill set in Taken, however, Luke is clearly affected by his foray into bank robbing, and the result is realism.

Consequently, Luke crosses paths with a fresh-faced Bradley Cooper, just out of law school and eager to make an impact on the New York police force which holds as much integrity as the one Al Pacino faces in Serpico. It comes as no surprise that Ray Liotta’s character, the frosty and domineering Deluca, is central to such corruption. Cooper and Gosling provide a strong basis for the film and yet, surprisingly, the film doesn’t falter in its third act which, after some tenuous expositional scenes, provides a satisfying, cathartic conclusion. Impressive parallel shots serve to enforce the link between the three stories and a score from Faith No More’s Mike Patton heightens the film’s grandeur. Cianfrance’s third feature film is certainly more ambitious than the character drama of Blue Valentine and is all the richer for it. With a running time of 140 minutes it doesn’t outstay its welcome and, instead, leaves you thirsting for whatever Cianfrance does next. With Gosling claiming to be taking a break from acting, he may well have found his new leading man in Bradley Cooper, an actor who has shown truly unexpected promise and talent since The Hangover.

Review: End of Watch

Film review for the Whistleblower

End of Watch is a cop-drama film with a thrilling difference. Through the use of public surveillance and handheld HD cameras, as well as those attached to the police cruiser, the viewer is thrust into the South Central LA landscapes where there is a real sense that danger is always looming. Written and directed by veteran of the genre David Ayer (Training Day, The Fast and the Furious), it seems that we’re getting something slightly original with this latest offering which really raises the bar for action films such as this.

The streets of LA take officers Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Zavala (Michael Peña) on a flash around the city with great pace. Routine traffic stops and runnings with local gang members give us a sense that these are two LAPD officers that can be trusted and liked by those on both sides of the law; holding the law of the street closer to their chest than that of the book. It’s a vision of the LAPD we have seen before from Ayers, a community driven police force which shares the values of the streets it patrols. The tone of the film changes, however, when Taylor and Zavala run up on a car full of drug money, jewel-encrusted weapons and gangsters, which consequently lead them into the world of the Mexican cartel. It is here that the film takes on an element of peril which up until now didn’t exist. Our confident and assured cops are now involved in shoot-outs with a group that operate above the law and, in true heroic fashion, they’re on their own.

Whilst this whistle stop tour of LA takes us to scenes which touch on implausible, a scene in which Zavala puts his gun down to fight with a gang member in order to earn the police respect comes to mind, it does so with such incredible urgency that there’s no time to linger on such trivialities. If the overly dramatic story and themes of friendship and brotherly love get all a bit too much, then you can count on this visceral style of filmmaking to hold your attention as the action unfolds – and with what pace it unfolds!  

Fire and Light: Tracing the cinematic desire

An article for Flash: Lancaster University Critical and Creative Journal

Man has long looked towards light, towards the glowing sun which is the giver of life, for many things – not least for artistic fulfilment. The primordial desire for the moving image which enchants so many of us in theatre houses around the world today is one which can be traced back through our history. Our cave-dwelling ancestors sought entertainment in a distinct form of proto-cinema that involved creating wonderful paintings on their cave walls which, by the light of a flickering fire within the cave, are animated into life. In his awe-inspiring 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, illustrious director Werner Herzog traces “the beginnings of the modern human soul” [1] to the Chauvet cave in the south of France where sophisticated drawings of mammoths, horses and lions hunting caught the imagination of early man.

In these caves there is an uncanny sense of shared consciousness with beings that once seemed so distant to us, twenty thousand years distant to be exact. Light was shown to give life in these caves, providing impressions of reality which aimed to satisfy our cinematic desire. Whilst these cave paintings can hardly be called cinema, they do show a fascination with the moving image that caught human curiosity and was never let go.

Technological restrictions meant that proto-cinema remained just that. The cinematic desire, however, can continue to be traced in our history. The projection of an object reality, that is the outside world, has been focused on by great thinkers such as Aristotle in Ancient Greece and Mozi in Ancient China who both made references to the camera obscura in their writings. This rudimentary ‘camera’ was placed inside a darkened room (where the properties of light can be most practically honed) with a hole in one side which light passed through, creating an inverted image of the object world before the onlooker. As time and technology progressed, an array of inventions was created with the aim of satisfying our cinematic desire; including the zoetrope and daguerreotype to name just two.

 Keith Cohen in Film and Fiction: the Dynamics of Exchange asserts that cinematic desire could only truly be realised “when the two essentials of motion pictures where at hand: the pictures (i.e. the photographic principle) and the motion (i.e. the means of mechanically synthesizing the discrete part of any action).”[2] The gradual perfection of the photographic medium in the nineteenth century gave birth to a cinema which projected movement, albeit within a fixed spatial frame at first, of workers leaving a factory[3], or a train pulling into a station.[4] This documentary style of filmmaking became synonymous with the Lumière brothers (a suitable name deriving from the French word for ‘light’) and led to a wealth of important works rooted in reality, such as Herzog’s film cited here. It was magician Georges Méliès, however, that first understood the creative capacity of cinema. By use of camera tricks and elaborate sets Méliès created a cinema in which time and space were at the hands of the filmmaker. With this came the birth of modern cinema and an unprecedented acceleration in the technology of the medium (sound, colour, widescreen, 3D…) and the symbolic language of film which engrosses us all.

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[1] Werner Herzog, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Creative Differences, 2011).

[2] Keith Cohen, Film and Fiction: the Dynamics of Exchange (Yale University Press, 1979).

[3] Lumière, La sortie des usines Lumière (1895).

[4] Lumière, L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1896).

Preview: The Master

Film preview for The Whistleblower.

The Master sees Paul Thomas Anderson return with his latest film since 2007’s hugely successful There Will Be Blood, a film which cemented Anderson for many as the filmmaker of his generation. With praise already rushing in from early press and festival screenings, this auteur looks to be on course for even more Academy Award nominations with his story of cults, transition and unsettlement in post-war America.  

Anderson’s sixth feature film follows Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a Navy officer sent home from combat in the Second World War on the grounds of psychological instability. Struggling with settling back into a life chasing the great American dream and developing a serious addiction to his home-made hooch, Quell becomes a drifter looking for something certain in the mysterious modernity of America. All is looking lost for Quell until he finds himself, in a drunken stupor, on the steamboat of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a self-titled ‘writer, doctor, nuclear physicist, theoretical philosopher [and]… above all, a man’. In this meeting of chance, Freddie finds cause and purpose, and Dodd finds a volunteer to exercise his psychological theories. Although Anderson denies the film is directly about Scientology, there is a clear connection between Dodd, the leader of a philosophical movement known as ‘The Cause’, and Scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard.  

With Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood providing an original score and cinematography being handled by Mihai Malaimare Jr., who has worked with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, The Master is going to be an unmissable film. Especially for anyone who wants an alternative to Hollywood’s latest offerings from a filmmaker who has a complete understanding of his trade.

Blocked: why do festivals fail?

An article published by Waxxx Magazine

If the sheer amount of festivals which have sprung up in various fields and cities around the UK tells us anything, it’s that there is something about music festivals that we just can’t get enough of. Another thing that us British can’t get enough of, if stereotypes are anything to go by, is queing – a phenomenon which we have become known for taking quite seriously. The two combined, however, led to disaster on Friday 6 July as Bloc Weekend was shut down, before leading the organizers to declare administration, due to overcrowding that brought London Pleausre Gardens to a stand still. The event was cancelled on its opening evening by the organizers at the festival’s first time in London who, in a statement released hours later, insisted that ‘safety of those attending is our primary concern at all times.’

Looking back at Bloc, a festival which provided an eclectic line-up of artists across the field of electronic music including Flying Lotus, Four Tet, and an appearance from Snoop Dogg, it is difficult to see where things went wrong. Those attending the event on Friday evening blamed incomplete, or not yet started, construction as the cause of Bloc’s problems which would only have added to claims made by the Metrpolitan Police that the rain created heavy congestion in certain areas of the site. One thing seems certain, however, it was not the problem which some festivals have had in the last few years of simply not receiving enough ticket sales. In fact, weekend Bloc tickets had sold out prior to the event whereas some festivals this year, such as Knebworth’s Sonisphere, failed to attract the attention which they had done in the past.

What’s more, Sonisphere isn’t alone as newly emerging festivals vow to offer a unique experience which can rival the more traditional music festivals. With rising ticket prices and rocketing costs for food and drink at many events, it really isn’t any surprise that the music festivals which offer, well just that, are suffering. It’s a decline that has been noted by Glastonbury’s Michael Evis who feared the demise of his festival in the next ‘three or four years’, asserting his belief that ‘people have seen it all with festivals. They want something else.’[1] In a time when people have to choose more carefully what it is they want from their festival experience, it is the likes of Bestival and Lattitude, festivals which offer a thorough bill of entertainment on their roster as well as a wide range of music, which are seeing a rise in their ticket sales year after year.

The competition from abroad is also a factor in the decline of homegrown festivals as the likes of Croatia’s Hideout or Outlook, or Spain’s Innovation in the Sun don’t have to contend with the great British weather; the severity of which brought an untimely end to this year’s Creamfields in Cheshire. Music festivals have become summer holidays to many and the appeal of music in the sun, in a different country, has appealed to many who dream of hanging up their wellies and escaping the mud. That said, Bloc did sell a substantial amount of tickets as a result of offering an unflinching bill of music. What failed this festival was poor organisation and planning as they ventured from their usual venue, Pontin’s holiday park, to London Pleasure Gardens. The poigniant point to take from this, perhaps, is that in a climate where many smaller festivals are struggling to keep up, it is important for those which do receive interest to get it right.

After all, interest in the British music festival certainly isn’t a lost cause. With such a large amount on offer ticket drops are to be expected as competition rises and, more importantly, variety in our music festivals increases. Such variety is something the British festival scene can be proud of as events that offer an array of talent stand up well alongside more specialized festivals such as Creamfields or Download, ensuring that, with careful planning, any festival-goer can have a unique experience in the UK. Even after tickets sold out for this year’s Bestival, which coincidentally was lucky enough to be drenched in sunshine, Rob da Bank made the decision to stream live sets of artists such as The xx, New Order and Stevie Wonder on Youtube, making Bestival the first British festival to provide a service which the likes of Tomorrowland and Coachella have been doing for some time, exposing our love of music to the world. The popularity of the music festival may be under threat, but with the likes of Glastonury, Reading and Leeds, and a wealth of festivals which have gained an international reputation for their successes, the British festival is far from dead.

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[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/15/uk-festivals-bubble-burst