The Green Light

Ever since I saw Baz Lurhmann's adaptation of The Great Gatsby I've been obsessed with figuring out exactly why I didn't like it. I hadn't read the book in a while, and yesterday I reread it and now I think I understand why - it's because Baz and I both made the mistake of thinking of both Nick and Gatsby as tragic heroes, two naive young men ruined by the excess of the Jazz Age.

I identify extremely closely with Nick. The opening lines of the novel really true with me. I feel as though my inability to assert myself while among unwanted company and my fear of confrontation means I often listen to unwarranted and unsolicited confidences. I also end up in situations I don't want to be in out of fear of offending someone and my shyness in strange situations means I end up sitting through weird events unable to really say anything. And perhaps I was feeling sorry for myself, because I started to feel that The Great Gatsby was a cautionary tale about an easygoing young man who, through the thoughtless actions of one group of people, is reduced to a negative, judgemental, critical person. He sees Gatsby punished for his dogged pursuit of a dead dream and it makes him sick.

But upon rereading I was reminded why I identify so closely with Nick Carraway and found that I was wrong to have romanticised him so much, to the point that I'm now embarrassed for all the times I bemoaned Nick's fate even more than Gatsby's. Because Nick isn't a naive, forgiving young man when we meet him - he's trying to tell us that following a piece of his father's sage advice lead to all of this trouble. He thinks now his father's advice stemmed more from a natural snobbery than any real need to understand other human beings and as a consequence, Nick was unwittingly pulled into the worlds of rich men afraid of losing their kingdoms and revealing their weaknesses to someone who didn't really want to know.

The Buchanans, Jordan Baker, Gatsby - they all use Nick to serve their own purposes, and whether Nick realises this early on I'm not sure, but I think some part of him always has a sense of Deja vu, that he's been here before. That though he might be at a fantastic party with fantastic people drinking fantastic champagne, he's still somewhere else pretending to be asleep while forced to hear too much information about someone he doesn't really know. Not only that, but he knew that this 'sharing' would be done in such a false, melodramatic way. Nick likes to believe he's that person who refuses to judge people immediately ("Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth."), but it seems as though it ends up being more trouble than it's worth.

He likes Daisy, Jordan and Gatsby and this is why he forgives them those moments he sees straight through them, Gatsby most of all. He's drawn to this man whose speech "just missed being absurd," his romantic dream of having built a magnificent life all for one girl, and his neverending hospitality. But it all seems so shoddy, and as a consequence it falls down so easily. The girl was never that interested - once all of the other girls started getting married and having fabulous lives Daisy grew impatient and rather than wait for Gatsby she married the first rich man who caught her eye. Gatsby's entire life is built on one invention after another; he's a poor farmer's son who runs away; joins a rich old sailor whose scheming wife pulls the rug out from under him when the sailor dies; he lies to a rich girl in order to get what he wants; he builds his empire on gambling and bootlegging and lies about it. Gatsby must have honestly believed that this was all just a shortcut to success: once he had Daisy in his arms again he could start a real, proper life and be a gentleman. But as Tolkien said, shortcuts make long delays.

And the trouble was, he never would have that life. And just as he wasn't the man he liked to think he was, Daisy wasn't the girl he thought she was, either. It suddenly seems obvious, perhaps maybe not to Nick, that none of Gatsby's guests turn up to his funeral. He never cared about those parties or those guests; it was just a desperate need to be loved by someone who never showed up to them, and when she did she hated them and he cut them and all his guests out just like that. Why Nick expected any loyalty only serves to show how much he actually liked Gatsby despite the fact he "disapproved of him from beginning to end." But Nick couldn't help but be drawn to these people (even when he's angry with Jordan he's still half in love with her), which is probably why the events of those months leave him feeling like the whole of the East will haunt him for ever.

There are a few moments when Nick sees straight through all of them: he guesses at Tom's desperate need to assert control over his life at that first dinner party; he figures out Jordan's a liar who will do anything to maintain her facade of bored iciness; that Daisy has perfected the art of seducing everyone to get what she wants. It's in the way she pretends at being cynical and that she stays with a man who so obviously cheats on her - it's how she escapes the reputation she probably deserves. This is also why she will never leave Tom for Gatsby. With Tom she's assured protection or at the very least, a status akin to being a victim. When she realises Gatsby's good name can be so easily torn away with a few well-placed questions, she sees there's no way she'll be protected from the scandal of running off with a 'bootlegger.'

Which I suppose leads me back to Baz. With the exception of Strictly Ballroom and a teen crush on Leonardo DiCaprio that resulted in a temporary obsession with Romeo + Juliet, I'm not a huge fan of Baz Lurhmann's films. There's just something I can't warm to - the excess, the frantic pacing, the theatrical acting. It's just not my jam. Maybe it will be one day. But I can't say his style doesn't lend itself to Gatsby's tale of excess, because in a way it does. All of the characters in one way or another embody that excess and that melodramatic flair. But I think it only works if you assume that The Great Gatsby is a romantic tragedy, which I'm sure can be read as such. But I don't, not at all, and I think it took seeing the film to remind me that for me at least it's not a romantic tragedy, and Nick isn't a poor, naive sap whose life is ruined. It's why the framing device of having Nick in a sanatorium, encouraged to work through his anger, alcoholism and depression to write about Gatsby just doesn't work for me. I actually hate it. And it's why I feel that even when the film is incredibly faithful to the book it manages to get it wrong, somehow. Perhaps I feel the spirit the film is trying to capture is the wrong one. And for me, the moment Nick has while drunk at Tom and Myrtle Wilson's secret apartment in the city seems, to me, to give it all away:

"I wanted to get out and walk southward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

Nick isn't drawn into this world, unwilling to leave. He's pulled in, always trying to leave, a tiny part of him wanting to stay but feeling as though he shouldn't. His disconnection from the events seems to stem not only from his father's advice but also from his literary nature (he wrote in college and hopes to take it up again by documenting the time he spent in the East), and perhaps that's why I feel so much like Nick Carraway is my spirit animal. But it's also the reason Nick would never be in a sanatorium - he always knows he's not really part of that world. He's the only one who ever seems to work, who ever has a sense of the need to work hard to achieve something. He likes that world, he has fun, but he never feels like he's fully engaged in it. There's never a sense that he entirely likes any of these people. Guests he has fun with at one party reveal themselves to be self-destructive bores at the next. His descriptions of some of them suggest disdain or indifference, momentarily brightened by a certain manner of speaking, or an unexpected act of valour, or a realisation that they genuinely believe what they're doing is right. He despises Daisy and Tom's actions but he can't bring himself to hate them. He remembers, "without resentment, that Daisy hadn't sent a message or a flower." When he meets Tom some time later he refuses to shake his hand and tells him off, but when he hears Tom's side of the story he realises that he will never change Tom's mind and doesn't see the point of bearing a grudge. He even concedes, in a way, that Jordan Baker nails his character the last time they speak:

"'You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.'"

He can't even tell her she's wrong, replying, "'I'm thirty,' I said. 'I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour.'"

I suppose Nick can be accused of being an unreliable narrator, or being reprehensible in his actions, and I can see that Baz has softened the blow by making him a little tragic. I suppose to me, however, it feels like a cop-out. Nick's not perfect; it's obvious his detachment from the events can make him seem a little cold and unforgiving, but I feel that Nick is deeply affected by what happened, but in his own way. I think this is his apology for pretending to be forgiving when deep down he isn't. Maybe he feels that he might not be much different from them after all, especially after Jordan's reprimand. He could be unreliable, or secretly in love with Gatsby, or an arsehole, but putting him in a sanitorium feels too melodramatic. The writing in and of itself is the therapy - Nick doesn't need any outside encouragement to think of it in this way because he already has that literary bent.

Perhaps it's never so obvious that Baz has perhaps misjudged Nick Carraway than it is at the end of the film. Maguire's delivery of the final paragraph of the novel seems to show a misunderstanding, or rather a need to think better of, Nick's character. He talks of infinite hope early in the novel but is sceptical it can ever be achieved. And rather than Gatsby being a celebration of infinite hope, he's proof for Nick of its non-existence:

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning -
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

We'll endlessly pin our hopes on the future, assured that tomorrow is that mythical day when everything we've ever wanted to happen will come to fruition, never realising that while we're looking ahead we're desperately trying to drag the past with us and never succeeding because of this dim belief that what we wanted back then will happen soon, and more to the point, that we'll still want it even now. I can't really think of anything more depressing than that, and I get the sense that Luhrmann and Maguire think that perhaps Nick feels a little better about this than we do. That said, the film's ending is quite affecting, if it weren't for that narration and Luhrmann's constant need to remind us of the story's literary roots by scattering text across the screen as though they're enchanted stars. But there is much to like there, if you can enjoy what film adaptations are - the filmmaker's subjective interpretation of the book's essence. It's not always the same as yours, and it's not always a well-made film, but that doesn't mean filmmakers should stop trying. I suppose my main concern that Tobey Maguire was the wrong choice to play Nick even stems from my interpretation of his character - and a relatively passive protagonist like Nick Carraway goes against every screenwriting rule in the book, so it was never going to be an easy task.

I suppose all of this really only leaves me with one question: if I identify more with this colder, less passionate, more detached Nick Carraway, I wonder what I think of myself now?

Hysteria (Tanya Wexler, 2011)

If Art’s primary function is to provide comment on contemporary society and ensure the tradition of passing down historical knowledge via storytelling, then it seems necessary that the cinema engage in presenting major historical developments that lead to societal or institutional change via an entertaining narrative. Recent examples would include A Flash of Genius (Marc Abraham, 2008), The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010), and The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011).

Hysteria, directed by Tanya Wexler and starring Hugh Dancy, Jonathan Pryce, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Felicity Jones, and Rupert Everett, is a worthy addition. Dancy is Mortimer Granville, a young doctor fascinated by the scientific developments taking place in London in 1880. It’s a pity that he seems to be the only one. After losing many jobs due to his crackpot ideas about ‘germ theory,’ he accepts a job with Dr Robert Dalrymple (Pryce), an expert in the diagnosis and treatment of Hysteria, a malady experienced exclusively by women. When Dr Granville proves extremely good at, erm, ‘handling,’ his patients, Dr Dalrymple promises future ownership of the practice, and Dalrymple’s youngest daughter Emily (Jones). Meanwhile, his elder daughter Charlotte (Gyllenhaal) causes much disruption to Granville’s life and eventually his heart.

This film is an entertaining and extremely amusing interpretation of the invention of the vibrator in the treatment of women with ‘hysteria,’ an impairment thought to be brought on by an ‘overactive uterus.’ But gender politics rule this film: here, women are thought by men to be mentally unstable because of their very genitalia. Our protagonist, Granville, is forced (often literally) to examine women and their various qualities. When given the choice between the ‘ideal woman’ in the form of the genteel Emily and the ‘hysterical woman’ in the form of the volatile Charlotte, he comes to see that both of these representations of women in Victorian England are fictional. Both women are intelligent, strong and resourceful and never regard one another suspiciously in the competition for Granville’s affections. It’s relatively rare to find a film in which both women are equally suitable for the male suitor – yet the conventions of the romantic comedy means the audience will know who Granville will end up with quite early in the piece.


Both women, and the women who visit Dr Dalrymple, seem more than ready for a personal revolution that leads to a societal one. Granville’s invention essentially becomes the catalyst for this change to occur. Hysteria’s message is that when men put women’s pleasure first, great things can happen. Amen.

Hysteria is now screening at Tower Cinemas Newcastle.

Where Do We Go Now?

Year: 2011

Director: Nadine Labaki

How will we cope? How will we cope? We're women. Now please stop asking stupid questions.

- Made in Dagenham (Nigel Cole, 2010)

The Melodrama or ‘Woman’s Film’ is identified as such by its focus on women and the domestic sphere. Often concerning lost or unrequited love, the Melodrama is essentially about women in love.

Et maintenant, on va où (Where Do We Go Now?) is the story of a small village in Lebanon where outlying areas have been ravaged by violence between Christian and Muslim communities. The village itself is half Christian and half Muslim, and has seen more than its fair share of violence.

The women of the village try their best to keep the men civil, but when tensions threaten to erupt they take matters further by employing a group of Ukrainian dancers to ‘get stuck’ in the village. Eager to please these newcomers, the men turn to mush. But how long will this scheme work?

This is a woman’s film in the very best sense. These are incredibly strong women willing to do whatever it takes for love. Here this love is a love for their husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers, and it is as fun to watch as it is frustrating as these men push the limits of these women’s love as far as they can go.

It’s the mark of a good film that can tell the story of a particular group of people in a way that is still relevant and relatable for a global audience and Labaki has crafted an exquisite film. These women are entirely relatable, not just for other women but for men as well. It’s an engaging story told in a heartfelt way – by turns hilarious and devastating, and never boring. It’s hard to find any fault at all; even the unexpected musical numbers are a delight. Reportedly earning a five-minute standing ovation at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, a crowd renowned for being hard to impress, Where Do We Go Now? is a beautiful exploration of gender, religion and love and well worth a viewing.

Where Do We Go Now? opens Thursday June 28 at Tower Cinema Newcastle on June 25.

Anton Chekhov's The Duel

Year: 2010
Director: Dover Koshashvili


Based on Chekhov’s 1891 Novella, Anton Chekhov’s The Duel is the story of Laevsky (Adam Scott), an idle civil servant who spends his days drinking, sleeping and playing cards, much to the annoyance of colleague Von Koren (Tobias Menzies). Laevsky is a man who has tired of his mistress Nadya (Fiona Glascott) and wishes to leave her. He has received important news regarding her husband but fears to tell her, worried it will seal his fate with her forever.

It shares similarities with two other European novels also written in the late 1800s: The Kill by Emil Zola, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. All three works share a similar concern with questions of marriage, social impropriety and the idle rich’s destructive pursuit of pleasure. Unlike those other novels, however, in which those who commit social transgressions are punished, in The Duel it seems all that’s needed is a jolt or catalyst to make the characters see the error of their ways. But does it lead to a positive new perspective or does it merely allow for the acceptance of their fate?

Koshashvili’s adaptation is a very self-assured work, taking full advantage of Paul Sarossy’s stunning cinematography. The seaside town of Caucasus is brought to life in their capable hands and they make excellent use of the screen space, filling it without cluttering it, drawing our eye to important details but never forcing it. Andrew Scott is excellent as the wayward Laevsky. He plays Laevsky’s mounting hysteria at the thought of marrying Nadya perfectly, never resorting to cliché.

This is a slow burn and the pacing may frustrate some. Yet it perfectly reflects the characters’ inner turmoil - as their frustration grows, so too does the film lead to its climax. Here the duel doesn’t simply refer to a physical battle – it is a war between our conflicting desires: love and lust; civilisation and violence; responsibility and pleasure. Which side wins and for how long is left for us to question.

Anton Chekhov’s The Duel is now showing at Tower Cinemas Newcastle.

The Zombie World Around Us

1. Cardio
2. Double tap
3. Beware of bathrooms
4. Seatbelts
6. Cast iron skillet
7. Travel light
8. Get a kickass partner
12. Bounty paper towels
15. Bowling Ball
17. Don't be a hero (later, 'Be a Hero')
18. Limber up
21. Avoid strip clubs
22. When in doubt, know your way out
29. The buddy system
31. Check the back seat
32. Enjoy the little things


We know most of the rules of Zombieland. We also know the old rules of the zombie canon, e.g. you must destroy the head or the brain, and if you’re bitten, you’re dead. We also know recent films have sought to break some or all of those rules. But what are the rules of the Zombie Universe, the universally acknowledged truths that will make for the perfect zombie film?


1. The cause of the Zombie outbreak has to reflect contemporary fears
In the midst of the Cold War, the zombie outbreak came from space. In recent years fear of stem cell research and medical experimentation on animals has resulted in a global outbreak. In the modern age, our fear of infection (swine flu, avian flu, any kind of flu) informs the cause of the post-apocalyptic nightmare. The idea of zombies is ridiculous, but that it could happen from something relatively plausible such as an epidemic, or pandemic, or space junk falling to Earth makes for some uncomfortable viewing. And that’s what we’re striving for.


2. Individual survivors must band together to face the zombie hordes
In scenarios like a zombie apocalypse, it’s the most unlikely that survive. Recluses too afraid to leave the house, gun-toting rednecks bent on vengeance, geeks used to avoiding a beating at lunch every day, kids from broken homes used to managing on their own, coma patients who miss the apocalypse. This isn’t always a good fit when several people think they should be in charge and one or two don’t let anyone be in charge of them. We at home know that their best chance of survival is sticking together, but it takes them a while to realise. And usually one of them ends up being killed by someone in the group. Group tension is usually required somewhere in the middle, when the tension brought about by the survivors’ immediate need to survive wears off a little.


3. Zombies shouldn’t run
In recent years zombies have been working on their personal fitness and are now capable of sprinting toward their victims. But this seems counter to the deeper fears zombies play on, namely, Death. Slow, inevitable, ever-present death. You can avoid it for a while, but gradually it will creep up on you. And I’m not alone in this thinking. In 2008, Simon Pegg lamented the end of the slow-moving zombie in his article, ‘The Dead and the Quick,’. That they now move faster does serve a purpose, however, which leads to the next rule.


4. Zombies need to be scary all the time
This appears to be a no-brainer, pardon the pun. But after the initial shock of seeing the Undead and discovering they can be killed, people may start to think they can survive this apocalypse business. So you need to remind people that zombies are still terrifying reminders of a painful death. But how? Usually a group attack will do the trick, but this will become boring. Another trick is revealing the band of survivors’ current hideout is unsafe. One of the best ways to remind people that zombies are terrifying, however, is having their loved ones transformed into the living dead. There’s nothing more gruesome than being eaten by your own family.


5. Guns
You need ‘em. But you should also have a shovel, club, or crossbow on hand. Or even a toaster oven or vinyl collection. We’re normally nervous about guns, and zombie films often suggest that they do come in handy sometimes. Gun control is an issue in itself, but the primary goal of this element of the zombie film is to illustrate that the rules change when society breaks down and what we’re scared to admit to ourselves is that the first thing we’ll probably reach for in the event of a global zombie outbreak is some form of weapon.


The idea of genre is that it’s a way of telling a story in a particular way and using certain codes and conventions to address particular themes and affect the audience in a certain way. It’s an easily recognisable structure that informs the audience what it’s about before they see it so that they can decide whether or not they’ll enjoy it. The zombie genre is technically a sub-genre of the horror genre and as such, it’s a way in which filmmakers can address the fears that are held in contemporary society, and a chance for the audience to reflect on them and examine them.


If the aim is to remind an audience of the things they fear most, then the zombie film (like other all horror films) has to consistently scare the hell out of its audience. And how? By following the above rules. It’s all about visual storytelling and creating the tension that allows for a visceral reaction to the themes addressed within the film or television series.


The following films (and one television series) follow these rules relatively consistently and are thus my pick as the best of the subgenre that I’ve seen:


Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)

Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978)

28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002)

Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)

The Walking Dead (Frank Darabont, 2010 - )


Though I love it dearly, I have left Zombieland (Rubin Fleischer, 2009) off this list purely because I don’t think it follows my rules perfectly and because it’s not scary. It totally wins everything else, because of Bill Murray’s cameo.

Adoxography: Skilled writing on an unimportant subject

In keeping with the theme of last week, I feel that sometimes, the title of this particular post could easily apply to me. I often wonder what the term is for skilled speaking on an unimportant subject.

I've been pulled into the world of buzzwords, procedures, processes, customer service, etc, and I find myself dabbling in adoxography less and less. And it pains me. Because my writing on those subjects isn't that skilled.

After reading interviews with Eli Roth and thinking he was going to reinvent the horror film because he's a filmmaker who really knows his generic conventions and therefore his films will be awesome, and being subsequently disappointed (you know I love you, Roth. Right?) I realised that perhaps it's true: critics talk better than they film. The exception to that rule is of course the critics of Cahiers du Cinema who would go on to create the Nouvelle Vague. But apart from them, who else? Scorsese is a film historian - does that count, I wonder?

My directorial debut (student of course) required me to go into detail about my infleunces and what I wanted the film to communicate and I think that what I wrote about the film promised something I ultimately couldn't deliver. And I remembered that my last project for my degree in Australia was much the same - my exegesis (document of creative practice and creative process in regard to a particular work) was about genre and genre transformation and if you hadn't seen the film you'd probably think it was some amazing work. The term 'new Simon Pegg' might be thrown around (a gal can dream, can't she?). But it wasn't. We saved it from being a complete disaster but in the end I was still embarrassed to show it to my peers in Manchester. Which brings me back to the subject: is my own analysis of my work simply a form of adoxography?

I've started reading yet another book and hopefully I'll finish this one (and then finish Brideshead Revisited, Nausea, The Age of Reason, The Brothers Karazmazov, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and Mrs Dalloway). It's called Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh. As a lover of fiction and hence buying it in its most accessible and economic form (cheapskate) - it's a Popular Penguin edition (you know, the orange and white one you can pick up for a tenner while lamenting the fact the prettier edition next to it in Borders is almost three times the price?) and it had a little bio of Waugh. The thing that caught my attention was a quote from Mr Waugh himself, which is the following:

"I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. I have no technical psychological interest. It is drama, speech and events that interest me."

What I think he was saying here is not that character is of no consequence to him in his writing, but more that he writes as someone with an interest in the structure of how we communicate - that is, it is the structure of the novel that primarily moves him; language, words, sentences, chapters. Psychology and motivation are secondary, but nonetheless important.

Which made me happier about the way in which I approach my own work. I'm often inspired by the language of film before characters. I like to place my characters in a particular film world and the filmmakers I admire all use their films primarily as an invetigation of the structure of film just as much as the stories and the characters who inhabit that world; Hitchcock, Tarantino, Scorsese, and Wright in particular.

And it is rather nice to be able to say to people, 'well, my approach to my work is in much the same vein as the likes of Evelyn Waugh.' Because I'm white.

Waugh has given some delicious delicacies for thought, but the advice I think I always come back to came not from a famous novellist or groundbreaking filmmaker (yet!) but from a friend of mine in Manchester,a fellow writer who helped make me realise that writing is my passion. Whenever I told her I was stuck on a scene she would say what do you want it to say?

Anyone who knows me will say I have too much to say - maybe that's my problem and I always wonder if what I'm saying is actually of any value in this world, but I'll say it anyway. And I figure that if I'm speaking the language of film, which is primarily visual, at least I'll be saying it without opening my great big trap of a mouth.

"I love you, man": The Bromantic Comedy

Oh. Em. JESUS.

I was going through my posts and I discovered I'd written a little about the bromance in film before (I recently wrote a list of the best ones in honour of Robert Pattinson needing a good bro in the wake of his embarrassingly public cuckolding at the hands of Kristen Stewart and Ruper Sanders.

I wrote this ages ago and for some reason it didn't post and I was devastated and too tired to start again so I wrote another post about it all (how self-reflexive) and I. JUST. FUCKING. FOUND. IT.

I also noticed that I didn't even finish it. Geez. And I also noticed that I thought I was the first person to use the term 'romantic comedy.' What a fucking moron.

Here goes:

One of the main theses of the late, great Robin Wood was that the goal of critical film analysis was to examine a film from more than approach, in order "to suggest something of the complex interaction of ideology, genre, and personal authorship that determines the richness, the density of meaning, of the great Hollywood masterpieces."

And I think that ole Woodsy was onto something, and not only that, I think there is a meaning to be found within not just the great Hollywood masterpieces, but also some of the recent 'blockbusters' and films considered 'below' the high purpose of critical analysis - I believe in my very half-hearted research into something one of my lecturers once told the class I stumbled upon an article championing indie films over blockbusters because it was so difficult to apply Wood's approach to formulaic and repetitive commercial films. Pretty sure Wood would turn in his grave if he knew - considering the Hollywood films theorists like Bordwell, Thompson and his good self developed a particular set of patterns and formulas to communicate certain ideologies. Massive fail for you, modern film critic.

You may have noticed recently that there have been more than a few films that would initially present themselves as 'guy movies.' My examples are films like Step-Brothers, Role Models, Superbad, The Hangover, and I Love You, Man. Films that feature little to no female characters, and if there any they're either screaming harpies hellbent on crushing the male characters' soul or objects of sexual obssession.

But are they really? On the one hand you could argue that yes, these women are symbols of the hideously narrow view of femininity, but if we stick with Wood's way of thinking, the message being communicated is one primarily for the men watching the film; a way of showing the male audience member the most desirable heterosexual union - in layman's terms: This is the wrong kind of girl, this is the right kind of girl. Which brings me back to why I was investigating my admiration for Wood - the thing my lecturer David Boyd told our class once. I wish I could remember who he was talking about - it may have been Wood - that every Hollywood film was about the reformation of the couple. Every single genre, this argument goes, is essentially a romance.

And yes, almost all Hollywood films feature a (let's face it) heterosexual union, no matter what the plot or genre, but this isn't really what this argument is referring to. If you look closely at a lot of films, the main line of action involves two characters meeting in an interesting manner (what we call 'the cute meet'), often hating each other immediately. But through the course of the film, they learn to value one another and become united. Does this sound familiar?

It's not just the plot of every romantic comedy, it's the plot of Lethal Weapon. On the director's commentary of Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright mentions that in the original script the character of Danny Butterman had a girlfriend, but in the end they decided the relationship between Nick and Danny was more important and scenes that were originally between Danny and his girlfriend sort of became incorporated into the scenes between Nick and Danny. And to me, it's a very deliberate decision.

One way to read these films is to look for the obvious homosexual subtext. And that is a perfectly valid analysis, one that I would like to research in the context of these films. But what interests me at the moment is the way in which these films seem to be expressing something about male relationships to a male audience.

The films that interest me the most, or the ones that seem to lend themselves rather well to this term 'bromantic comedy' (god, I hope I invented this)are Step-Brothers, Superbad, Pineapple Express, and of course I Love You, Man. The latter film is essentially the blueprint for the generic conventions of the Bromantic Comedy.

I should probably stop just reading the first section of Daniel Chandler's An Introduction to Genre Theory and actually read it properly before I research this further, because as he observes, "the attempt to define
particular genres in terms of necessary and sufficient textual properties is sometimes seen as theoretically attractive but
it poses many difficulties. For instance, in the case of films, some seem to be aligned with one genre in content and
another genre in form." So while it would be tempting to group these films together and pretend I've invented (or at the very least identified) a new genre, I must first ask; what are the common themes, devices, stylistic choices that bring all of these films under one umbrella? The magic Bromantic Comedy umbrella?

Well, Mr Chandler and members of the filmgoing public, I shall tell you. Well, I'll try, anyway. And I must point out that because this is a blog and not my PhD thesis, I'm being really lazy and just spewing forth random wisdom. And as you may have guessed, not referencing academically. But shout outs to Robin Wood, Chandler and of course, my secret boyfriend (so secret he and his wife know nothing about me), David Bordwell for making me the lazy writer on film I have become.

The common theme is pretty apparent - all of these films focus on the relationship between men. Or teenage boys becoming men in the case of Superbad. Superbad is sort of an interesting point of comparison with I Love You, Man, actually because each film deals with a lack in a male character's life in completely opposite ways. The second thing that unites these films, I Love You, Man and Stepbrothers, more so than Superbad, and I Love You, Man most of all, is its adherence to the generic conventions of the Romantic Comedy.

I Love You, Man, directed by John Hamburg, is most unashamedly a romantic comedy. It's just the couple united at the end that's different. The story is essentially this; Peter, played by Paul Rudd, gets engaged to his girlfriend, Zooey (Rashida Jones). When she tells all of her friends about the happy news and discovers Peter doesn't really have anyone to tell, she realises that he doesn't have any male friends and subsequently no best man. So Peter decides he needs to find a best man for his wedding. After a serious of tragic meetings that seem more like disastrous blind dates than attempts to find mates, Peter finally meets Sydney (Jason Segel) and a friendship begins to bloom.

The Dream

Every year I watch the Academy Awards on television I wonder what it would be like to win. I fantasise about what I would wear, how I would have my hair and what shoes would go with my dress.

I think about what I say in my speech and the award I might possibly win (Best Director, Best Original Screenplay or Best Picture? Sky's the limit).

However, the biggest fantasy is the afterparty. At this imaginary celebration of winners, I interrupt my conversation with some young Hollywood hottie when I spy Martin Scorsese, clutching yet another Oscar (now he's won one, they're sure to follow). Here is how the conversation goes:

Me: Excuse me, Sir, but I would just like to say that you are an amazing filmmaker and that as a film critic before a filmmaker, you've really inspired.

Marty: Well, thank you. You know, I saw your film and I have to say, it's incredible.

Me (blushing): Oh, thank you, Mr Scorsese, that's so nice of you!

Marty: Every year I'm impressed with the young kids coming through.

Me: Well, Mr Scorsese, I think that your films are such a complex analysis of masculinity and violence. Going from Mean Streets to the Departed, you can see the ways in which the two concepts are so intertwined.

And on I go, demonstrating the ways in which, if you analyse his films chronologically you can see that a lot of the same cycles of vengeance are repeated, and does he think that men haven't really found a way to break out of these patterns of behaviour, and he answers at length. In my fantasy, I do a lot of the talking. But Marty loves it - he tells me to call him Marty and it's incredible.

So scoff if you will at my humble little dream, but I bet all of you have a secret little inner nerd, dying to have an imaginary conversation with a great like Scorsese.

Now, Tarantino and I - that could be a long one.

Cinesthesia and Quadrophenia

Vivian Sobchack believes that there exists between the cinema and the spectator a powerful relationship that goes beyond the limits of the mind. She argues that the film image can produce a bodily effect on the spectator and not only that, but the cinema represents a crossing over of the senses – in effect, a kind of synaesthesia that she calls 'cinesthesia.'
To me, this article is fascinating because I'm incredibly interested in the relationship between the viewer and the text, and the ways in which this relationship is played out. The idea of the cinema as producing cinesthesia has informed me before when researching the concept of 'seeing' music in music videos. I find that sometimes, I am affected by a song more when it is used in a film.


For example, the moment I realised I loved The Smiths was while watching Episode three of Blackpool. To sum up Blackpool, it is a dickensian study of a man using murder, intrigue, the 'family entertainment' business, sex, and setting it in a Northern England resort town. Oh, and did I mention it is all accompanied by pop music?

Well, in episode three, DI Peter Carlisle decides to try and get more dirt on his enemy Ripley Holden by scaring his son Danny into giving up information on his dad. The local police know Danny has been dealing drugs and set up a trap for him. A handsome young man solicits him for drugs and just as he's about to deliver the goods, the young man reveals his badge and Carlisle and back-up head toward him. Do they walk toward their catch? No. They dance toward him, and sing along, to The Boy With The Thorn In His Side.
The sight of David Tennant singing and dancing to Morrissey moved me and I decided to stop thinking of the Smiths as 'emo music for snobs and intellectuals' and give them a listen. My only regret is that Blackpool wasn't made sooner.


This seems a trivial reason for stumbling across your favourite band (and to be honest, I had loved How Soon Is Now for ages and been known to burst into tears upon hearing Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I want for years, but I never really associated these songs with The Smiths – again, with scenes from movies; The Craft and Ferris Bueller's Day Off – and covers were featured in both of those films!), but when a film is able to combine audio and video perfectly to express an emotion or an idea, it affects the spectator and they take both of those elements with them. The binding of sound to image remains etched on your brain, and you forever connect those emotions to the sound and the image both separately and together.
This is also how I came to love Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. Jeff Buckley's version had always moved me to tears, but Cohen's left me cold. I think it was because Buckley's version is so blatantly designed to produce an emotional response. My friend Amanda commented that the strings on Buckley's guitar as he plays the song are designed to literally pull at the heartstrings, and my friend Victoria agrees, arguing that the changes Buckley made to the composition provoke an emotional response to the song. And they always did for me. If it were a film, it would probably be called a tear-jerker (read Linda Williams for another great analysis of what she calls 'body genres'). It's a powerful song. But whether I desensitised myself after repeat listens, or if The OC ruined it, I stopped having the same response.

The song is most often used with images of love lost, which is beautiful, but when I analysed the lyrics, to me it's about feeling abandoned by God. The biblically-themed verses make that seem quite obvious when you really think about it, but I guess because Buckley didn't use a lot of these verses , people think of it differently. It's only when you pair the song with images of hopelessness and desperation, or with images of death and grief that this connection becomes quite strong.


John Cale's version has been used both as an accompaniment to heartbreak and lost love, but it's also been used as an accompaniment to grief. An episode from the first series of Scrubs, which dealt with Turk, JD and Eliot all losing their patients, featured Cale's version and it was haunting.
So, how did I finally experience the song in its original form, by the fucking amazing Leonard Cohen? Er, while watching Watchmen. Yep. A comic book movie.


The film, and I'm assuming the graphic novels do too really explores the completely unheroic side of life as a hero, or as someone placed in a position of authority. For some, it is too much. A licence to indulge in whatever sin and corruption they like. For others, it is a tiresome burden that you must eventually dissociate yourself from. For others, it is a youthful adventure that stops being fun. Some have pure intentions but lose hope, and for others, logic takes the place of compassion.

Set in alternate 1985, President Richard Nixon rules a dilapidated, grey New York. The Cold War has escalated to the point of nuclear war again feeling like an inevitability. And superheroes are now outlaws, vigilantes with nothing more than a desire for blood and chaos. The band of superheroes who invoked this ban, the Watchmen, have all gone their separate ways. At the film's beginning, one is murdered. The others must come back together to discover who murdered one of their own and maybe stop the impending doom.


Now, the ways in which this story unfolds is powerful, dark stuff, different to every other comic book film. A lot of comic book movie fans, whom I call idiots, hated this film. I loved it. I don't know if it captured the essence of the graphic novels, but for me it totally subverted the cliché-laden superhero narrative.


There is a montage in which the surviving Watchmen are at a loss as to what they should do and the situation seems entirely without hope. One member is dead, another imprisoned, the other has escaped to another planet, tired of the human need to always assign blame to others for their plight. Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen is absolutely the perfect sound for these images. And it just entirely sums up the emotional pull of this sequence of the film.
Now I'm a great champion of this song and as lovely as Buckley's version is, it just can't touch the subtlety and intelligence of Cohen's or even Cale's, for that matter. But enough of that, because I feel as though I've been arguing about this for ages. And it isn't the point that I'm trying to make.


The point is that I've found that the inspiration for many of my ideas, or for sequences in my scripts, come directly from music. The sound perfectly expresses an emotion I want to evoke, or the images just spring from the music I'm listening to. With that in mind, I'd like to note down the ideas that have been strengthened by music and the music that has inspired moments for my ideas.


Any Way You Want It – Journey
The film it inspired: MacCormack and Jones
The idea: The song was the perfect soundtrack to a moment in which MacCormack and Jones, two dishpigs in a restaurant, high-five their way to a successful crime-fighting team. I wrote a version of the script for a media production project and for very obvious reasons (we didn't have any money to buy the rights and we weren't sure how to contatct the right people about it), we couldn't use the song in the film. However, the song's rousing vocals, guitar licks and complete cheesiness set the tone for the entire project. We even used it in our pitch. I fully intend on making this film as it was always intended, and you can bet your bottom dollar that this song will accompany a high-five. Even if it's the only thing I spend money on.


Les Temps de L'Amour – Francoise Hardy
The idea: I don't have a film in mind. This song represents a song inspiring an image. It's not attached to an idea I'm already working on. Whenever I listen to this song, I get this lovely, 60s-style black and white image. It's an ECU of a young woman, the wind whipping her hair around her face. She appears to blink back tears, but before we witness any change in her expression, we fade to black and the song continues over the end credits.


Now clearly, it's some sort of romantic take on the final image of The 400 Blows, by Francois Truffaut, which isn't a musical thing at all. However, it is the song that inspires this take on that haunting image. Now, I just need to craft an entire work around one final image.
Often, I'm reading a book and I think about how I would make it. Some music has inspired me along the way.


Brave New World
Fashion – David Bowie
The sequence: the organised social activity. I always think 'turn to the left, turn to the right,' and 'listen to me, don't listen to me, talk to me, don't talk to me...' and the kind of ritualised dance that the people take part in.


The Picture of Dorian Gray
Newborn – Muse
The sequence: the ominous undertones of the song seem to perfectly encapsulate the darkness that informs Dorian Gray's transformation from naïve young man to student of hedonism. His decision to let the portrait bear the burden of his sins rather than as a moral compass represents a dark rebirth, a new journey into the depths of true sin.

This may be an unwanted interpretation of the original story, but I've always wanted to do a version in which Dorian is a woman. People will argue that this robs the story of it's study of homosexuality and the social taboo surrounding it, but I think what lies at the heart of Wilde's story is not simply the exploration of his own sexuality (don't do what Basil laments – perceive art as autobiography), but the idea of art as a reflection of the person consuming it; the spectator. And on the issue of sexuality, a third interpretation of the story on film would provide yet an another interesting portrayal of gender relations in the story. The Hollywood film was seen as inferior, completely removing the intelligent study of gender relations, turning it instead into a man making a horrible choice and seeing the chance for redemption within the love of a woman (donna reed). I know there is another version in the works starring the guy out of Prince Caspian. I can only assume that this version will be more faithful to the novel.

In changing the gender of the protagonist, it will instantly change the gender relations within the story. People may suggest that it is a cliché that a woman is obssessed with her own youthful image, or another way of denying a homosexual voice within the narrative (not necessarily, of course – Sybil's gender doesn't have to change. I guess people would say that audiences are more receptive to two women together, but there have been a lot of films lately adressing homosexual men and relationships), but really, but I guess it's a dramatic comment on Simone De Beauvoir's writings on the subject of the Gaze. She argued that women are so used to be subjected to the gaze of others that they begin to internalise it, so that they are constantly subjecting themselves to the Gaze (think about how long you spend looking at yourself in the mirror, turning yourself into parts and not a whole). There's a great example of this in Mad Men, in which the women deal with so much objectification from men that they exercise it over each other.

But enough of my grand ambitions.


A lot of the times, I have an idea but can't quite work it out until I hear music that inspires me. I've been working on this time-travel meets Vertigo kind of idea for a while, and three particular bands have really inspired me and moved the story forward in my mind; The Smiths, Midnight Juggernauts and Klaxons.


a lonely young man is drawn into a plot spanning decades by a beautiful, enigmatic and charismatic young woman from the future. It's a film noir science-fiction film. Yeah, because that totally hasn't been done before! Cough. To me, it's an homage to two films; Vertigo and La Jetee. I know, why am I bothering to do a sci-fi version of Vertigo when La Jetee and Twelve Monkeys are both such wonderful explorations of the film? To me, it's that idea of moments in time converging on one another, and the film noir trap of the vulnerable man being disempowered by a devious woman . In Vertigo, the woman is a victim too, and her destruction is the way in which the man attempts to claim his own power back, but it's useless. The damage has been done. I like the idea of creating a sense of anachronism, of being out of time. Things that seem to have a timeless appeal can become a symbol of a character's stasis. The music is a big part of this.


Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now – The Smiths
The idea: Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now is the perfect way to establish my protagonist, and the image I have is of him walking through a grey, depressing industrial estate on his way to a party. And the kind of party? A costume party, and he is dressed as, you guessed it – Morrissey. His time-travelling femme fatale will be Marie Antoinette, a figure blamed for the downfall of the French economy, punished for someone else's poor financial decisions (supporting the British in their fight against the Americans), and while she'll represent three seemingly random periods of time (a woman from the future living in a time she considers the past, dressed as a figure from the 17th century), it will make so much sense, given the situation she's about to tangle my protagonist up in.


Across The Galaxy – Midnight Juggernauts
The idea: The idea, as mentioned before, is to use completely different kinds of music to represent the present and the future, but while that music will seem perfect on the surface (given that the two different kinds of music will distinctly portray the past and the future), but they will be anachronistic in that the present music will already be from the past, and the music from the future will be from the present. But not even that, because the music that I would like to use for the segments in the future are already old – by a couple of years at that. There should be this disjuncture between what the music is supposed to represent and what it really is. Across The Galaxy by Midnight Juggernauts inspired the actual time-travelling within the film, though now I'm not sure I actually want to show any travelling at all. I've been toying with the idea that the whole idea of the future is a con, but I don't know. The cover of the album it comes from, Dystopia, features a painting of the Northern Lights and this, combined with the light sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2046 (and by association I guess the warp-speed effect in Star Wars) provided the idea for the way in which these symbols of the future are so firmly grounded in the past.


Isle Of Her – Klaxons
The idea: the Klaxons' fusing of synthesisers and guitars, while in no way original, is done in a way as to create these eerie, ominous tunes. This song, about a doomed mythic journey, inspired the dark deeds my protagonist is forced to participate in with my femme fatale and her devious lover. I guess, just as I think Midnight Juggernauts (which some could argue are a pale imitation of klaxons, but they're a bit mean) does, is create a sense of elements colliding and create a dystopic vision of the future, as the title of the Juggernauts album suggests, I guess. And yes, I'm well aware I'm indulging in the modern sci-fi cliché of the ruined future.


Two Receivers – Klaxons
The idea: I see the protagonist and the femme fatale coming together whenever I listen to this song, and inspired by the video for Put Yourself In My Place by Kylie Minogue, they're enjoying conjugal bliss in zero gravity. Don't know how it all works in space, but I'm sure astronauts would be able to fill me in...


Like A Drug – Kylie Minogue
The idea: musical inspiration can strike at any time, and even if the idea has already been crafted and formed, music can often provide a concretisation of ideas that seem unformed. I was listening to this song as I was writing the previous paragraph and thought; this song could bring together the elements of romance within this idea of time colliding. I always planned to return to the costume party, and I think that Like A Drug could replace a song used earlier at the party to represent the binding of the future and the present. Hmmmm.


I don't think I could ever write without music and I'm currently working on an idea that goes entirely hand-in-hand with music.


The Beautiful and The Damned
Adding the second 'The' is not the only way I want to interpret F. Scott Fitzgerald's incendiary analysis of self-destruction and the debauchery of the idle rich. If these people are represented by the new aristocracy in Fitzgerald's work, rock and pop stars seem perfect for the modern age. Of course, the aristocracy in America and Britain are now the children of rock stars, so maybe that's something to add to it? I was thinking that Anthony, the protagonist, would desire to be a famous rock star, but the desire for fame and money without working hard would be the bigger pull than the actual music. As I'm writing this, I feel a change in the whole narrative coming. Son of a rock star, Anthony wants to be a rock star but really he just wants to spend his father's money. Gloria, his perceived love interest, sees Anthony as her meal ticket. Her talent is wasted by her new status in the modern day upper echelons of society. Their perceived musical prowess provides the soundtrack for their adventures, and their playing out of the rock star clichés seems informed by their knowledge of pop music. As their youth and naivete give way to their inflated egos, the music will change with them.


Poor Boy – Nick Drake
The scene: Anthony sits busking at a train station, playing this song. I love this song, because I think it's a very cheeky song from Drake. The saxophone and the piano seem to exude this self-awareness of the image Drake creates of a lonely young man. To me, it's not really a song about loneliness and the need for love, but a man's plea to a woman to take pity on him. It's that line, “he's a mess, but he'll say yes/If you just dress in white,” that does it for me. And I think this is the perfect description of the image Anthony is trying to project; the attractive, lonely, struggling musician who just needs love. He's playing with stereotypical ideas of the struggling musician. Gloria happens to go past, stopping when she recognises the song. She begins to sing the backing vocals, revealing not her love of the song and their shared musical knowledge, but their shared knowledge of popular culture.


Gloria – Patti Smith
The scene: In essence, I want music to be the narrator of the film. It drives the narrative and provides the emotional and visual cues to propel the story along. This is the moment in which Anthony finally wins the heart of Gloria. Unfortunately, their reckless passion will ruin them and ultimately fade, but this will be a genuinely beautiful moment. This song is absolutely perfect because, for one, it's about a girl named Gloria. What girl wouldn't want a boy to serenade them with a song about them (I fell madly in a love with a guy in my class who, on hearing my name, began to sing Long, Tall Sally. Aaaah)? But more importantly, it's not really a song about love at all but about lust. The song is about the glorification of sin, really. It's about a guy who seduces a girl for fun. The confusion of lust for love will be Anthony and Gloria's downfall, and this is only the beginning.


Sawdust Man – Ben Kweller
The scene: The moment in which Anthony and Gloria's only real taste of fame isn't really inspired by this song but by Russell Brand. My Booky Wook is as much the literary inspiration for this film as Fitzgerald's novel is. He recounts in the book a moment in his drug phase in which he singlehandedly ruined a television production (not a one-off event, obviously). The idea was to travel around the UK in a van and interview people on the fringes of society. As they were about to set off on their first interview, Brand decided that rather than get in the van and do his job, he would instead make camp on top of the bus and refuse to budge, despite the pleas of the producer, director and his friend and collaborator Matt Morgan. It was his drive toward self-destruction, his need to test the limits of normal behaviour (he often asks himself, what would happen if I just keep doing this?) and of course, his drug addiction, that leads to this childish urge to refuse to do what is asked of him. And the line from the Ben Kweller song, 'I'm on top of the Greyhound Station, won't you please come home?' seemed to cement this scene in the narrative. After a fight with Gloria that results in her threat that she quit the band, and a night of drugs and debauchery, Anthony climbs to the top of the tour bus and refuses to budge until Gloria returns to the band, howling this line of the song at the top of his lungs.

Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007)

Was there ever a kid at your school who dressed differently, liked all the cool indie music and talked like an extra from Dawson’s Creek or The OC? Then chances are you’ll find Juno Macguff slightly familiar. As the title character and driving force of this film, Juno is simply the coolest kid ever. And the film is just like Juno: perfectly oddball, funny and heartwarming. I’m going to go ahead and call it this year’s Little Miss Sunshine.

Juno Macguff (Ellen Page) is in a bit of a pickle. After deciding to sleep with her friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), she’s having a slight case of pregnancy. After being unable to go through with an abortion she decides to give the baby up for adoption to a wealthy couple she finds in the trading post (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner).

The film may sound weird, or if you’re conservative, an endorsement of teen pregnancy and therefore evil. This film is one of the best films I have ever seen. Yep, I’m making that call. It’s the right balance of funny and moving, heartwarming and sad, and it is well presented on a narrative and visual level.

I’m not really that big a fan of the opening credits (it’s a personal thing, just rubbed me the wrong way), and I have not been won over by Kimya Dawson’s oddball charm as much as I was by Juno’s, but apart from these minor irritations I was bowled over from start to finish. The film looks great, 85% of the soundtrack is amazing, and the characters are just beautiful. The performances are terrific. Ellen Page’s nomination for Best Actress at the Oscars is surprising but in no way undeserved. For someone so young she has quite a formidable screen presence. She’s fascinating to watch and if she doesn’t win this year she certainly will win eventually. It’s an If, not a When kind of a deal.

The script is brilliant. Diablo Cody is a master at this and it’s only her first go at it. I’m impressed. Fuck, I’m even jealous. It’s a blinding debut and I think she has a good chance of picking up an Oscar as well.

More films should be like this.

If you like this you should:

* Become a fan of the Moldy Peaches
* Watch You, Me and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, 2005)
* Read The Pussy Ranch, Diablo Cody's blog.

Control (Anton Corbijn, 2007)

Photographer Anton Corbijn has photographed, and directed videos for, many high profile bands such as The Killers and U2, and one of the bands he photographed early in his career was Joy Divsion. For his first feature film, Control, Corbijn has beautifully portrayed the life and tragic suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis.

Based on the book Touching From a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division, the film feels like an intimate glimpse at the private life of the singer. Curtis committed suicide at the age of 23 on the eve of the band's US tour in 1980 and the film explores, but never passes judgement on, some of the contributing factors to his death. These include his troubled relationship with his wife, his affair with Annik Honore and his battles with epilepsy and depression. The film portrays Curtis as talented and unpredictable: he's a sympathetic character but at the same time, Corbijn doesn't shy away from revealing his faults.

His background in music video is apparent in his use of rhythm and pace in the film, and also in the performance scenes of Joy Division. It was said that the audience often didn't know whether Curtis was taking a seizure or if it were simply a part of his performance, and Corbijn handles this confusion brilliantly in one note-perfect sequence. Also of note is the band's first television performance ('Transmission' in the film, but in actual fact the band performed 'Shadowplay'). While it's not the band's first performance in the film, it's where we first see Curtis' distinctive performance style and the band's recognisable image as post-punk icons.

A friend told me that she read that the title didn't just refer to Curtis, but that it also summed up Corbijn's direction of the film and after having viewed it, I think she's right. Corbijn shows excellent control not only in the narrative but also in his framing and composition. Curtis is often framed off-centre and in corners of the screen as though he is struggling to break out, which is the perfect visual representaton of his stated wish to Annik that he wants to get away from Macclesfield, his hometown. The film was shot in colour and printed to black and white, according to trusted friend Wikipedia, and again this shows Corbijn's complete control of the film. Not only that, it creates a beautiful play with light and shadow. Not a single shot in the film fails to contain some sort of beauty, even in the face of what can be very heavy material.

The performances strengthen the breathtaking photography. Newcomer Sam Riley is heart-breakingly beautiful as Ian Curtis. His portayal of the singer's erratic performance style, his epilepsy and his mood swings are impressive. His voice, while similar, is not quite the same as that of Curtis, but his musical performances are admirable, as is the rest of the cast portraying the band. Samantha Morton is an incredibly talented and versatile actress (I highly recommend Morvern Callar), and her performance as Deborah Curtis is amazing. Tony Kebbell is also fantastic comic relief as the band's manager Rob Gretton.

I have read a few criticisms of the film and while I don't disagree with them, I feel they are a little unfair. A biopic is a visual balancing act: it must juggle the subject's public persona, their personal life, historical fact, the demands of film narrative, and often a secondary source material such as a written biography. Personally, I think that very few biopics get that balance right, but Corbijn's film is definitely one them. Again, control is the key, and I look forward to Corbijn's next project.

If you like this film, then you should:
* Immediately purchase Unknown Pleasures, Closer and Still.
* Buy the Control soundtrack.
* Listen to Lou Reed and David Bowie
* Rent 24 Hour Party People.
* Look up the video for 'All These Things That I've Done', by the Killers