Film Reviews: July 2008 Archives

Pixar are very well known for their computer-rendered animated features and as is typical for a film for all the family WALL.E was released in the UK in time for the school holidays.

Andrew Stanton is an old-hand at Pixar and writes and directs this particular Pixar project. He previously directed 'Finding Nemo', and was the writer of 'Toy Story'.

To summarise the plot, without giving too much away, WALL.E is the title and main character of the film. WALL.E is a droid working on the tidying up of an over-polluted and deserted planet Earth. He seems to be well past his original service life, as he works alone scuttling around the remnants of civilisation compressing rubbish and salvaging interesting artefacts including an array of extra service items for himself. Mankind has left for space and the droid seems to have developed a personality of his own - the usual anthropomorphism present in most of Pixar's stories.

One day WALL.E witnesses a spectacular visitation from an other-worldly droid who is apparently scanning the planet. Having spent so much time without excitement WALL.E attempts, with the help of a friendly cockroach, to befriend this new arrival.

To put it simply this film was really excellent. At first the scenes are gritty and realistic as WALL.E trundles around doing the sorts of things that Wombles are known for doing. The graphics were so realistic you can recognise rusting cans of WD-40 and bashed-up iPods that WALL.E has found. As the film moves forward it shifts towards a more aesthetic experience altogether, and some of the scenes were just pure art as well as entertainment. There is a blatant ecological message here too, but it's not so heavy handed as to make you feel too guilty about being human.

Considering this film is for all the family, and especially the younger members of them, I found (despite being a jaded adult) that it was quite easy to get engrossed in the visuals and the simple story. A few nods and winks to other Sci-Fi films make for even more fun; Sigourney Weaver even has a cameo voice-over role.

Special note also goes to the end credits which feature the plot of the film backwards in a style from early human wall painting through to primitive computer animation. Sadly I managed to miss the Pixar mini-movie at the beginning of the film, which means I will have to get this one on DVD - or maybe even Blue-Ray - when it is released!

***** (out of 5)

Having seen, and very much enjoyed, The Station Agent, I made a point of catching this latest one by writer-director Thomas McCarthy. It almost lived up to my expectations, but not quite. Like The Station Agent, the film is about the loneliness of modern society, and celebrates the joy of unexpected and improbable friendships. However, there is less zany humour in The Visitor, a film which tries to be serious yet shies away from uncomfortable areas, handling the issue of illegal immigration with extreme caution, almost coyness.

The film's warm humanity comes largely from its caste of likeable characters. Walter, an ageing professor teaching third world and development studies, is kind and gentle and cannot resist helping a young couple when he finds them unexpectedly living in the New York flat he rarely uses. Incidentally, I wasn't sure exactly how they managed to infiltrate it and felt that that area of the plot could have been better clarified. Anyway, Walter turns up one day to find Zainab, a young African woman, in the bath, upon which her boyfriend Tarek runs up to find out why she is screaming. After initially asking them to leave, Walter decides to invite them back as they clearly have nowhere else to go. It probably helps that they are an attractive and charismatic couple: he a talented musician and she a stylish jewellery designer. One wonders whether Walter's reaction would have been the same if they had been a little more unsavoury or just stupid. Anyway, Walter is won over when Tarek offers to teach him drumming (Walter's a would-be musician whose attempts to learn the piano after the death of his piano-teacher wife have ended miserably). With his new friend, Walter visits cool night-clubs and open-air jamming sessions and feels generally rejuvenated.

The sunny mood clouds when Tarek is arrested in the subway and kept in detention. In his efforts to help Tarek, widower Walter strikes up a relationship (of a very decorous kind) with Tarek's elegant Palestinian mother, who wants to visit Tarek in prison. Meanwhile Zainab remains in the vicinity, watching and waiting, and apparently safe from suspicion although she too is not a legal resident. The question of why Tarek was picked on for arrest rather than other, equally marginal figures, was not explained, although the lawyer whom Walter hires explains that the government is tightening up a lot in the wake of 9/11. I felt that McCarthy could have gone further - without becoming too heavy or boring - to show the range of treatment meted out to people in these circumstances. I was left wondering what was special about Tarek's case. The treatment given to the issue just seemed a little thin, and whilst I appreciate that McCarthy was trying to make a character-driven film rather than an issue-driven one, the result was a little frustrating.

The best scenes in the film were the ones of group drumming, in which the performances of the musicians were exhilarating. These high points were equivalent to the visual poetry (shots of disused and little-used railway lines winding into the distance) that made The Station Agent so beautiful and moving. The Visitor was an enjoyably bitter-sweet study of human vulnerability. Almost like E. M. Forster's novel Howards End - with its motto 'only connect' - the film showed the very human need for friendship and understanding, but it could have afforded to be a little more hard-edged without losing its appeal. Or simply be more zany: one or the other. This film ended up being neither one thing nor the other.

Listen very carefully, I will say this only wuurnce ... Women have been making important contributions to national life (at least in European countries like France and England) for a long time, not merely since the advent of 'feminism' thirty years ago. It doesn't need a film like this to present that fact - the involvement of women - as if it were a surprising discovery! One of the aims of Female Agents is to pay tribute to a group of women who helped the D-Day Landings to go ahead, but whose contribution was not, perhaps, recognised as much as it should have been. That is a good aim, but I felt that the film over-played the feminism angle in a way that seemed, at times, patronising. Apart from that flaw, however, it was a gripping, fast-paced piece of cinema that told a fascinating story very well.

Jean-Paul Salome, the director, combines convincing character-development with good cinematic technique (such as interesting cutting between different scenes) to hold the viewer's attention from the start. The women in the team (whose mission is initially to save a man wounded whilst reconnoitring the Normandy beaches, then to eliminate the Nazi colonel who suspects the plans) are portrayed as very different in their personalities. Gaelle, the explosives expert, is religious, Suzy is a sensualist, Jeanne is earthy and tough, and Louise, who holds them together, is coolly rational. The male characters in the film (even the ones on the Allied side) come off rather badly in comparison. Louise's brother Pierre, for example, seems cold, and fails to win our sympathy even when he is the victim of torture by the Nazi colonel, Heindrich. Perhaps if there had been some more sympathetic male characters the film wouldn't have felt quite so dogmatic in its feminism. Colonel Heindrich's romantic involvement with Suzy adds complexity and psychological interest to his character, and his one act of mercy redeems him somewhat, but ultimately (and inevitably) he is a villain. The fact that he alone of the higher-ranking Nazis seemed close to suspecting the Allied plans before D-Day is intriguing, and a testimony to his intelligence.

There were some very skilfully-shot sequences in this film. For example, the bombing of the hospital near the beginning. Before the bomb has exploded, Louise (disguised as a nurse) stalks Heindrich with a gun whilst the rest of the men are distracted by a Folies Bergeres-style striptease routine that some of her fellow agents put on. Louise tracks Heindrich to the men's lavatory and he, still in his cubicle, sees her approaching by means of the reflection in the chrome plumbing in front of him, The camera angles here added magnificently to the suspense, in a way reminiscent of the chase scenes in that movie classic, The Third Man. The fast pace continues throughout Female Agents, with twists and turns enough (no spoilers here) to intrigue the viewer right up to the end. It is a very moving film as well, and makes you wonder how many other heroic lives from that era remain untold.