Shrink Wrapped

In the new edition of Standpoint, Peter Whittle finds little illuminating in the new movie Shrink

For a city which majors in the pursuit of success, beauty and personal fulfilment, the most powerful smell Los Angeles leaves in the nostrils is the stench of failure. The threat of it sits heavier than the famous smog. And it permeates every frame of Shrink, the director Jonas Pate's low-key, small-scale drama about Henry Carter, a once hugely successful psychiatrist who has given up trying to make any difference to the lives of his mostly pampered yet addiction-addled patients, and who now spends seemingly all his waking hours swathed in dope smoke.

The movies have always looked kindly on psychoanalysts — from Now Voyager to Ordinary People to the whole of Woody Allen's "middle" phase. It's hardly surprising — look up Hollywood in Who's Who and you'll see therapy is its favoured pastime. There is an unswerving West Coast belief in the healing powers of this secular priesthood which must be the envy of the Catholic Church. Anybody who resists is simply providing further proof of just how big a screw-up he or she really is. Know-it-all Barbra Streisand tamed Nick Nolte this way in The Prince of Tides. Robin Williams brought Matt Damon to heel in Good Will Hunting. But there's a feeling in Shrink that perhaps we have come to the end of this particular road. Physician heal thyself, it seems to be saying, and then tell your clients to stop being so deluded and self-aggrandising.

Henry lives with one ironic eyebrow always cocked. His self-disgust is barely concealed behind a passive, smirky knowingness. In other words, this is a job for Kevin Spacey, who has to deliver only a slight variation on his American Beauty persona to make Henry utterly believable. Spacey has been missing from the big screen for some years now, thanks to his directorship of the Old Vic, but also, one suspects, because in this increasingly 3-D world, his kind of roles are increasingly thin on the ground. His performance in this otherwise lacklustre trawl through Californian self-absorption makes it worth seeing. You sense that, despite the most overt cause of his disillusionment (the suicide of his wife), Henry is anyway sceptical about this whole psychoanalysis thing he has found himself in and is more concerned with working out why we're here in the first place. Spacey remains one of our finest screen actors.

Henry's clients are mostly from stock LA central casting: the ageing beauty, the sociopathic agent, the alcoholic young actor, the over-the-hill movie star (an uncredited Robin Williams). Very little happens, although salvation of a limited kind comes for Henry in the shape of a disturbed black teenager, the only truly sympathetic character — a predictable development you can see coming from miles away (this is Hollywood, after all). But the film does convey accurately the fact that for the most part, despite all the delving into dysfunctional behaviour, the one thing which is in short supply in this world is the very thing therapy is meant to bring about: self-knowledge.

The lack of drama in Shrink would not have mattered if there had been some attempt at wit or humour; the movie is too listless to crack a joke. Despite their devotion to therapy, many of the Californians I knew when I lived there were certainly able to see the funny side. I remember asking one friend, a comic actor, if, after 9/11, he would be looking less inwards and more outwards during his sessions. "I'm not sure," he replied. "Will it cost more?"

Woody Allen, of course, got a huge amount of comedic mileage out of the psychiatrist's couch, while believing in it all at the same time. His New York (and the one I grew up watching in the movies) was one populated by uptown types kvetching in therapeutic terms over the meaning of life, death and the universe, usually to a wonderful Cole Porter soundtrack. But Allen's neurotic Manhattan has disappeared, pushed aside by the frocks and sexual frankness of Sex and The City. The second movie of the hugely successful TV series is now out but, such is the misplaced self-importance of the makers of this franchise, we critics were not being treated to a screening until the very week of release, which would have been far too late for this magazine. I'm sure you're not too disappointed by this.

It is, however, worth noting how the enormous success of Sex and The City has changed utterly how people look at New York and what they expect of it. In the world of Carrie Bradshaw and her friends, there's not a shrink to be seen, the only therapy mentioned is the retail variety, and the women's version of feminism, suffused as it is by a kind of hyped-up, super-sexual version of Jane Austen's courting rituals, is one Annie Hall would utterly fail to recognise. Woody Allen's fans have been crying out for years for a "return to form" but it's not him that's changed: it's New York.

Posted in Film add new comment

Funny Old World

In the new edition of Standpoint magazine, NCF's Peter Whittle considers The Infidel, a new comedy from David Baddiel

I vividly recall trotting off to see Monty Python's Life of Brian as a first-year college student. There would be a media storm surrounding it. I especially remember an indignant Malcolm Muggeridge attempting to condemn it in the face of a hostile audience on TV and looking silly. For us, you see, it was no big deal — we'd grown up and still lived in a cultural atmosphere that saw religion as a legitimate and hilarity-inducing punchbag. Muggeridge was an old fogey. The notion that we should refrain from causing offence by laughing along would have struck us as absurd — would have made us, indeed, laugh longer and harder.

I saw the movie again recently and it holds up well. It's available on DVD, and features regularly in those lists of Best Comedies Ever. Its closing number, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, is a bona fide pop culture classic, still a sing-along fixture at good-natured drunken gatherings and coach journeys home up and down the country.

Thirty years ago, that country was ravaged by economic decline but culturally still knew what it was, and the assumptions it could safely make. Then again, few of us freshers had even heard of Islam. As we queued for the movie, we knew that something was going on over in Iran, yes, but we'd been told the Shah was a fascist tyrant. So the establishment of this new regime must have been some sort of victory for something we could vaguely assume was good, progressive, and to be supported.

The Shah's replacement was an old man who famously went on to say: "There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humour in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious." So there would be no Life of Iqbal showing in downtown Tehran. Blinded by a misplaced sensitivity, cringing cultural cowardice and a very well-placed sense of genuine fear, we followed suit. Now, three decades later, we can say with certainty that there will be no Life of Iqbal at Bradford's local multiplex.

What we get instead in our brave new world is The Infidel. This new British comedy was written by the comedian and novelist David Baddiel, who says on the film's website: "I think that people are terrified about race and religion, especially issues surrounding Muslims and Jews, and when people are terrified, what they really should do is laugh." That's all well and good, though I think it's fair to say that there's some disingenuous equivalence going on here. I don't think many people are "terrified" of Jews, for the very good reason that they can be sure they wouldn't have to live under constant police vigilance or fear their property being torched if they drew a few satirical cartoons incorporating the Star of David. Baddiel seemed to tacitly admit this when he spoke briefly at the screening I attended. The film-makers had striven not to be offensive, he said. "But what's the most that Jews are going to do? Ban you from eating at Bloom's?"

Starting out on a project like this with the desire not to be offensive must be like boxing with one arm tied behind your back. You will end up losing, and sure enough, The Infidel is simply not funny. Sidestepping the very basis of religion itself, it instead goes for good, old-fashioned fun at the expense of social stereotypes. The Iranian-born comedian Omid Djalili plays Mahmud, a relaxed, not especially devout London Muslim who on the death of his mother discovers that he was in fact born a Jew — real name Solly Shimshillewitz — and was adopted at birth by Muslim parents. Once the initial trauma dies down, he tries to find out more about his real identity, mostly with the help of a Jewish (and, bizarrely, American) London cab driver. Cue lessons in "Jewish-ness" — syntax, gestures, barmitzvahs and the rest.

The point about Life of Brian is that it went right for the source material. The Infidel, on the other hand, comes from the "It's a funny old world, ain't it?" school of comedy in which our foibles are laughed over in the warm, fuzzy knowledge that more unites than separates us. The truth is we're not really that sure about that now, and it seemed to me, neither is the film. It treads carefully. Most of the humour derives from the funniness of a particular brand of North London Jewishess. Islam is, on the whole, left well alone. There is a send-up of Abu Hamza in the form of a radical with a hook, surrounded by threatening looking heavies. There are young women in burkas dancing. But the religion itself? That, it seems, is no laughing matter.

A word about this year's Oscars: what a relief that that overblown, infantile piece of tosh Avatar was stopped in its tracks, and by a small film, The Hurt Locker, which, by the standards of James Cameron's cartoon epic, has been seen by almost no one. More importantly, the simple-minded anti-Americanism of Avatar was trumped by a film which, whatever its makers' view on the Iraq war, admires and celebrates the bravery of US troops.

Such a film is inconceivable here — or anywhere else in Europe for that matter. It was not ever thus: Noel Coward did a sterling job in In Which We Serve, admittedly a wartime effort. Even as late as the Sixties, with the star-studded The Battle of Britain, it was possible for audiences here to see a straight-faced tale of heroism where nothing much was called into question. But even then, the heart was already growing feint, and really from Tony Richardson's revisionist take on the Charge of the Light Brigade in that decade it has been downhill all the way. Even when they show up in science fiction dramas such as the zombie-fest 28 Days Later, British troops are portrayed as bigoted, psychotic grunts. Our film-makers, it seems, refuse to separate the message from the messenger.

Posted in Film add new comment

The End of the World Credits

In the new edition of Standpoint, Peter Whittle looks at the current fade for apocalyptic films 

The End of the World has always been Nigh in the movies. At certain times, it appears more Nigh than at others. We're in one of those doom-laden phases right now. We've seen universal death by a mutating cancer cure (I am Legend), mass infertility (Children of Men) and a deadly virus (28 Days Later). And maybe just when you thought it was safe to venture out, the darkness has intensified. In the past couple of months alone, audiences have witnessed the end of civilisation as predicted by the Mayan calendar (2012), life on earth after an unspecified cataclysm (The Road and The Book of Eli) and implied environmental burnout (Avatar). And now with Legion, Hollywood goes back to scripture itself, and brings on a plague of flies, some festering boils and a couple of archangels.

The apocalypse, and its slow-burning younger brother dystopia, are simply great fun for art directors and production designers: all those brooding skies and half-ruined but still recognisable national monuments, all that combat gear. You can prettify the future nightmare with splashes of 1940s retro-chic, as in Ridley Scott's classic Blade Runner, or make it macho-cool, as in the Mad Max series. Rarely, however, do we get to see a pair of giant fluttering, feathered wings, especially when connected to the back of an action hero.

In Legion, Paul Bettany is the archangel Michael, who descends to earth — Los Angeles, actually — intent on thwarting God's plan to throw in the towel and obliterate humanity. Clipping off his wings and taking on a kind of man-with-no-name persona, he goes in search of an as yet unborn child who, we are told, is mankind's only hope. This leads him to a small, greasy diner in the middle of the desert, where an assortment of characters presided over by the owner, Dennis Quaid, are holed up as the world outside goes seriously off-kilter.

This is hokum at its purist. Legion is nominally a horror film. It has its share of splattered blood and ghoulish zombies, although probably not enough for dedicated fans of this hugely popular cinematic sub-culture, who will doubtless also view the spectacle of Michael fighting the archangel Gabriel, who's been sent to make sure God's intentions are carried out, as unintentionally funny. Mindful of not being taken seriously, such apologists for horror and science fiction always justify their beloved genres by claiming that they tap uniquely into the anxieties and preoccupations of any given time. Well, there's certainly something different going on in Legion.

That would be religion. On the whole, this has been absent from the apocalypse business, although it appears to be creeping in lately — the existence of the last remaining Bible is an integral part of the narrative in The Book of Eli. Legion goes further. We even hear what I assume was meant to be the sound of God — a massive reverberating foghorn in the sky. This is, in other words, the apocalypse not by environmental or viral means but, quite literally, by the Book.

As such, it makes all the silliness oddly intriguing. The sheer nerve displayed by the director, Scott Stewart, in assuming we might take on board the very premise is admirable in an odd sort of way, even to an agnostic. And it certainly makes a refreshing change from having one's ear bent by movie characters telling us why we're simply terrible for not listening to warnings about climate change.

Legion begins and ends with the same monologue, when one of the characters tries to explain why God has gone from loving to vengeful: "I don't know. Maybe He was just tired of all the bullshit." Which brings us neatly to Avatar. What is there to say about James Cameron's futuristic epic about the lovely Na'vi people of the planet Pandora and the nasty, grabbing humans who interfere with them which hasn't already been said? It's been seen by billions, has taken trillions at the box office and websites have been set up for the thousands who have apparently found it difficult to readjust to the real world after having been immersed in its 3-D-enhanced universe for two-and-a-half hours. I saw it in good old ordinary 2D, which laid bare the banality of the whole enterprise. Having ruined our own world, we're plundering others, so yes, it appeals to ingrained Western self-hate, and yes, it seemed pretty darned anti-American to me. The fact that this movie should sweep all before it says something depressing to me: that here we have the perfect epic for an infantile age. Even the much-praised look of it seemed child-like and, considering the amount of time and money expended on new technology, oddly old-fashioned.

Over and above this, I kept thinking to myself, what the hell is the attraction of Pandora anyway? It looked like the sort of place in which any New Age disciple or self-proclaimed Citizen of the World would feel at home. It was full of inhabitants who were in thrall to mystical gods, spiritual energies and mass rituals. There were no good restaurants. I think I'd rather be in that diner.

Posted in Film add new comment

Singular Sensation

Colin Firth has been nominated for an Oscar for his performance in A Single Man, which opens this week (the Oscar ceremony is on March 7th). Here is what NCF director Peter Whittle wrote about the film in the current edition of Standpoint:

' "Grief is the price we pay for love," was the Queen's message to the American people after 9/11. That seems exactly right. But in everyday life, many delay the final accounting. Some put off payment altogether. Others have the courage to look at the bill square-on, but find that for them, the cost is simply too great to bear.

One such is George, the single man of the title of Christopher Isherwood's short novel, which has just been adapted for the screen. George, played by Colin Firth, is an English college lecturer in early Sixties, pre-counter-cultural California, a place of effortless golden-limbed sunniness. But he makes his way through this world like a dead man walking. Jim (Matthew Goode), his partner of 16 years, has been killed in a road accident and he now operates like a human being only on the outside. Grief has hollowed him out.

A Single Man (on release 12 February) follows him over the space of a day: his fastidious early morning grooming routine; his journey to work; the pleasantries he exchanges with neighbours; and his conversations with Charlotte (Julianne Moore), his best friend from earlier London days. Thoughts and memories of Jim come in flashback. The only distinctive thing to happen is a series of encounters with one of his young students (Nicholas Hoult), a boy who senses that there is something wrong about his teacher, something that might shed light on his own emotional confusion. This being the early Sixties, little is spelt out between them. George lives with his emptiness in secret.

Rereading those paragraphs above — gay relationships, death, suppressed mourning — I can see how this film might seem to hold little for a wide audience. That doesn't stop it from being a remarkably powerful, beautiful one. Being gay myself has much to do with this. I have watched thousands of movies and even now, in 2009, it comes as an utter, blessed relief for me to see one depicting a relationship between men that doesn't just revolve around the obstacles against a youthful "coming out", or a death from Aids, or an addiction to dancing and shopping. A Single Man is an adult film, George, Jim and Charlotte are grown-ups and the themes which give rise to the story — the disappointments of age, the nature of love, how one continues when the most valued part of one's life has been ripped out of it — are of the sort which our infantilised society increasingly refuses even to acknowledge, let alone discuss.

The film is directed by Tom Ford, known to you, I'm sure, as a fashion designer, the face for some time of the newly-revived Gucci. Ford, self-conscious and preening on the red carpet, has always struck me as the epitome of an unlikeable metrosexual sensibility. So initially my heart had sunk at the prospect of an over-produced, under-nourished piece of style fetishism. Certainly, there are moments when he has obviously reined in (or been forced to rein in) a strongly developed love of the look of things, of mid-century modernism and the way a jacket creases. The characters are all better looking than they would probably be, even in California. But these are quibbles. Ford's entry into movie-making is genuinely impressive. The surfaces are there and they gleam, but they remain just that — surfaces. They never get in the way of what is an enormously detailed, humane exploration of the effect one life can have on another.

Above all however, the film's power is down to Colin Firth. I have never quite understood the appeal of Firth, and his screen presence I generally find chilly and supercilious, wet-shirted or otherwise. But as George, he demonstrates the very essence of great film acting: he does so little, and conveys so much. There is no thrashing about, no wild gestures. It all happens beneath the skin. From the moment he constructs himself in the mirror first thing in the morning, to the brief, sweet connection he makes with his neighbour's little girl, there isn't a moment when you don't believe him. The pain he endures, etched in his movements and the awkwardness of his social encounters, becomes equally unbearable for us to witness.

Or not, perhaps, for everybody. When I watched A Single Man, I was faced with the imminent death of one beloved. The critic who claims to be able to divorce himself from his own condition when considering the work before him is, I think, being dishonest. Our judgment is clouded just as much by happiness as by sadness. But perhaps it also means that we become more acutely aware of the fake and the fraudulent. The cinema is full of ersatz suffering, including much which one might once have considered nuanced and authentic. One becomes very alive to anything remotely near the truth. And that, in its way, gives us comfort.'

Posted in Film add new comment