STACK #136 Feb 2016

CINEMA REVIEWS

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THE DANISH GIRL

SPOTLIGHT

Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl is superficially based on the lives of Danish painter Lili Elbe and her one-time wife, Gerda Wegener. In truth, the film is based on David Ebershoff’s novel of the same name, which was an almost fully fictionalised portrayal of Elbe and Wegener. Elbe, formally Einar Elbe, was one of the first people in the world to undergo sexual reassignment surgery. That’s fact, although much of the film isn’t. Which ultimately begs the question – why use Elbe and Wegener’s real names when so much of the film is fabricated? It’s a common misstep in cinema the world over, in which filmmakers fear truth so much they contrive events in order to make their work more palatable for a wide audience. In reality, it’s misleading. When are you watching a film about Einar Elbe that isn’t really about Einar Elbe? When you’re watching The Danish Girl . The production is proficient yet uninspired. Unfortunately, it’s exactly the variety of work you might expect from a film by the director of The King’s Speech , starring the lead from The Theory of Everything , about the world’s first gender realignment. However, there’s still a great deal to be admired about The Danish Girl , such is the professionalism of the people involved in the production. It’s just not particularly inspired filmmaking, and it smacks of prestige-mongering. John Roebuck RELEASED: Now Showing DIRECTOR: Tom Hooper CAST: Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Amber Heard RATING: M

Good newspaper films demonstrate just how problematic truth can be. Great newspaper films pursue truth almost as much as the journalists that inspired them. Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men and David Fincher’s Zodiac are examples of films that largely jettisoned the sensationalism that’s usually synonymous with Hollywood productions in favour of fact and authenticity. Truth is stranger than fiction – and it’s certainly more compelling. Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight , which follows the story of a team of Boston-based investigative journalists exploring corruption in the Catholic church relating to priests molesting young children, is largely disinterested in embracing puffery. It might not be entirely devoid of stylistic embellishments, but it's never smothered by them. It’s not an easy topic for a film. “How do you say no to God, right?” one character quips. Spotlight engages intellectually, allowing the viewer to dictate their emotional response themselves. The risk of fostering sentimentality in a film that promotes thought is that it can disable any established educated authority. People don’t like to be told how to feel, and McCarthy avoids this pitfall entirely by embracing fact, not judgement. More remarkable is how effectively that fact is conveyed. There’s an enormous amount of complex information involved in Spotlight , yet the result is as illuminating as it is engrossing. John Roebuck RELEASED: Now Showing DIRECTOR: Tom McCarthy CAST: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams RATING: M

THE BIG SHORT

ROOM

CINEMA

RATING KEY: Wow! Good Not bad Meh Woof!

This is a film with the best of intentions and the most maddening of executions. Director Adam McKay, generally known for comedies like Anchorman and Talladega Nights, is undeniably attempting to make a convoluted and largely sluggish topic – finance – accessible and compelling. And yet the tools he employs to lend his film clarity ultimately have the opposite effect. The Big Short is largely concerned with three separate parties, each at varying degrees of involvement in Wall Street culture, who predicted the devastating financial crisis of 2007-08. There’s very little narrative, with the film favouring education over entertainment. That only becomes a problem with McKay suffocates his delivery of info with hyper-frenetic filmmaking; loud music and erratic cuts distract from important material. Celebrity cameos – designed to make the data more digestible – by-and- large mislead the viewer. By the time we’ve realised that Margot Robbie is playing herself, naked in a bath and drinking champagne, it’s too late to absorb the financial details that she’s explaining. There are no heroes on Wall Street. As one of the characters suggests late in the film, interest in money ultimately leads to a disinterest in the things that make life so wonderful. With the characters so unappealing and the details so murky, The Big Short leaves a broad impression of the financial crisis that ought to have been far more enlightening. John Roebuck RELEASED: Now Showing DIRECTOR: Adam McKay CAST: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling RATING: M

A mother (Brie Larson) and her five-year-old son, Jack (Jacob Tremblay), live a cloistered existence in a small garden shed, with a skylight providing their only glimpse of the outside world. "Room" is the only world young Jack has ever known – his mother was abducted seven years ago by a psycho (Sean Bridgers, who's done this kind of thing before in The Woman ) and has been held captive in the shed ever since. When the opportunity for escape finally presents itself, their bid for freedom inevitably comes with life-changing consequences for both of them. It's the kind of story that far too often makes headlines, and is frequently the fodder of horror/torture thrillers. But Room is neither sensationalist nor exploitative – it's a sensitive, suspenseful and sometimes heartbreaking look at how such an experience impacts the lives of the victims after they re-enter society, beyond the tell-all interview to a talk-show host. Larson is terrific as the mother whose unconditional love for her son (despite the circumstances in which he was conceived) sustains her through years of captivity and abuse, and will most likely win the Oscar. But she's equally matched by Tremblay, who invests Jack with both wide-eyed wonder at the real world he's never known and a troubled countenance that hints at the psychological scars left by the ordeal. Give the boy an Oscar too. Scott Hocking RELEASED: Now Showing DIRECTOR: Lenny Abrahamson CAST: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Sean Bridgers RATING: M

FEBRUARY 2016

24

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