Obvious Child – 2014

Five years ago Gillian Robespierre made the short film of Obvious Child and had such success that she spent the following five years expanding it into a feature. It’s always suspicious when a successful short is adapted since it requires a very different narrative style and skill to make a short versus a feature, however Robespierre doesn’t seem to have had a problem with this transition. The characters are fully fleshed out, the plot is simple but not slow. In fact, watching Obvious Child now it seems impossible to imagine what could be left out of this coherent whole to make it a short.

Obvious Child has a pretty simple premise. Just before Valentine’s day in the life of Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) she’s dumped, fired and gets pregnant. The film progresses as a story of hope despite circumstances where Donna needs to tackle a burgeoning romance at the same time as her upcoming abortion. It’s refreshing to see a story that deals with an abortion as a normal, healthy part of a woman’s life. However, the very idea seems to throw the film into an arena of debate that it doesn’t deserve. At its heart Obvious Child is a sweet yet cutting romcom. It shows a very normal person living a normal life. Unfortunately, the inclusion of an abortion, which is a common point for many women turns the film into a dramatic discussion. Really, I feel that this film is best enjoyed with a tub of ice cream and a glass of wine. It’s not a piece of feminist propaganda or a debate feature. It’s the most simple form of representation, just accepting and showing real life with no holds barred, and even making it into a comedy.

The comedy in the film is mainly provided by Jenny Slate; a stand up comedian playing a stand up comedian. Oddly her comedy routines are some of the least funny or accomplished parts of her performance. Two of the three routines are meant to be painfully awkward and we laugh at her in these moments because she’s doing an excellent job of portraying the over-sharing comedienne. The third, however seems to centre around scatological and appearance-based humour. Neither of which bring out the more sophisticated side of the performance. It’s a shame, but this seems to be the fault of the script more than the performance since Slate is raucously funny throughout all the little moments in the film. Despite the melodramatic premise Obvious Child doesn’t become irritating or self-absorbed and that is entirely due to Slate’s light-hearted and charming performance. Her comedy succeeds in undercutting the emotional moments without undermining them.

That being said, Slate is surrounded by an outstanding supporting cast. Jake Lacy is incredibly natural in his role as the one-night-stand gone wrong and Polly Draper, despite not appearing often, provides one of the best scenes of the film as Donna’s mother. It’s generally a faultless production and a highly enjoyable film, amazing for a first feature and I can’t wait to see what Robespierre produces next.

• Entertainment: 4/5
• Artistic:             4/5
• Intellectual:      2/5

They Came Together – 2014

David Wain has teamed back up with Paul Rudd and Amy Poelher for this giant send up of rom-coms. Wains script swings from slapstick to smugly self-aware and back again every other minute. This really rather confuses the mood of the piece since beneath all the neurotic sarcasm there is a genuine love story being told.

Set in Manhattan like many rom-coms before it They Came Together features New York as “almost another character” in the story, a joke that is repeated over and over but is never substantiated in the plot. Every scene is a new set of gags and a new group of films to be mocked but it never seems to quite get past being irritating. Parts of it will be hysterically funny but then you cut back to the cheesy framing device full of done to death meta jokes. Perhaps if this secondary narrative level was actually serious it would make more sense. This dinner scene is set up as “the real world” where the story is being told but it’s just as smug and stupid as what is being mocked in the romanticised story.

The humour pulls from Woody Allen’s self-depreciating irony in many places but the problem is that beyond the jokes there is nothing. While you’re watching it is funny, it carries you along but it’s a kind of brainless, instinctive laughter – more like being tickled for the duration of a film rather than genuinely laughing. There’s no social comment or even cinematic comment, it doesn’t criticise anything about the tropes it exaggerates and it almost seems redundant to be telling us “films don’t represent real relationships” in this day and age. This concept becomes clear about 45 minutes into the film and then you’re just watching it carry on, wondering if it will ever go there and laughing at the same old absurdist humour as you were shown in the first five minutes.

• Entertainment: 4/5
• Artistic:              2/5
• Intellectual:       1/5

Axiom – 2014

Recently, when Archive found that they had five tracks that did not fit on their most recent album they decided that the best thing to do was to make these five tracks, forty minutes in total into a short film with the help of Spanish film collective NYSU and director Jesus Hernandez.

I’ve liked Archive’s music for a very long time and so I was intrigued and excited about this new project. Axiom is the portrait of a city, a dystopian island commune to be precise. It feels a little like a cross between Brave New World and Jonestown in concept. The citizens are locked away in cells to avoid the sound of the bell that keeps the city alive. Despite being essentially an extended music video Axiom does have dialogue and a plot, although the latter is very convoluted. It’s very atmospheric, although I don’t recommend it for the squeamish – some sequences can only be described as gratuitous and deeply disturbing.

I’m not sure the endeavour is a great success. The film is presented in Black and White, but both ends of the spectrum are absent, as if someone equalised it out to the blandest greyscale you can imagine. It’s an odd tension because the plot seems to distract from the visuals and vice-versa but neither are that great. Generally speaking Axiom takes a lot of mediocre filmic ideas and combines them into something that is more odd than profound. It does stay in the mind, if only for the themes of oppression and control that are expressed so vividly.

Structurally the film follows the song progression and divides itself into chapters, this works to an extent. Chapter one is more of a prologue than anything else but that can be forgiven. Chapter three however, seems to be entirely devoid of any link to the rest of the film. The visual ideas don’t link back to any other point in the film and it has no clear context in the world that has been created. It does serve to be very, very creepy, but the tyranny of a madman that was established in chapter two had already done that. It’s hard to say whether the problem lies in the track being too far removed from the others or with the director for not properly integrating the concept, either way it serves as a microcosm for the film. Powerful, creepy and odd but clumsily realised and by no means an artistic revolution.

• Entertainment: 3/5
• Artistic:              3/5
• Intellectual:       2/5

Fruitvale Station – 2013

Ryan Coogler’s film actually premiered at the Sundance Festival in Park City, Utah in 2013. Despite winning the Grand Jury Prize and the audience award it failed to make it’s way across the Atlantic on its own and so the Sundance Institute brought it over for Sundance London 2014.

Fruitvale station deals with the shooting of Oscar Grant III who was killed by a police officer on the 1^st January 2009. The film chronicles his last 24 hours. While institutional racism and police brutality are always hot cultural issues it seems more than serendipitous that the film was released in the States a mere two weeks after the controversial Zimmerman trial, a case which also dealt with a debatably racially-motivated shooting.

Coogler’s film is undoubtedly beautiful to watch, featuring some good old-fashioned 16mm film and trademark grain. It’s as romanticised as an image of a girl in raybans dancing in the sunset. Many of the events in the film are, as one would expect, completely fictionalised and they paint Oscar Grant as a loving, reformed, family man. A good glaze of nostalgia and forgiveness is thrown over such incidents as him cheating on his long-term girlfriend and mother of his daughter, his past arrest for owning illegal firearms and his violent and threatening behaviour towards a former employer and his involvement in drug dealing.

What is achieved by giving us a candy-coated hero in place of the real man? No one should ever be shot illegally by a police officer.  The presentation of the victim as largely an all round good guy is designed to tug at the heartstrings. As a result the film starts to feel like a protest campaign, demanding justice for Oscar Grant III and further demonisation of the police force.

Coogler wants to open a dialogue about this incident but ignores one of the main issues – the appallingly widespread use of firearms. It’s a far less palatable and fashionable discussion, but in tackling real-life events some degree of respect for the facts must be present. The verdict reached on the Grant case, like the Zimmerman trial after it, does not imprison the shooter for murder. Coogler suggests that this is an unjust and racist verdict, despite the official plea being that Mehserle, the officer in question, mistook his pistol for his Tazer, and the testimonies of eye-witnesses that Mehserle said he was about to Tazer Grant moments before he fired the shot. Surely justice for Oscar Grant III would be to question why it is that a transport police officer was armed with a pistol in the first place? It would have been daring and revolutionary to question the culture that allows the possibility of a tazer and gun being confused and to result in such accidents. However Coogler ignores this issue, focuses on the now familiar theme of the perpetually oppressed, and appears to cry racism. Interestingly, in Fruitvale Station, Oscar Grant III is shown as a well rounded human, the kind of man who saves dying dogs, loves his young daughter and throws away a bag of weed in a symbolic act of the reformed character. The casting of Michael B. Jordan as Grant is accurate and sympathetic.  However Mehserle, who is of German descent, but has dark hair and eyes, is cast as a pale, blonde blue eyed man quite unlike his real-life appearance. If anyone is guilty of negative racial stereotyping it is the director.

It’s a difficult film. It’s beautiful, enjoyable and flawlessly realised. Technically I cannot fault it and as I watched it I was pulled along on this wave of emotion. As time goes by I find myself more and more disturbed by the blatant emotional manipulation employed so skilfully to promote a troubling ideology. Not all victims are martyrs and not all police are racist thugs but unfortunately these tropes are becoming all too acceptable in our media.

• Entertainment: 3/5
• Artistic:              5/5
• Intellectual:       2/5

Drunktown’s Finest – 2014

Over the last weekend I was lucky enough to attend the Sundance London festival. Sundance is all about listening to the stories that may not be heard. Sydney Freeland’s directorial debut is one of these stories, and that just makes it all the more beautiful. Following the lives of three Native Americans in the fictional town of Drylake, and the neighbouring Navajo reservation, Drunktown’s Finest is a fresh new face on the cinema scene.

While Drunktown’s Finest deals most specifically with the modern Native American culture it also contains three deeply personal stories that are universal. The struggle for balance, be it between past and future, between who you are and how you are seen or even just between instincts and reasoning. The three lead performances documenting these struggles are all fantastic. However, Jeremiah Bitsui (SickBoy) seems let down by a slightly weaker character arc. SickBoy’s character is almost entirely objectionable and lacks adequate change or redemption, getting by through the kindness and forgiveness of others. He’s a little further removed from the heart of the film and ironically it seems that the film is balanced a bit too far in his direction.

That being said, newcomer Morning Star Wilson lights up the screen as adopted Christian Nizhoni. Her demeanour is perfectly placed in the realm of the teenage paradox, a proudly independent force still desperately in need of community and acceptance. Her performance is charming and raw in a demanding role. Our third protagonist, Felixia, a transgender woman trying to make it as a model is played by Carmen Moore, herself a transgender model and a Navajo woman. Her performance never misses a beat here and she has stated that many of the situations shown in the film reflect the reactions she experiences every day in regards to her identity. It’s a surprising and interesting voice to find on screen and the surrounding LGBT issues are handled with sensitivity and respect. Freeland avoids politicising the film on this issue, instead focusing on the importance of self-acceptance for everybody through the lens of someone who is struggling for their own reasons.

Ultimately that is the magic in Drunktown’s Finest. Freeland has touched upon and opened up a dialogue on topics ranging from religious diversity, LGBT acceptance and the struggle of Native Americans in today’s society without creating something that feels like promotion or propaganda. Drunktown’s Finest is uplifting and enjoyable and life-affirming, quite apart from being beautifully shot in some spectacular landscapes. It gives us a window not only into the three protagonists, but into their culture, which is itself struggling for unity and acceptance in the modern United States while holding on to a rich cultural heritage.

• Entertainment: 3/5
• Artistic:              4/5
• Intellectual:       5/5