Talking Movies

March 28, 2020

Any Other Business: Part XLVIII

As the title suggests, so forth.

Status … Burgundy

Drip, drip, drip… It seems best to describe where we are now as Status Burgundy. We can still leave our homes without a printed and signed permission slip so it’s not quite Status Red. Yet. But as with the drip, drip, drip feed of restrictions tightening like a vise there’s a lot of ‘yet’ in the air too. Why did we not move to this crisis status immediately on March 13th? Why the sustained refusal to admit that schools would not re-open on the 30th? Fears of ‘behavioural fatigue’? It’s not like we don’t know from the experience of countries preceding us in these dominoes how this works; if you are responding to the numbers as they spike you are already too late. Uncertainty is not something stock markets or citizens appreciate. Varadkar unbelievably decided to paraphrase Terminator 2 last night following his Churchill plagiarism last week, refused to call this a lockdown when being told to ‘stay at home’ (even emblazoned under the RTE logo today onscreen) is patently a lockdown, and unwittingly combined the worst elements of Trump and Modi’s addresses. We were given three hours notice not to stray more than 2km from the house or else. But Leo, outside of Dublin it might be more than 2km to the nearest food store. And so today, presumably after howls from outside the Pale, we have a ‘clarification’ that 2km is the straying radius for exercise, you can stray 5km to get yourself a burger.

SEAL Team: Havoc has Fallen

Jessica Pare’s burnt CIA analyst Mandy has been notably underused in season 3 so it was nice to see her unexpectedly get tactical alongside Blackburn and Davis as Havoc fell the other night on Sky One and impose herself on the action in her guilt-ridden determination to rescue her kidnapped asset. Her work the problem drive and firefight skills also gave new hope to shippers that Mandy and Jason should get together, despite the awesome kismet that exists in Emily Swallow as Jason’s partner Natalie; uniting as it does Supernatural‘s Amara with Buffy’s Angel. The use of drone photography on SEAL Team has been outstanding but season 3, especially the opening episodes in Serbia, has taken it to new heights. The fact that this story of Bravo getting roughed up in Venezuela has now revealed itself as a three-parter makes one compare this trio of episodes very favourably to most action films out there. I for one would take the thrilling and legible choreography of the action in these three episodes against the choppy nonsense of Mile 22 any day.

November 4, 2015

Brooklyn

Saoirse Ronan’s shy emigrant makes a new life for herself in 1950s Brooklyn before being tempted by new opportunities suddenly presenting themselves in hometown Enniscorthy.

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Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) is a part-time shop-girl for snobbish Miss Kelly (Brid Brennan). That’s the only job in town, so she emigrates; leaving behind beloved sister Rose (Fiona Glascott) and best friend Nancy (Eileen O’Higgins). On the boat to NYC she gets a crash-course in confidence from Americanised Georgina (Eva Birthistle). But her confidence doesn’t stand up to her demanding new boss Miss Fortini (Jessica Pare), homesickness, and the snide lodgers at the boarding-house of Mrs Kehoe (Julie Walters) – Patty (Emily Bett Rickards), Diana (Eve Macklin), and Sheila (Nora-Jane Noone). Fr Flood (Jim Broadbent) pays for Eilis to study accountancy at night-school, like Rose did, and soon a rejuvenated Eilis has fallen for Italian-American plumber Tony (Emory Cohen). But a return to Enniscorthy presents her with a new suitor, Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson), and a plum job opportunity…

Brooklyn looks amazing. Dallas Buyers Club cinematographer Yves Belanger, costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux, and production designer Francois Seguin combine to startling effect. It doesn’t surprise to see a sun-drenched 1950s Brooklyn, but to see endlessly maligned 1950s Ireland explode with sumptuous clothes in many vivid colours does. John Crowley directs at a measured pace, and Nick Hornby’s screenplay wrings great comedy from the nightly dinner-table feuds at Mrs Kehoe’s, the man-hungry new Cavan lodger Dolores (Jenn Murray), and Tony’s loudmouth younger brother Frankie (James DiGiacomo). But Brooklyn is a fundamentally dishonest film. This is a fantasy of emigration. Emory Cohen’s performance is halfway between young Marlon Brando and young Bruce Willis. Tony’s courtship of Eilis consistently rings psychologically untrue, and her return to Enniscorthy as (secretly) Mrs Fiorello makes her romance with Jim a trite rom-com set up and unbelievable.

A cousin of mine read Colm Toibin’s short novel on publication and dismissed it as only being praised because it was by Toibin. This film is so handsomely mounted it takes a while to realise how shallow and vacuous it is. Jim Farrell broke off an engagement because he thought his fiancé wasn’t serious about him. The subtext she was just serious about his money; Jim being one of the rugby set the poorer Eilis disdains. We are never offered the slightest insight into the moral gymnastics Eilis Fiorello, raised in mid-century Ireland, has in mind to allow her forget her consummated marriage so as to fall into Jim’s arms. And the contrived happy ending leaves one instead wondering about Jim. After being led on so cruelly by Mrs Fiorello what romantic future can he have? A grim, embittered bachelorhood?

We just lost 250,000 people in 4 years during the crash. That’s worse than Brooklyn’s mid-1950s, but it cheerleads emigration as being some sort of demented self-reliant individualist self-actualisation.

2.5/5

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