Dvd/150: SHAUN OF THE DEAD (Edgar Wright, 2004)

Shaun's having a bad day: nagged by his stepfather not to forget his mum's birthday, ordered by his housemate to throw out their lazy mate Ed, and dumped by his exasperated girlfriend Liz for forgetting to book a table for their anniversary.

It could be worse... there might also be a zombie apocalypse.  Oh...

Edgar Wright delivered an instant classic comedy-horror film which works on all levels; he whip-pans and crash-edits his way through it, but also finds time for quiet, sad moments which rewards repeated viewings.

Wright and co-writer Simon Pegg picked the perfect cast: Penelope Wilton as Shaun's mum Barbara and Bill Nighy as stepfather Philip, Kate Ashfield as long-suffering Liz, Nick Frost as the slobbish Ed, Dylan Moran and Lucy Davis as Liz's flatmates, and above all, Pegg is wonderful as Shaun.

A recognizable London and thumping soundtrack all contribute too.

Shelf or charity shop?  Armed with cricket bats and and shovels, Shaun and co. are holed up on the shelf forever

 

DVD/150: PRIDE (Matthew Warchus, 2014)

You know the film genre: individual / group take a stand against their fate, there are setbacks but triumph vindicates them: BILLY ELLIOTT, THE FULL MONTY, KINKY BOOTS, MADE IN DAGENHAM...

...and there's PRIDE, Matthew Warchus' marvellous film which tells the true story of how gay activists set up the support group 'Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners' during the 1984-85 miner's strike.

Stephen Beresford's excellent script mixes fact and fiction to tell how Mark Ashton and Mike Jackson started the group when they realized that the miners and their families were facing the same forces of oppression that they had experienced: the Government, the police and the press.

Brimming with wit and emotion, the film boasts memorable performances from Ben Schnetzer, Joe Gilgun, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Jessica Gunning, Faye Marsay, Paddy Considine, Dominic West, Andrew Scott, George MacKay, Menna Trussler and Lisa Palfrey

PRIDE is an instant classic...

Shelf or charity shop?  PRIDE never fails to make me blub: a testament to the times I lived through and to the remarkable Mark Ashton who died aged only 26 in 1987 from an AIDS-related illness.  Standing proud on the shelf.
 

There Is Power In A Union

Every so often a film is made in the UK which takes you so unawares, so by surprise, that it refreshes your interest not just in British film but in the medium itself.

I booked to see a preview screening at the National Film Theatre of the new British film PRIDE directed by Matthew Warchus, I thought I would have a punt on it as it starred a number of actors that I like but as I took my seat I also suspected that it would probably be the sort of film whose poster would boast "This Year's Full Monty" and that it was "heartwarming".  In short I expected something that would easily fit all that is required of the average Sunday evening television series: lovable working class scallywags, strong but silent wives, comic character parts, brass bands playing every 5 seconds and a happy ending guaranteed.

The remarkable thing is that all those elements are there but when the film reaches it's emotional climax it is genuinely moving as it has been reached in such an honest and restrained way by director Warchus, writer Stephen Beresford and a remarkable cast.

What made the film so special is that finally here is a film that makes me think "Yes that's my history, that's the 1980s that I lived through".  The film has conjured up that time of covert Government pressure on anyone who didn't fit with their world - now doesn't that sound familiar?  Here is a film that could not be more timely. 

The film is worth it's weight in gold for many reasons but primarily for shining a spotlight on Mark Ashton who spearheaded the LGSM group.  When we staggered out of the screening, Owen wondered aloud how so little is known about Ashton, a genuine gay hero.  I guessed that it's a case of history is written by the victors - not only were the Miners beaten but ultimately so was the gay activism that Mark Ashton and his comrades stood for.  As he is pointedly told at the Gay Pride march that ends the film, "It's all about celebration now".

So Gay Pride becomes a glorified excuse for crap pop acts to peddle their product to the pink pound and activism can be ended as we now have taken over Old Compton Street.  Hurrah, we have created our own ghetto.

Stephen Beresford's excellent script introduces us into Ashton's world through a fictional character.  1984: Joe is a closeted gay student who escapes his suburban prison to come to London for the Gay Pride march where he meets the Out-and-Proud friends Mark, Mike, Gethin, Jonathan, Steph and Jeff.  He stays with them into the night at the Gay's The Word bookshop where Mark proposes that they form a new action group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.

At first incredulous, the group is formed when Mark points out that the miners have the same enemies that they face: the government, the police and the media.  Soon they are raising large amounts of money but with nowhere to distribute it as their overtures are met with a refusal to accept their help.  A Welsh mining town is randomly picked and eventually they meet with Dai, a leader of the Strike committee in the Dulais valley who comes to London and accepts their passion to help.

A visit to Dai's village shows the group the depth of the struggle and both the activists and the miners find they have more than the perceived enemies to fight.  Behind all of this, the gay friends are having to deal with the growing shadow of AIDS.

Of course we all know the outcome of the strike but the coda to it was wonderful and as end titles told stories of the characters beyond the film's timeline it is impossible not to be uplifted, saddened and empowered.

Matthew Warchus guides the film with the touch of a master - only once, just before the end, does the pace seem unsteady - but otherwise he keeps a wonderful balance between the comedy and the drama while also finding small telling moments within the bigger picture - there is a wonderful cameo from Russell Tovey which is all the more telling for what is left unsaid.  Also memorable is a quiet scene between Imelda Staunton and Bill Nighy where an absolutely killer punchline is not allowed to puncture the feeling of friendship, sadness, dependence and community.

Stephen Beresford's script also deserves kudos for giving the quite large group of characters little moments to shine and for giving them all the dignity they deserve - even the villains of the piece.

Warchus and Beresford are also gifted with a cast that give the feeling of a real ensemble with no one pulling focus despite the opportunities to do so.

Ben Schnetzer - unknown to me before this - has a naturalness on camera and is charismatic as Mark Ashton, driven to support the miners against all the trepidations of his comrades.  I loved Joseph Gilgun as Mike, Mark's close friend who is equally as driven to help but is more steady than his excitable friend.

Warchus seems to allow all his actors to find their own rhythms which pays dividends with Dominic West as Jonathan, the older member of the group, which starts off as the cynical seen-it-all participant but which through the course of the film, slowly becomes a rounded and multi-layered performance.  Andrew Scott as Gethin also gives a performance of subtlety and gentle strength.  His tiny scene of Gethin visiting his mother while he is in Wales is all the more emotional for being so restrained.

George MacKay has a gauche charm as Joe (aka Bromley by his new family) and I really liked the delightful performances of Faye Marsay as spiky Stephe as well as Karina Fernandez as Stella, itching to start her own breakaway group of Lesbians Against Pit Closures.

Wonderful performances by Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy and Paddy Considine give the film a solid foundation.  As the members of the Dulais Strike Committee who are most welcoming to the LGSM they each give impassioned performances representing aspects of a quiet, hardworking community victimised by the powers that be.

Paddy Considine gives a performance of subtlety and warmth as Dai, the head of the Strike Committee, who can see beyond prejudice to accept the help the gay community are offering.  Imelda Staunton is delightful as Hefina, the rigid moral backbone of the community who welcomes the activists into the village and, in possibly the film's best performance, Bill Nighy is excellent as the committee treasurer Cliff.  A taciturn man made anonymous by his own secrets, it's a joy to watch him be re-born through his association with the gays from London.  All Nighy's usual shtick is swept away as he gives a performance of lonely grace.

Jessica Gunning is excellent as Sian James, a young married housewife whose life is transformed by her experiences during the strike and through her relationship with the gay activists.  I also enjoyed Lisa Palfrey's performance of the bigoted Margaret who does all she can to wreck the association of the miners and the LGSM.

It would be easy enough to play the 'villain' but Palfrey keeps you intrigued in her character throughout. There is also excellent work from Monica Dolan as Joe's mother, as tightly controlled as her suburban decor.

Tat Radcliffe's cinematography and Simon Bowles' wonderful production design makes the 1980s real again and there is an invaluable contribution by Christopher Nightingale with a moving and eloquent score.  Nick Angel's music supervision also contributes to the excellent sonic recreation of 30 years ago.

We were lucky at the NFT for the film to be followed by a Q&A with producer David Livingstone as well as Schnetzer (and what a shock to discover he's American!), Marsay and Scott who were all insightful into working on the film and what they have gained personally from being involved in telling the story.

The following Sunday there was another preview screening at the Brixton Ritzy which we went to again as we were so excited by the film.  Far from being ready for all the film's power, again we were emotional wrecks at the end of it and I stayed for the length of the closing credits to recover - not that I succeeded as the credits roll over "To A Friend", The Communards' contemporary tribute to Mark Ashton.

I cannot urge you enough to rush to see PRIDE, it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you think, it will make you proud.

Love and Politics in the 1990s

I was thinking the other day that we seem to be in a very good season for excellent performances onstage at the moment - Michael Xavier, Joanna Riding (Pajama Game), Julian Ovenden, Geoffrey Streatfeild, Lewis Reeves, Matt Bardock, Richard Cant (My Night With Reg), Clive Wood, Eve Best, Phil Daniels (Antony & Cleopatra),  Helen McCrory (Medea), Billie Piper, Aaron Neil, Robert Glenister (Great Britain)... and now you can add two others to that list, Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan in the revival of David Hare's SKYLIGHT at the Wyndhams Theatre.

I never saw the original production of the play which starred Michael Gambon and Lia Williams which did the usual hop, skip and jump of National Theatre - West End - Broadway.  After it's Broadway run it reopened in London with Bill Nighy in the Gambon role and he is revisiting the role again, 18 years later.

This production also has Carey Mulligan in her West End debut and she was the reason I wanted to see it as her performances in AN EDUCATION, NEVER LET ME GO, DRIVE and SHAME have been exceptional.  Luckily she did not disappoint, with both her and Nighy giving sparky, memorable performances.

Set in that ancient, long-gone time - the early 1990s - the action takes place in a small council flat in West London which Kyra is subletting from a friend.  Kyra is a teacher in a struggling school in East Ham and has a quiet, untroubled private life.

One wintry night, Kyra is surprised to receive a visit from Edward, the 18 year-old son of her ex-lover Tom, a wealthy restaurateur.  She learns that Edward's mother died from cancer a year ago and that father and son are struggling with each other's unspoken grief, sharing a house that is no longer a home.  Edward is also still angry that Kyra walked out of all their lives three years before with no word of explanation.  Edward, bristling with the sulkiness of youth, skulks off but who should appear later also unannounced?  Tom turns up, saying he just happens to have been in the area.  Just by chance he also has an unopened bottle of Whisky.

 

Prowling the small flat like a lion in a cage, straightening and unstraightening her school books, dragging a chair out with his foot only to push it back again, Tom obviously has come on a mission which slowly is revealed along with what really happened three years before.  Although their story starts six years before that...

That's when Kyra had landed a waitress job in Tom and his wife's Chelsea restaurant soon after arriving in London.  She proved indispensable to the couple and their children, eventually moving in to the family home. Needless to say, Kyra and Tom were soon lovers although she said she would leave if his wife ever found out.  When she did, Kyra left with no goodbyes.  Soon after Tom's wife was diagnosed with cancer and he did all he could to make her life comfortable in their home.  Finally he admits to Kyra that he is there to try and get her back but Kyra is a different person now and refuses to give up her new life, although she cannot help her old feelings surfacing.

What soon emerges in their barbed conversations - and out-and-out arguing - is that Tom, while railing at the political correctness and woolly liberalism that he sees all around him, can no more understand Kyra's wish to travel across London every day to deliberately work in a depressing job than she can for his ever-growing need for money and his selfish world view.

In their night of long knives, we see both sides of their argument - yes, Tom cared for his dying wife turning their home into her holistic paradise but was he doing it out of genuine love or guilt over the affair and yes, Kyra cares passionately for the sink-estate children she teaches but is her hair-shirt approach to life just a reaction against her upper-middle-class upbringing - is she a working class tourist?

Bill Nighy was on excellent form as Tom the misanthrope ex-lover, railing at a changing world while attempting to repeat the past with Kyra.  His comic timing was wonderful, gaining huge laughs at his withering responses to both life and Kyra's attempts at carving out a new career, as well as the physicality of his performance too, you could feel his revulsion having to handle the lump of cheese Kyra was intending to put in her ragu!  But underneath it all was a loneliness, an emptiness and his short-lived happiness at their resumption of intimacy was touching.

Carey Mulligan had a wonderful sense of gravitas as Kyra, firmly believing that she was making a difference to people's lives and ideologically stronger than either of her male visitors.  Her sly sense of humour was delightfully played and she also suggested the quiet gnawing loneliness of a young woman deliberately cutting herself off from love.  I do hope she makes the return to stage often, she is too good an actress to be lost to film.  She also proves she can multi-task by acting and cooking onstage at the same time!  And it was real cooking too... the smell of frying onions was delicious!!!

Matthew Beard was effective as the stroppy Edward - an archetypal teenage boy that his father likens to a character from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS - who surprises both Kyra and the audience in the final scene.

Stephen Daldrey directs with his customary insight and stages the ebb-and-flow conversations with variety and pace.  Bob Crowley's set design conjured up the drab flat perfectly, it's invisible inner walls seen against a life-like block of council flats with lights going on and off in the windows showing that, while Tom and Kyra are battling each other, life goes on elsewhere.

An excellent revival of a fascinating play, as relevant now as it was in 1995.