Reviews
law'smmxns MA PEAU) (18) 93min 0000
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PAH/\Nt m t ll inn l tn THE FORGOTTEN (12A) 96min .0
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(it Nbll lithl‘. l i AFTER THE SUNSET (12A) 97min .0
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nPAMA ANATOMY OF HELL (18) 80min .0.
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INTERVIEW
. \ \ SPANKING THE PHILOSOPHER
Alistair Harkness meets DAVID O RUSSELL, the writer and director of Three Kings and now I v Huckabees.
David 0 Russell is leaning back in his chair, squeezing a stress ball. He looks a little dazed.
In fact he looks like he’s just been smashed in the face with a Space- Hopper. If this sounds mean, it won’t after viewing Russell‘s wondrous new movie I U Huckabees. In the film - which defies conventional summary so let’s just call it a head-tripping, brain-bursting screwball comedy about a cosmically confused environmental activist who hires an existential detective agency to sort out his life - the aforementioned Space-Hopper facial is the fastest way to reach a Zen-like state of ‘pure being'.
Russell is a committed Buddhist (he studied under theologian Bob father of Uma Thurman), and it’s two days after the American elections. He certainly seems calm about what’s just happened, joking around that he’s had lots of emails from people saying they feel like Caterine (Isabelle Huppert), Huckabee’s sexy French nihilist philosopher whose business card promises ‘cruelty, manipulation, meaninglessness’.
Russell’s serenity, however, should not be mistaken for complacency. Unlike most Hollywood directors, he’s unafraid of politicising his work. His last movie, the prescient Bush (Senior) bating Gulf War drama Three Kings, remains one of the most subversive mainstream films ever and I O Huckabees - based in part on Russell‘s pre-film career as an activist - is no less fired up. Getting into a debate about benevolent capitalism as a mask for corporate greed, it reflects Russell’s feelings about Bush’s America, where people are ‘very Open-hearted, but very close-minded’.
Then there’s Mark Wahlburg’s character, Tommy. How many other Hollywood movies would dare feature a fire-fighter embarking on an existential quest to make sense of his post-9H1 confusion and the ‘back to business’ attitude of most Americans? ‘Everything Tommy says is what I think about that,’ expands Russell. ‘After 9/11 I felt there were five minutes where everyone asked themselves heavy questions, then [this inquiry] evaporated. l was like, “Well wait a minute; I’ve been asking myself these questions all along. Why is everybody just now getting on the bandwagon and then jumping right off?”
If all this makes I V Huckabees sound polemical - nothing could be further from the truth and Russell would be delighted if you regard it simply as a slapstick comedy that makes you think. ‘I think that’s the best way to go with it,’ he says. ‘My favourite response, the one that’s the closest to my intention, is when somebody tells me they feel strangely elated by it.’
In other words, it’s a cinematic Space-Hopper to the face.
[I O Huckabees is on general re/ease from Fri 26 Nov, See rewew.
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/ -‘. THE LIST 53