Film Reviews
DRAMA DEPARTURES (OKURIBITO) (12A) 130min ●●●●●
Japan's entry, and indeed the winner of the 2009 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, Yojiro Takita's Departures arrives in the UK without much fanfare, perhaps because its subject matter hardly sounds promising on paper. When decent but un-inspired cellist Daigo (Masahiro Motoki) finds himself redundant after his orchestra is disbanded, he heads to Tokyo with his girlfriend Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) to beat a retreat to the humble spa-town where he grew up. There, he finds work as the assistant to Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki), whose small business performs the unsavoury task of preparing the bodies of the dead for funeral rituals.
With little trace of his unsavoury background as a porn director in the 1980s, Takita’s stern and sombre compositions and skilful use of a lush and evocative score by Joe Hisaishi are only part of Departures’ life- affirming charm. A sly, mordant humour is continually evident, from an ingenious opening scene involving a beautiful corpse with a secret, to the ingenious use of stones and sea-life to reveal the inner life of the tightly wrapped characters. Yes, the subject might sound grimly off-putting, but Departures has a spiky wit, warmth and empathetic bent that Bill Forsyth would be proud of. (Eddie Harrison) ■ GFT, Glasgow from Fri 18–Wed 23 Dec.
SCIENCE FICTION EPIC AVATAR (12A) 161mins ●●●●●
After months, if not years, of hype, James Cameron’s Avatar is finally unveiled as a visually stunning yet deeply flawed sci-fi epic.
Hailed by industry insiders as a ‘game-changer’ that will revolutionise the way we see cinema, it’s a film that’s high on technical flair but short on storytelling ambition. For a filmmaker of Cameron’s proven ability, that’s all the more disappointing.
Set in 2154, the film focuses on a paraplegic marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who arrives on the distant moon of Pandora with a mission to help displace its indigenous population, the Na’vi, so that humans can mine a precious material needed to ensure the Earth’s survival. In order to do so, Jake must assume 12ft blue Na’vi
form using advanced avatar technology. But, after winning their trust and being embraced as one of their own, Jake finds his allegiances gradually shifting, to the point at which he is compelled to lead the Na’vi against the military might of his former bosses in
order to defend their world and ideals.
For Cameron, Avatar marks the realisation of a long- held labour of love that has been decades in gestation. It’s a film that marries his passion for pushing technology with the global concerns – both environmental and political – that have come to resonate with him. Sadly, it feels too derivative of other better movies (Dances With Wolves, Apocalypto) and is also lacking on an emotional level, with many of the lead actors restrained by the effects surrounding their appearance or the clumsy dialogue that reduces them to one dimensional ‘good’ or ‘bad’ characters.
That said, Cameron does succeed in creating a universe you can believe and immerse yourself in that is both beautiful and dangerous. The look of Pandora frequently dazzles and the 3D version does enhance the overall effect.
Ultimately, though, Avatar pales in comparison to the
pioneering work that Cameron achieved in the first two Terminator films, Aliens and Titanic, which all felt like more complete visions. (Rob Carnevale) ■ Avatar is on general release from Thu 17 Dec.
COMEDY/DRAMA HUMPDAY (15) 94min ●●●●●
Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard) are old college buddies who haven’t seen each other for a decade. At a drunken house party in Seattle, the straight duo comes up with a radical proposition – they will have sex together in a film, which will be submitted into Hump! an amateur pornography festival. In their own words, ‘It’s not gay, it’s beyond gay. It’s not porn, it’s art.’ In the cold light of day though, certain obstacles remain. How is Ben going to tell his wife Anna (Alycia Delmore) about the project, and who, in baseball parlance, is going to catch and who will pitch? Writer-director Lynn Shelton has in the low budget Humpday fashioned a very
amusing and observant study of male insecurities. Beneath the bear-hugs, backslaps and mutual claims of ‘I totally respect you’, our bromance protagonists are far from confident in themselves: passive-aggressive Ben is sensitive to criticisms that his life has become drearily suburban, whilst artistic underachiever Andrew fears that he’s not the nomadic free-spirit that others assume, and their pig-headed competitiveness is entertainingly illustrated in a bruising game of one- on one basketball. And the heavily improvised performances of the leads, not least in the climactic hotel room scene, offset the film’s functional visual style. (Tom Dawson) ■ GFT, Glasgow and Cameo, Edinburgh from Fri 18 Dec. See profile, index.
56 THE LIST 17 Dec 2009–7 Jan 2010