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Film REVIEWS
DRAMA THIS MUST BE THE PLACE (15) 119min ●●●●●
There is a strong sense of the baroque running through the films of Paolo Sorrentino, not least his bravura portrait of former Italian Prime Minister Andreotti in Il Divo. His first English language venture This Must Be The Place neither dilutes nor abandons that impulse as he creates a weird but sometimes wonderful mixture of road movie and revenge drama. Sean Penn contributes one of his most fearless, idiosyncratic performances as Cheyenne, a reclusive, oddball rock star with the look of Robert Smith, the voice of Andy Warhol and a manner somewhere between Peter Sellers’ character in Being There (1979) and an alien visitor. It is an incredibly endearing, knife edge performance that also has the potential to irritate. How you respond to Penn might well determine how willing you are to embrace the film.
There seems little promise in the initial Dublin
scenes where the reclusive Cheyenne shares a mansion with his wife Jane (Frances McDormand). The narrative only gains focus and momentum with the news that Cheyenne’s long estranged father is dying. It is then that Cheyenne discovers his father was obsessed with finding one Aloise Lange, the SS officer who humiliated him at Auschwitz. Cheyenne decides to continue the search through the American heartland and there are echoes of Paris, Texas (underlined by a cameo from Harry Dean Stanton) and even The Outlaw Josey Wales as the quest for revenge is transformed into something more complex and life-affirming.
Sorrentino displays a wonderful eye for location, colour and composition and wraps the film in a great score from David Byrne. It might not all work and it might risk absurdity at times but there is a bracing aesthetic and gentle humanity to This Must Be The Place that encourages you to overlook the flaws and embrace the ambition of it. (Allan Hunter) ■ General release from Fri 6 April.
HORROR THE DIVIDE (18) 108mins ●●●●●
Rarely will you see a film as nasty and nihilistic as Xavier Gens’ The Divide. The Frenchman scored a cult hit with 2007’s Frontier(s) before making his first foray into the studio system with the by numbers video game adaptation Hitman. Like that film, The Divide is English-language, though infinitely more bleak as it depicts the rapid decline of civilisation in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. After Manhattan is subjected to a missile strike by unknown assailants, eight apartment block residents (including Rosanna Arquette and Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia) seek shelter in the basement-home belonging to the building’s janitor (Michael Biehn).
Think Lord of the Flies, with lashings of torture, rape and battery, as humanity all but evaporates. Frankly, some of it is stomach-churning, but Gens and his actors stick to their task grimly, and the film boasts some stunning images – none more than the final shot, which is almost worth enduring what goes before it. (James Mottram) ■ Selected release from Fri 20 April.
APOCOLYPSE Archives
Actor turned director DEXTER FLETCHER picks 5 films he’d save in an impending apocalypse
1 The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980) ‘It’s a great film about London at a particular time, and there’s something so deeply emotionally impacting about it. I’d have to have it in there, irrespective of my own appearance in it! There’s some great people in it; Wendy Hiller and John Gielgud, John Hurt and Freddie Jones, and I’m lucky that I’ve got some memories that I can attach to it.’ 2 Semi-Pro (Kent Alterman, 2008) ‘It makes me laugh, and I think that would be important – you need to have a laugh. The scene where they’re sitting round the poker table and one guy calls Will Arnett a ‘jive turkey’ is particularly funny – he goes totally serious and says, “Did you just call me a jive turkey?” I love all of that stuff.’
3 Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968) ‘It’s got one of the best openings of any film. Film is storytelling with pictures and not so much words, and [Leone] is brilliantly powerful in terms of telling a story with visuals. When you see Henry Fonda’s face change when someone calls him by his name – the power of that close-up; you can see what film can really do and what great film acting is. For me that’s something really special.’
4 Black Cat, White Cat (Emir Kusturica, 1998) ‘It’s so full of life and vibrancy. These people are real and crazy and funny and alive: the girl is absolutely beautiful and you want to know her, and the old man with the band tied to a tree is brilliant, and a pig in a car, it’s inspired! It doesn’t matter to me that I don’t understand what they’re talking about, it’s a film I can sit and watch again and again.’ 5 Hard Eight (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1996) ‘I like all of his films, but for some reason I love this one. It’s the simplicity of it, and it’s Philip Baker Hall acting with heart and purpose. Samuel L [Jackson] is brilliant in it, and Gwyneth Paltrow is fantastic, massively underrated. It was his first film I watched after Boogie Nights that I was like, “This is really fucking good filmmaking”; so accomplished and steady.’ (Paul Gallagher) ■ Dexter Fletcher’s directorial debut Wild Bill is out in cinemas now.
29 Mar–26 Apr 2012 THE LIST 69