Life of Pi

I have to say, Life of Pi was better than I expected it to be. I expected to really dislike it, but I actually quite enjoyed it.

I never read the book. It was recommended to me many, many times but I had taken an instant dislike to it. I read how its premise was taken more or less wholesale from a Brazilian novel about a boy stuck on a dingy with a jaguar. I read how it was rather artificially hanging on the Booker-baiting trend of an Indian setting with magical realism elements, especially when everyone has an oh-so-quirky history, like the main boy who is named after a swimming pool. I read how the boy and the tiger end up coexisting and end up on a fictional island of meerkats, and decided it would be trite and awful and try much too hard.

Nor was I enthusiastic about the film, initially linked to the director who has probably fallen furthest from grace of any I can think of beside Michael Bay – M. Night Shyamalan. He was then removed from it, and though directors I like such as Alfonso Cuarón and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and by the time years had dragged on an Ang Lee finally committed, I felt it was in ‘troubled project’ waters and likely wouldn’t come out of it well, especially as Lee is rather uneven, especially with more populist work.

Still, the film was finally made – and the trailer duly arrived, showcasing some rather lovely CG and annoying me with a motif of words matched with drumbeats. If I had missed it, I wouldn’t have been duly worried, but I caught it.

And yes, I should have given it more of a chance. It asked you to believe a lot less than I thought it would and it allowed for an acknowledged cynicism. There are some fanciful moments with the tiger, but you are never expected to believe it is anything but a wild animal. The island is indeed one of the parts that really stretches credulity, but a plot point was made of that. And though the framing device – about a visiting Canadian writer looking for a story – is lazy, but it also provides a much-needed alternate story. And yes, there is enough beauty in the oceans, as well as hallucinogenic fantasies of the oceans, that there’s a real visual spectacle.

It’s still a concept lifted wholesale from elsewhere, even if the devil is in the details here. Speaking of matters spiritual, I was not keen on the treatment of different religions, made into a quirk that comes over very differently when you remember it’s from Yann Martel rather than from a generalised, rather patronising Western idea of superior spirituality in India. It also still gets quite dull at times. But it is still lovely to look at – especially in 3D – tells a fun tall tale, centres on a likeable character with a likeable fierce tiger companion, and well worth the time to watch in the cinema, even if you can’t persuade me it would be worth the hours it takes to read a book. 

The Hobbit part 1: An Unexpected Journey

While both were fixtures of my childhood, I read The Hobbit rather more. Well, Lord of the Rings was a commitment of all your reading time for weeks, even months, whereas The Hobbit could be read in a few days. But it was a lot more inconsequential and I even came to view it as babyish, especially beside its big brother. The Hobbit makes Tolkien and C.S. Lewis in their little club sharing ideas make much more sense. It is in every way more child-appropriate, simplistic and indeed, superficial. I never really felt Bilbo was in any danger, unlike the members of the Fellowship. The dwarfs were silly griping fellows and for all their roots in Norse mythology, they had silly names and their quest seemed rather abstract and fuelled by gold. The trading of riddles, so iconic now, always struck me as a very unlikely scenario and I resented Bilbo for cheating, even if he did so inadvertently. The ring, meanwhile, even though Tolkien actually rewrote the passages featuring it once he knew how important it was going to be, seemed so trivial, as Bilbo slips it on and off as he pleases – though of course it takes time.

Well, I haven’t read the Hobbit since I was a preteen, but still remember much of it, largely because of family discussions. So I know just how much was added to this film, how much padding and embellishment there was – but that’s quite understandable in an effort to make a rather small quest story epic, and expand it to no less than three full films, which I can’t say I think entirely necessary when they could be getting on with The Silmarillion. The padding hasn’t just stretched the content to three films, though – it’s stretched this film to a full three hours, which is really too long. The first act in particular, when a mass of characters we can barely distinguish from one another are introduced, is long-winded and I am very sure that the main criticism The Hobbit will suffer is that it was dull. I had a very good time of it, recognising hints and references, but I was also aware that had I known nothing of mythology, deviations from the text or what was to come, I may have been bored.

However, bored I was not. A little surprised by sudden changes of scene once or twice, but very soon delighting in the new chapter. More or less all of the additions I loved, especially giving Radagast not only a role but a great and endearing eccentricity, with a very obvious visual clue to how little he cares for the impression he gives others. I was puzzling over who the actor was for a good few minutes, having forgotten the prior announcements but knowing he was terribly familiar, but when I realised it was the Doctor I remember seeing on Saturday evenings, I couldn’t have been more pleased. I hope this leads to Sylvester McCoy having a career renaissance, and his interactions with Gandalf were priceless. Though now I will no longer get to be quite so snobby about actually knowing who Radagast is – until now it was a bit of a bit of geeky esoteria.

The film squeezes in a prologue of sorts with Frodo and the older Ian Holm directly before the opening of Lord of the Rings, which is a lovely nod to the films these quite clearly build from. We are then shown the younger Bilbo, and Martin Freeman does an absolutely excellent job in his usual slightly baffled Englishman role. I may not care much for Sherlock or The Office, but he’s certainly one of the best things in either, and provides a nice Hitchhiker’s Guide link with yesterday’s film, Seven Psychopaths. As Bilbo tumbles into the quest, he gains confidence, and it will be great to see him grow further in the next installations. As well as the familiar encounter with the mountain trolls, the stop at Rivendell, the encounter with the goblins and Bilbo meeting Gollum and finding his ring, the film gives itself more of a structure by introducing a baddy only mentioned in the book as part of the story of Thorin getting his full name Oakenshield. This allows for some pretty heavy action scenes, and gives the film the artificial climax it needs. We also get Radagast encountering Sauron in an early form, and having a rather confusing episode with what will become a Nazgul, here apparently a summoned spirit and not a man who can only be killed by a woman. There are also added appearances from Saruman and Galadriel as well as Elrond, which is great – seeing those familiar faces and getting Christopher Lee another screen credit is never a bad thing. Also present is Stephen Fry – his voice, at least – unexpectedly as a goblin king with a huge wobbling chin I’m sure insecure Stephen will quietly fret over. The eloquence of this hideous creature and his sublimely awful singing make for an excellent casting choice, turning what could have been a highly forgettable character into a very memorable one.

The dwarves are more memorable than they might have been, too. Though some are little more than ‘the fat one’ or ‘the daft one with a slingshot’, others get distinguished well, though of course it’s Thorin that does the most growing – and comes over as far more formidable than in the book. James Nesbitt’s one scene shows his great talent at seeming like a lovely guy in just a few words, and the guy from Desperate Romantics as the one bizarre good-looking and non-squat dwarf gets to stand out as a character as well as a face with his naivety and careless tongue.

It was long and in summary, doesn’t feel that action packed, but it was in fact very enjoyable and I’m looking forward to seeing Beorn, hearing Smaug and cringing at the spiders in glorious 3D – and yes, the 3D was exemplary here.

I may well go and see The Hobbit again, too. After all, I saw it in 24fps, which I had no complaints about, and was happy I saw first, but I am curious about the controversial 48fps. I remember when making a film for my master’s course, we were far happier with the lower framerate, the higher looking too amateurish, but I do want to know if it looks different large-scale. Perhaps I will see. I can’t see it being a more dramatic transition than that from film to digital, and we barely noticed that.

I’m also glad Jackson returned. I adore Del Toro, but…this just wasn’t the project for him.   

Seven Psychopaths

Seven Psychopaths just by the skin of its teeth manages to pull off its concept and be a lot of fun, and that’s because it’s a comedy. If this had been presented without all the jokes, it would have been the sort of film I really dislike – trendy-trendy Tarrantino derivatives with the tired, deeply deeply lazy conceit of being about a screenwriter trying to write a film. I hate screenplays about screenwriters writing, possibly making allowances for Charlie Kaufmann doing it but in general finding it highly irritating – and it’s the centre of the plot here. Possibly I’d give the same leeway to Martin McDonagh if I’d seen In Bruges, but I didn’t catch it, so this was my first impression of him. The meta concept is supposed to give a sense of credence, much like books that pretend they’re written by the main character, but in film it only has a distancing effect.

Alcoholic Irish screenwriter Marty needs inspiration for his screenplay, Seven Psychopaths, as he just gets drunk all the time and rips off his friend Billy’s ideas. Billy is involved with a ridiculous scam led by an older Polish gentleman called Hans, in which the two of them kidnap dogs for a few days, answer the ads and collect the reward. To help Marty along, Billy puts an ad in the paper asking for psychopaths to get in touch to share their stories, and while that leads to a disturbing encounter, they have much bigger problems because one of the kidnapped dogs belongs to a mafia boss who wants it back at any costs.

The set-up isn’t terrible, but much of the early development is. It’s painfully obvious who the psychopath with the jack of diamonds calling card is, and it doesn’t make sense that he’s two of the titular seven. The line between comedy and drama is deftly toed everywhere but with the mafia guys, who are too cartoony. And honestly, it’s just not very interesting, with vague ideas about psychopaths thrown around and occasionally enacted – there’s one idea about a Vietnamese guy who’s going to take revenge for war atrocities, and another stolen from Billy about a quaker who stalks his daughter’s killer, which of course neatly gets referred to again later.

The film rests, though, on two brilliant asides and a strong ending that mixes anticlimax, dryness and traditional action payoffs very nicely. The first aside is with Tom Waits’ character Zachariah, who goes everywhere carrying a white rabbit, telling the story of himself and his lover travelling the country as serial killers who hunt down and kill serial killers. When Tom Waits’ character is too horrified by the burning to death of the Zodiac Killer, they part, and he’s been searching for her ever since. The time and place the character reappears can be seen coming a mile off, but it is still quite brilliant, Waits’ inimical voice relates the tale perfectly and his presence here is worth the price of admission alone.

The second aside is Billy’s concept of how the film should be, an incredibly stupid shoot-out in a graveyard full of melodrama and absurdity. What makes it work is that it’s all filmed, done with a great seriousness by the actors, with every stupid twist enacted and every ridiculously violent moment realized. It’s easily one of the funniest scenes in any film I’ve ever seen, and is all the better for the contrast with the understated, wry humour elsewhere.

At the end, the neat way the ends are tied up is very nice. I was cynical about the Vietnamese man’s story, and it really only works because of how it’s delivered, but it does work, in the end. Hans’ stand-off with the mobsters, where he undercuts their schtick with wonderful deadpan responses, couldn’t have worked better. Loved it.

And no review of this film could be complete without mention of its fantastic cast. This ensemble is absolutely sublime, and Tom Waits is really the icing on an exceedingly tasty cake. Colin Farrell does bewildered and hapless yet likeable far better than expected, and Christopher Walken brings such measured gravitas to what is after all a role that oscillates between awesome and pathetic, and embodies a man so very different from his usual characters sublimely. Sam Rockwell, who despite loving him in Moon and enjoying in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I had hitherto paid little attention to, certainly distinguished himself this time, with a bravura performance balancing madness and goofy simplicity in a compelling, fascinating and rather unsettling way without ever being unbelievable – just the sort of role someone like him needs to stand out. And then there’s Woody Harrelson, whose character is simple on the surface but probably the hardest of any of them to make work in the film, being at once logical and precise, unhinged and unpredictable and also motivated by a rather daft love of his doggie. They all spark off each other, and it’s fascinating to watch it all work.

Arguably it shouldn’t work. It should annoy me. But largely thanks to the cast, it doesn’t. They are very enjoyable to watch.