Bob Blog: Issue #04
Local Hero, More Shyamalan and Kneecap
Some quick but important updates!
August was an extremely fun but busy month for myself. I went on multiple trips to the countryside (heavily influenced my first piece on Local Hero) and got my first ever job in journalism (I even went to my first ever critics’ screening)! Hence, Bob Blog will be consequently affected by such opportunities. Not to worry however! My job is at my university paper where I’ll be the head film critic, so, my film reviews will primarily be uploaded on their website (and also in print). You can find the film & tv section of the University Observer here and my authors page here. I’ll probably give updates in the start of each Bob Blog issue on what I’ve written over the month but its worth checking the site regularly as myself and my team will be working hard and consistently as the college term starts.
The schedule for Bob Blog will change only slightly; the monthly, first of the month, Bob Blog issue will still go out as per usual with two pieces on film and a film review. For the middle of the month however I’ll only be uploading one medium sized piece on the 14th instead of a review on the 13th and a larger piece on the 15th. I’m doing this only because essentially any reviews I write will be prioritised for the paper and also due to the fact that I’m heading into my final year of college and will also be applying to masters program throughout the upcoming semester! If this issue feels rushed, I apologise because it is, I’ve written all three pieces in the one day due to how busy I’ve been. These are all small changes but I’ll always be committed to making Bob Blog the best that it can be! Anyways, please enjoy what I’ve written.
Subtle Profundity in Local Hero
My perception of everything is affected by its cinematic representation. This past month I traveled with my girlfriend to the ever expansive Scottish Highlands where we met her family. In preparation, a double feature was insisted upon. Two nights before leaving we watched The Water Horse, a basic if not touching family film about the mythical origins of the Loch Ness monster and Local Hero, which is a film I had been meaning to watch and one that my girlfriend’s mother was quite fond of. Before watching each of these films, the only Scottish, or Scottish-set, movies that I could recall watching were Trainspotting (i.e. “IT’S SHITE BEING SCOTTISH”) and Ratcatcher (one of the most depressing stories committed to film). My view of Scotland, as a result, was quite negative. Local Hero goes beyond the city limits of Glasgow however. Even when it gets to the far stretches of the Highlands, it thrusts you even further beyond.
The beauty of Local Hero is its simplicity. The film follows Mac (a typical Peter Riegert role), a smooth and chill employee of a towering American Oil corporation. He has been asked to travel to Ferness at the tip of Scotland to negotiate buying up the entire village so that the land can be used for an oil refinery. Not much happens beyond this basic premise. Even when Mac arrives in Ferness he spends the length of the film within the steep hills and never-ending shoreline of the village. The film meanders along as Mac presumptuously writes off Ferness as an archaic, behind the times village with nothing to do but drink and go home to sleep and dream about drinking. As negotiations progress, Mac becomes fond of the simplicities of the village and builds personable relationships with people he would have never expected to have.
What I’ve described sounds like a broad, fish out of water 80s comedy with light sentiments concerning the industrialisation of the natural world and “there are more things to life than money”. Bill Forsyth certainly represents these themes formally; shots become wider and longer as Mac becomes more engaged with the geography and population of Ferness (Not to mention his gradual costume change from his yuppie suit to an Aran sweater and jeans). But, to say that these themes are the thesis of Local Hero would be a miscalculation. The owner of the oil company that Mac represents, Felix Happer (a delightful Burt Lancaster), is more interested in star constellations than he is an oil refinery, let alone oil itself. He urges Mac to witness the stars and to watch out for comets in the nights sky. Happer has the typical Lancasterian enigmatic and eccentric traits but is never an intimidating presence. He’s in search of something, other than oil, that will give the remainder of his life purpose and he believes that it could be found in the stars.
As Mac awaits seeing some cosmic amazement in the Scottish sky he meets several other visitors to Scotland along the way. He first meets Reverend Macpherson (Gyearbuor Asante), a man from Africa who came to Ferness as a student minister but “didn’t ever get away again”. He also meets a Russian man named Victor (Christopher Rozycki) who sailed in from his homeland to imbibe in the local beers and whiskies as well as enjoy the chaotic vibe of the Ceilidh. These men are all scotsmen at heart. Mac himself is a faux scotsman. His last name, McIntyre, was switched to by his parents once they immigrated to America from Hungary. Ironically, they felt as though it was a more American name. What Forsythe is getting at goes beyond the aforementioned themes as the film locks into how you don’t need to be genetically linked to a country to appreciate its beauty and feel a sense of belonging. Additionally, the natural world is one of the only things which is accessible to us all.
Once the film begins to depict meteor showers and the northern lights, it does so with a delicate hand. They’re never sensationalised and the camera is never distracted by spectacle. Forsythe focuses on Mac and how his character responds. He phones Happer and yells the colours of the Northern lights over the phone, trying his hardest to paint a picture but often is too exasperated to say anything coherent. The intangibility and complexity of these natural wonders is felt so strongly. In the city, you fail to recognise how spellbinding and unique the natural world can be. We often separate these things from our own realities because they lack explanations in layman’s terms; however, this is our reality. Astonishment and meaning can be found quite easily, you just have to search for it.
The ending of Local Hero is strangely ambiguous. Happer travels to Ferness, seemingly indefinitely, as he feels that the village will present him with some much desired clarity. Mac travels back to America and splays out the little trinkets that he picked up along the shoreline as well as some pictures that he had taken with his Highland mates. He goes to his balcony and looks out over the city and its light pollution. The city is not presented as ugly or over-industrialised. If anything, the neon blue lights are reminiscent of the blue hues in Ferness. One thing is for certain however, you cannot see the stars. To leave our lives behind and to start anew is a privilege that many of us cannot afford to have. The city can narrow your perspective and keep you in a state of constant movement. In the countryside your mind is allowed to wonder and meaning is found in the most trivial of interactions.
I’m learning to love M. Night Shyamalan
Bob Blog has been short in its existence but has still strangely mapped an interesting development in my relationship to the work of M. Night Shyamalan. In my review for The Watchers in June I compared Ishana Night Shyamalan’s work to her fathers in terms of its expository dialogue and heavy-handedness. Last month, I turned a corner with Ishana’s father in my review for Trap. I became so fond of M. Night’s specificity and oxymoronic mixture of horror and humour that I watched two of his other films in the days after writing my review. I’m not going to act as though the fact that I watched two (2) movies is revelatory. However, considering that I used to describe certain aspects of the auteurs oeuvre as “untenable”, it is fascinating to me that I suddenly found such an allure to his previous work.
Coincidentally, a profile of Shyamalan was published in The Atlantic at the end of July but I didn’t have the pleasure of reading it until a couple of days ago. In it, he describes what keeps him up at night, what influences his penchant for horror. “That something could happen to the family unit is the primary fear”, he continued, “that is the most sacred thing”. It’s an oddly specific thing for a director to latch on to but it often is the key to a lot of his work. I also read a two star review in Empire Magazine for Trap that miscalculates that the film “might be a grim comedy with something satirical to say about fandoms, drawing the line between the icky fascination with serial killers and shrieky pop idolatry”. To me, this is such an egregious misreading of the film that clearly is focused on Hartnett’s Cooper more than any other aspect of the film.
Critics and the general public often like to act as though they are above Shyamalan due to his implausible premises and unsubtly, as I did once. Unfortunately, people will often refuse to suspend their disbelief purely so they can feel superior to something. The idea that Shyamalan is not aware at how sincere or evident about his themes is quite laughable. In a film like The Visit, it’s evident that Shyamalan has a propensity for comedy and his usually stilted vibe. It’s a film that is equal parts funny and scary which is a perplexing combination. Horror and comedy come hand in hand but usually one will prevail over the other. Shyamalan demonstrates how the two can co-exist and, if you’re willing, can make for an eerie and oddly sentimental watch.
As mentioned, Shyamalan is driven by the security of family being breached or compromised. Family in horror films like Hereditary, The Babadook and Rosemary’s Baby is consistently treated and presented as tortured. To a degree, it feels trite. Shyamalan fights against this. It is easy to make a horror film that has chaotic scenes build on top of one another and expand on its thematics in purely cynical way. Real ingenuity is conveyed by being able to have justifiable sentiment and optimism at the heart of your horror film. Perhaps my now favourite M. Night film, The Village, is also his most esoteric and alienating. It has predictable twists and very emotive performances. These aspects never come across as ostentatious to me due to the fact that it is a film about love and family. In an insular village surrounded by murderous beasts, Shyamalan makes a heartfelt and moving film about the double sided nature of love. How it can drive us to fight and be defiant but also force us to be protective and hostile.
People are afraid of allowing a horror film to be anything even close to earnest. In a crowded theatre, especially for an M. Night film, you can often feel people getting their knives out and waiting for any moment to laugh. Horror as a genre is often conventionalised and narrowed down so that an audience will find it permissible. Shyamalan is evidently at a point in his career where he no longer cares. In the profile in The Atlantic he mentioned that “I think I have a thing where I want everyone to like me and I want to please everybody” and went further “There’s that side of me, which maybe isn’t a great side of me. And then the other side of me, which is: I’ll burn down the house for an idea, no problem, without blinking. Those two sides are always a little bit at war within me.”. I personally believe that his attempt to please people is showed through his sense of humour. An M. Night film will always be singular in the horror genre; a horror film with a little bit of heartwarming sentiment.
Language breaths Life: Kneecap Film Review
An Irish drama has a certain look and feel. Often slow and meditative and scarcely set in a metropolitan area. As a nation, we can be obsessed with history and the need to feel guilt and a connection to the past. Kneecap opens by going against tradition in Irish cinema. It mentions how every representation and story of Belfast shows a troubled and political history with no ounce of respite or even a sense of Irish culture. Kneecap certainly is interested in Irish history but never holds it too sacred or glorifies it. Instead of looking backward, Kneecap looks into the future and fights for Irish culture to be present and strong in that reality.
The film focuses on the real life story Irish Hip-Hop trio of the titular Kneecap (Who are all played by themselves). While a consistent narrative is never truly formed, the film primarily follows young and drug obsessed rappers Mo Chara (a stage name for actor Liam Óg) and Mòglaí Bap ( a stage name for actor Naoise Ó Cairealláin) as they face constant pressure from the police and the R-RAD (Radical Republicans Against Drugs). Amongst being chased and harassed and being forced into speaking “The Queens English”, they remember the words of Móglaí’s father Arló (Michael Fassbender); “Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Ireland’s freedom”. Arló disappeared from the boys lives at a young age after faking his death to avoid arrest after being found guilty of several IRA related car bombings. The boys respect the fact that Arló instilled a love for the Irish language in them at a young age but want to take their fight for freedom in a new direction. All begins to take form when the rappers meet JJ Ó Dochartaigh, a directionless Irish teacher who makes music in a squalid garage.
What Kneecap does for the Irish language, it also does for Irish film; it’s a shot of adrenaline right into the pulse of Irish culture. It displays a flavourful and powerful use of invective which often is left out of Irish film altogether. It’s camerawork, for once, feels inventive and inspired, drawing on the propulsive shots from films like La Haine. This is all intentional as it feeds into what Kneecap are all about; repurposing the Irish Language in new and modern ways to grant it longevity. The culture surrounding the Irish language makes it appear as though that it is something of the past, something that is reluctantly taught in schools. Societally, Irish is repressed by this outlook. By utilising the language in such a contemporary medium and genre, it is given valuable longevity.
Though at times Kneecap can fight against its own sincerity and struggles to juggle its several, sometimes mundane, dramatic relationship threads, it proves to be a landmark for Irish film and culture. It’s outlook on the future of the Irish language is exciting and invigorating and will prove to be an imperative cultural object in years to come.
Sounds like a busy, fun and fulfilling summer! Wonderful news on your job success, congratulations and best of luck in the role, richly deserved.