Longing for a Djinn

When it comes to film CVs, there’s homogenous, and then there’s eclectic, and then there’s George Miller. To be fair, Miller isn’t the only one to have skipped his way through multiple genres in the course of a long career – you could argue that (amongst others) Neil Jordan, Steven Soderbergh and even Steven Spielberg have all covered a lot of ground, as well – but the relatively small number of films he’s made in over forty years, and the acclaim many of them have received, does make it particularly noticeable in his case. He practically invented a new subgenre in Mad Max 2, moved gracefully on to glossy fantasy with Witches of Eastwick, wrote and produced the pitch-perfect pig fantasy Babe, and then – after a brief interlude involving dancing penguins – blasted back with the most recent Mad Max film at the age of 70. A further spin-off to the road warrior series is apparently in the works, but Miller has warmed up for this with another entirely different kind of film.

This one is entitled Three Thousand Years of Longing, and a somewhat curious beast it is too. The protagonist-narrator (Tilda Swinton) presents it as a kind of fable or fairy tale, which is entirely appropriate as the film is largely about why people tell stories and the power inherent in them. Swinton plays Alithea Binnie (her name means ‘truth’, which is probably not a coincidence), a present-day academic – she calls herself a narratologist, but this sounds to me like the kind of discipline scriptwriters invent when they’re worried audiences won’t understand what an anthropologist or ethnographer actually does. Basically, she studies folk tales and other literature. As the film opens she is on her way to Istanbul to address a conference.

All goes well, apart from Alithea having some rather bizarre hallucinations of outlandish and otherworldly individuals haunting her steps – she is clearly well-liked and respected, despite being someone who has always been solitary and slightly detached from everyone around her. A colleague insists on buying her a gift from the Grand Bazaar before she departs, and she settles on a slightly curious glass bottle, somewhat discoloured by fire at some point in its history.

As you would, she decides to give the bottle a bit of a scrub with her electric toothbrush, and – you are probably ahead of me at this point – the top flies off and billowing mystical vapour fills the room. Yes, it’s one of those bottles with a genuine genie inside it, although as we are in 2022 and respect other cultures now, the movie tends to stick to the word djinn instead. The djinn (Idris Elba) offers Alithea the usual three wishes to fulfil her heart’s desire, subject to certain reasonable rules (no wishing for infinite wishes, no raising the dead, no abolition of suffering, etc), at the end of which he will be able to vanish off to the realm of the djinni. However, there are a couple of problems to be overcome first – as a scholar in her particular field, Alithea knows full well that the entire corpus of wish-granting literature easily fits into the genre labelled ‘Cautionary Tales’, which is hardly an incentive to start wishing for anything. There’s also the problem that she’s very satisfied with her current mode of existence, and isn’t at all sure what her heart’s desire actually is…

This is not one of those films which you get a sense of an iron narrative structure about while watching, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable or engaging. Once the djinn is out of his bottle, the two of them settle down in her hotel room to discuss their situation, which develops into the djinn recounting the peculiar tale of his long existence and the various interludes which have punctuated his time in the bottle. A series of quite lavish Orientalist fantasies unfold, incorporating characters such as Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, Suleiman the Magnificent, and so on. There is doomed love and palace intrigue and a striking number of really extremely voluptuous women who are notably under-dressed. It put me very much in mind of certain elements of Terry Gilliam’s Baron Munchausen movie, and also some parts of his Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus too, although Miller doesn’t have quite the same unique visual style. Eventually the film goes into a different gear, telling the story of what happens when Alithea takes the djinn back home to London with her.

This film is really a buffet of things to enjoy; it looks fabulous, and the two leads are both on top form – then again, Tilda Swinton is seldom less than magisterially watchable. Perhaps it is working opposite her which inspires Idris Elba to give one of the best performances I can recall him ever producing – blessed as he is with a very distinctive presence, so often Elba seems to be actively trying to be generic. The most memorable thing about Idris Elba’s film career, in some ways, is just how forgettable he often is. For whatever reason, that doesn’t happen here, and Elba’s work has both depth and subtlety. If he really wants to leave an impression as an actor, he should spend more time doing films like this and less time being chased by lions.

What it’s actually about is a little more obscure. George Miller is of the post-Lucas school of thought in the sense that he is very much influenced by the writings of Joseph Campbell, particularly with respect to the latter’s theory of the monomyth – the idea that there is one fundamental ur-story from which all the others are derived. You can sense the director’s very real fascination with the power of storytelling and roots of mythology throughout the film; you get the impression there’s a first-rate documentary waiting to be made here. But as an actual piece of fiction dealing with this topic, it’s not really clear what point he’s trying to make – or even if there is one.

Instead, the film concludes with a reasonably affecting (if slightly rose-tinted) tale of romance and loss. If it’s ultimately a bit unexpected, that’s because it always seems difficult to predict what’s going to happen next in this film. It’s a very likeable, deeply humane film, made with obvious intelligence, wit and sensitivity – but’s notably short on any real sense of conventional narrative structure. The incidental pleasures on offer will more than likely be sufficient reward for many viewers, however.

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The Square Root of Art

Martin Scorsese, esteemed producer, director, writer, and general elder statesman of the cinematic medium, caused a bit of a kerfuffle in 2019 when he declared that the films of Marvel Studios’ meta-franchise were ‘not cinema’, likening them rather to theme parks – presumably on the grounds that they are simply a commercial undertaking, part of an endless stream of franchised product.

Well, everyone’s entitled to an opinion, of course, but the great man’s complaint seems a little peculiar given some of the projects he has lent his name to as executive producer recently. The interview about Marvel was released virtually on the same day that Joker came out, while right now Scorsese’s cachet is being used to promote yet another example of a sequel intended to capitalise on the success of its forebear: Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II.

Well, of course I jest, albeit probably quite feebly – but there is something distinctly odd about a film which was so clearly meant for the art house getting a follow-up like this. I asked for a ticket to Revenge of the Souvenir when I turned up at the cinema and the chap on the counter didn’t bat an eyelid at it, but then they are probably used to me there. Nevertheless – obscure art house darlings don’t get sequels. Do they?

It seems they do. For those who missed it, the first Souvenir film tells the story of a young English film-school student named Julia (played by Honor Swinton Byrne), who gets a bit distracted from her studies by her relationship with Anthony, a slightly older man working in the Foreign Office, especially the fact that he turns out to be a heroin addict who (spoiler alert) ends up dying of an overdose before the end of the film. I should add that this story is told in the most restrained and unsensational manner imaginable, with scenes going off at various tangents and much attention given to Julia’s startlingly posh mum (Tilda Swinton) and other relatives.

Nothing about this screamed fertile material for a follow-up, but in some ways this hits all the targets for a good sequel: all the key creative personnel return, and the style and storyline from the first film continue seamlessly: you could probably edit the two films together into one three-hour-plus epic with the join barely showing (but I for one doubt I would have the stamina for that).

Describing the film in terms of the things that happen in the plot is probably a bit misleading, as – and here again it closely resembles the first film – it doesn’t so much feel like a story being told, as much as things happening in front of the camera in a fairly off-hand manner. But: we find Julia still coming to terms with Anthony’s death, spending time with her parents and his. The time of her graduation project from film school approaches. She enjoys a brief romantic entanglement with a fellow student.

Eventually the film settles down to focus on the film project, which – it slowly becomes clear – is an impressionistic retelling of the story of her relationship with Anthony. The school tutors are initially unimpressed by the half-finished script, and Julia is informed she can’t expect their support. (A gob-smacking scene ensues where Julia casually asks her mum for £10,000 to help out with financing the film, and Mumsy naturally agrees.) Actors are cast, sets built, and a not-entirely-trouble-free shoot gets underway.

So: The Souvenir was an autobiographical film. The Souvenir Part II is an autobiographical film about the making of an autobiographical film – perhaps The Souvenir² would have been a more appropriate title. The film is as recursive and self-referential as it sounds, but there is something strangely mesmerising about seeing another version of the events of the first film play out, not to mention a weird tension between the film’s careful naturalism and its awareness of its own identity as a piece of fiction – Julia’s own flat and the mock-up of it that appears in the film-within-the-film (which is, naturally, also called The Souvenir) are obviously both represented by the same set.

That said, the pace isn’t any quicker this time around, and if you’re not quite on board with the notion of a film which exists more as a piece of sensory and aesthetic art than as a narrative this probably isn’t the film for you. There are more obvious incidental pleasures, I should say – chief amongst them the reappearance of Richard Ayoade as temperamental auteur Patrick, given to shouting things like ‘You’re forcing me to have a tantrum!’ I really wanted Ayoade to be in the movie more, and found myself wondering why he’s never had a lead role in a movie; he certainly has the presence for it.

As the film went on I found myself pondering the prospects of a Souvenir Part III and what it might involve – an autobiographical film about someone making an autobiographical film about an autobiographical film, perhaps. In the end, however, there is a very definite sense of a conclusion taking shape – the fictional version of The Souvenir is completed and screened, and the different layers of metafictionality begin to collapse into one another. From what we see of the fictional movie, it looks like a pretentious load of old cobblers, but in a strikingly different way from the ‘real’ Souvenir; nevertheless, both feature Julia as the lead, rather than the character cast as her. Early in the film she is given a line of dialogue about her desire to make films that represent the imagination brought to life, rather than a straightforward recreation of life as it is lived – for most of the movie this feels like an ironic joke, given how naturalistic and low-key most of the action is – but Julia’s own film holds true to this. And, perhaps, the conclusion of Souvenir Part II suggests that Joanna Hogg’s films are equally works of the imagination. It certainly has all the strengths and weaknesses of the original film, but its subtle blending of different layers of fiction with reality gives it a depth and a puzzle-box quality all of its own. For many people it will doubtless just be a rather introspective film about posh people being pretentious together. But I suspect it’s a very good rather introspective film about posh people being pretentious together.

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A Knightsbridge Tale

I have no idea what I was doing in late summer 2019 when Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir was released; worrying about my career, maybe, or planning a holiday (looking back on those days it seems almost inconceivable that no-one could have had any notion of just how screwed up things would very shortly become and remain, but unwitting pawns of impending events we were – and remain, I suppose). Suffice to say that not only did I not see it, but I have no memory of even being aware of its existence – which is a little unusual given it seems to have been a bit of a critical darling, at least in art house circles.

It’s certainly not the kind of film which tends to receive mainstream plaudits. Some movies are like a highly-regimented coach tour, where you’re never left with any doubt about where you are or what you’re supposed to be doing – characters are being introduced and delineated, plot is being laid in, set pieces are being set up, all you have to do is sit there, pay a minimal amount of attention, and enjoy yourself. The Souvenir is more from the independent travel end of the market. Things sort of happen in front of the camera, some of which may turn out to be significant, some not. You can either sit back and let it all wash over you, initially at least, or you can try and engage with the film and figure out what it’s all going to mean in the end.

It’s not explicitly stated for some time, but the film is set in the very early 1980s and concerns Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne), a young woman from what’s clearly a highly privileged background who is going to film school in London – she has an idea for what sounds like a rather clumsy social-realist drama set on Tyneside. She shares a flat with a friend, there are parties; nothing in her life seems to be especially unusual. The camera observes it all steadily and calmly.

It becomes apparent that Julie is in a relationship with an older man named Anthony (Tom Burke) – he is likewise cultured, seems affluent, has a job working in security for the Foreign Office. Julie seems quite happy to let Anthony make most of the decisions in their relationship. He meets her parents, who seem to approve of him. And then they host a dinner party for two of Anthony’s friends, one of whom observes – while Anthony is out of the room – that they don’t seem like two people who would obviously be in a relationship, what with Julie being a nice well-brought-up young woman and Anthony a habitual heroin user of many years’ standing… (Delivering this key bit of exposition is Richard Ayoade, in another of the highly effective cameos he seems to have done so many of in recent years.)

You would expect this to be the inciting incident of the movie – boom! – after which it all kicks off and goes onto a slightly different track, but you’d be wrong. The film just continues in its measured and cool way, although the emphasis is now more clearly on the dynamics of the relationship and its impact on Julie. It becomes clear that she is paying the bill whenever they eat out; she has to borrow money from her mother (Tilda Swinton); what seems like a burglary at their flat proves to be nothing of the sort.

The meticulous attention to detail and restraint of the film never really waver; as a piece of art consistent and intact on its own terms, The Souvenir is very impressive. The question is whether a film which is so understated and so stately in its pace is a sufficiently rewarding piece of drama for most audiences. I watched it with my partner, who was very sure the story could have been told just as effectively in only half the time, while the milieu of the film – wealthy posh people sitting around flats in Knightsbridge not quite discussing their problems – is hardly guaranteed to get the majority of audiences on-side with it. The Souvenir does seem to be wide open to the criticism that it is essentially a kind of cinematic equivalent of a Hampstead novel – events are treated as significant and profound not because of any inherent quality they have, but because of the social background of the people they happen to (and the post code area that they live in).

The film itself isn’t quite as stifling as that sounds, and it does seem to be aware of the potential problem – there’s a scene where Julie is given quite a hard time by a tutor at the film school, who clearly has a chip on his shoulder about the fact she comes from a wealthy background. In the end, while much of the film doesn’t exactly feel essential – for example, a scene where the two main characters bicker in a low-key way about who’s hogging the middle of the bed – it does result in a very authentic and absorbing sense of the reality of what’s going on. Films are life with the boring bits taken out – or so Hitchcock is supposed to have said. But naturalism was never really Hitch’s thing, and Joanna Hogg seems to be trying to make a film which reflects the entirety of life, boring bits as well as moments of passion and heartbreak. (This is apparently a semi-autobiographical story.)

I’m still not sure this is an achievable objective, but before its end The Souvenir does become quite engrossing to watch, if seldom particularly comfortable. This is mainly due to the slow accretion of detail and the strength of the performances, low-key though many of them are. It’s in the nature of this kind of film that the acting isn’t of the demonstrative, awards-chasing sort, and the fact that Honor Swinton Byrne hasn’t given another major performance makes it a little hard to assess her work – but, as noted, it all feels authentic and involving.

That said, while this is undeniably a film with many positive qualities, it’s still one which is arguably slow and reserved and quite bleak for much of its duration. It feels like film intended to be admired more than loved, a piece of catharsis as much as entertainment.

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The Recurring Boom of Colossal Concrete Balls

The old joke is that the word onomatopoeia sounds nothing at all like the thing it denotes. Srang kha, lest you be wondering, is the Thai word for the same concept. In French it is the rather more familiar onomatopee; in Spanish, the jaunty-sounding onomatopeya. The great thing about onomatopoeic words is that they really cut down on the time you need to spend explaining what something sounds like – bang, boom, crash, splash, and pop are all notions it’s quite easy to get your head around.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film Memoria opens with Tilda Swinton being woken in the night by a peculiar sound which does not easily lend itself to onomatopoeic translation. She assumes it is just the result of local construction workers making an early start, but this suggested explanation is met with blank looks by her friends and colleagues, who tell her no such work is going on.

Swinton is playing Jessica Holland, a British woman living in Colombia. Some reviews of this film offer with great confidence the information that she is a market gardener; she does talk about the care of orchids occasionally but apart from this I never really got a handle on her line of work (I assumed she was some sort of academic). Maybe the press kit for Memoria has a really informative synopsis; I don’t know. Anyway, we see Jessica visiting her sister, who is apparently very ill in hospital, talking to colleagues, and so on. Once again she hears the mysterious sound, which everyone around her is oblivious of.

It has been evident since the start of the film that this is not going to be your conventional narrative, and this is confirmed by a sequence in which Jessica goes along to a recording studio to talk to the engineer there about her experiences. Very kindly, he tries to help her recreate the sound she’s been hearing. When asked, her response is along the lines of ‘It sounds like a colossal concrete ball falling down a metal well surrounded by sea water.’ I would have said this was proof you can be very detailed with an answer without it being especially helpful, but the guy looks through his sound effects library and comes up with a close copy. However, when she goes back to see him again, nobody there has any idea who she’s talking about.

I’m probably making Memoria sound like some kind of disturbing psychological thriller – but while it has managed to score a 12 certificate in the UK (for ‘unsettling scenes’) it really isn’t that kind of film at all. There are no thrills (except perhaps on a conceptual level if you manage to figure out what’s actually going on – and good luck with that). There is very little action at all. Often the camera just seems to have been left running as it points at a street scene or a car park, across which somebody may eventually amble. Dialogue scenes usually concern Swinton talking to someone about a fairly mundane topic, occasionally interrupted by the sound of a colossal concrete ball falling down a metal well surrounded by sea water (or a close cousin of it). There are only the faintest signs of a developing plot, which take the form of various odd occurrences – as noted, someone disappears, someone else who Swinton believed to be dead turns out to still be alive – it is as if she has somehow become slightly detached from her native reality and is drifting through a series of almost-imperceptibly different parallel worlds (if this is in fact what’s going on, the film does not make it at all clear).

Revelations, such as they are, come near the end, as Jessica takes a trip into the countryside and the film seems to slow down even further. At one point, after a lengthy and possibly portentous conversation carried out in long, static takes, a character lies down on the ground and takes a nap – and the camera stays locked on them throughout while they sleep and wake up. I don’t know how long this takes but it seems like a rather long time.

Kind critics have called Weerasethakul’s style of film-making as mesmeric and Memoria as having a trance-like atmosphere. If I were to be unkind I would suggest this is just critic-speak for a rather long, very slow film where it is frequently unclear what’s actually going on. Clearly the jury at Cannes wouldn’t agree, as they gave it a prize – although possibly there was something in the French water last year, as the Golden Palm winner of 2021 could reasonably be described as certifiably bonkers.

I’m really not sure whether this is just a slow, pretentious movie which has been rather overpraised by highbrow critics, or something which is genuinely brave and accomplished and thoughtful I’m just not quite bright enough to fully appreciate. The fact that no-one seems particularly inclined to offer an explanation for the denouement of the film, which apparently sends it spinning off into the realms of science fiction, may be significant. Either way, this is not a conventional movie in any sense of the word.

And neither is the way it has been released into the world – it seems that here in the UK, we are quite blessed, in that Memoria is playing in several cinemas just near me. My understanding is that in the US at least, there is only a single print of the film on an extended roadshow release – it’s showing in one cinema at a time, for one night only, on a tour that could potentially last for years. That’s not a release, that’s an urban legend in the making.

On the other hand, it is quite fitting for this kind of film. On some level this is clearly a movie lifted (and perhaps facilitated) by another powerful, almost ethereal performance by Tilda Swinton, dealing in a quite profound way with issues of perception, the senses, memory and experience. On another, it is a mystifying and obscure experience that I would struggle to describe as satisfying. A real oddity, either way.

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Terminal Express

There’s a game you can play, if you find yourself at a loose end (and, who knows, over-endowed with the will to live): it’s called ‘Foreign Movie or Not-Foreign Movie?’ It works like this: someone says the name of a movie and you have to decide if it’s foreign or not (complex rules, I know, but give it a chance).

It almost goes without saying that this game relies on a rather flexible definition of what actually counts as a foreign movie: in this situation, ‘foreign’ actually means ‘not in the English language’. Given the American, British and Australian (etc) film and movie industries are so radically different, you might very well think that this is stretching a point beyond the bounds of reason and off into the realms of the uncomfortably insular, but so it goes. Every more-accurate title I can think of is hopelessly unwieldy.

Cinema is a business, in the end, and it’s a fact that English is the closest thing to a lingua franca that the medium possesses – if you want your movie to get a decent international mainstream release, doing it in English smooths the way considerably. Perhaps the most notable exponent of this kind of thing is the French hyphenate Luc Besson, responsible for a string of largely fun-but-disreputable action thrillers like The Transporter, Columbiana and Lockout, all of which are technically French, but all of which (to paraphrase one critic) disguise their national origin to appeal to a wider international audience.

You don’t have to be making trashy genre movies to play this game, of course: Besson has done it with slightly more elevated fare as well. Even so, it doesn’t necessarily work in helping a film to cut through: which is just a rather circuitous way of saying that I don’t recall Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer getting much of a UK release when it came out back in 2013. This is a Korean-Czech co-production, but made in English and with a predominantly British and American cast; the subject matter, as we shall see, is essentially mainstream. And yet for some reason it still seems to have slipped through the cracks, round my way at least. Or maybe I was just distracted. So it goes.

Proof we are in traditional SF movie territory comes in the opening few minutes, where a bit of audio, some captions, and footage of chemtrails establish the premise of the film: in an attempt to halt global warming, a new chemical has been released into the upper atmosphere with the intention that it will cool the planet down a bit. This works much better than expected: far too well, in fact, with the planet transformed into an icy, uninhabitable snowball. The only remnant of civilisation is the Snowpiercer, a train which functions as a sealed, apparently self-sufficient habitat as it endlessly circles the planet.

Seventeen years on from the cataclysm, all is well aboard the Snowpiercer, as the passengers enjoy a pleasant lifestyle with all the amenities they have come to expect – passengers in first class, anyway. Back in third class, at the rear of the train, it’s a squalid, overcrowded hell, with no facilities and extreme discomfort (insert your own joke about the UK rail network here, should you wish). However, as the money and power of the third-class passengers is greatly exceeded by that of the people up front, no-one important really cares about them.

However, revolt is stirring at the back of the train, led by brooding, reluctant hero Curtis (Chris Evans), who is guided by a wise old man named Gilliam (Gilliam is played by John Hurt, and as there is a distinctly Gilliamesque feel to much of the movie, one wonders if there isn’t a little tip of the hat going on here). Their plan is to get past the gates and armed guards and reach the front of the train, where its creator Wilford (Ed Harris) is to be found, at which point a profound social realignment will take place. But it’s a long way to go, with many nasty surprises on the way…

So, yeah: missed Snowpiercer on the big screen, then Former Next Desk Colleague gave me a copy on a hard drive (hardly ethical, I know, but I was looking at two months’ solitary in Kyrgyzstan, so to speak) which I managed to bust before I watched it; sometimes it seems like the stars are just set wrong and you’re never going to see a film (still haven’t completely given up on Tiptoes, though).

But what do you know, I finally managed it, and this is certainly a superior example of what it appears to be trying to be: a proper science fiction film with genuine ideas in it, a touch of visual innovation, and plenty of violence to keep the mainstream punters happy.

It’s well-written, well-played, well-paced, well-designed and well-edited and meets every requirement of being an impressive movie which is worth your time, if slightly brainy SF action movies are your cup of tea at least (I can imagine some of the more graphic elements of the story may not be to everyone’s taste). One could probably take exception to a few elements of the plot as being slightly contrived and implausible, but this would be to miss part of the point of the piece.

This is that there is a limit to how literally we are intended to take the film: it seems to me to be a kind of existential fable or allegory, and this informs the story on a fundamental level. Rather like Ballard’s High-Rise, in which the tower block becomes a metaphor for society, so in Snowpiercer the train becomes a microcosm of the wider civilisation which initially created it, with the social divisions and inequities of the train reflecting those of our own world. This is hardly some deeply-buried subtext: this feels like an angry, insurrectionist movie, and one wonders if some of the more comic-grotesque elements (Tilda Swinton’s extraordinary apparatchik, for instance) have been included just to make the film more palatable as entertainment as well as a piece of agitprop.

On the other hand, beyond being a call for revolution, the movie also has a rather topical concern with the state of the world, and its sustainability: the train isn’t just a symbol of society, but for the world in ecological terms – the need to maintain a balanced and functioning closed system turns out to be one of the main drivers of the plot, and indeed is the main reason for the status quo on the train at the start of the film. The antagonists of the film suggest harsh measures are required to achieve this; the protagonists have no response beyond breaking open the system, not really an option available in the real world.

It’s not surprising, then, that Snowpiercer eventually comes across as a rather existentially bleak and ambiguous movie, certainly not an example of the traditional Hollywood ending. If it reminded me of anything, it would be The Matrix Reloaded – there is a similar mix of visual flair, elaborate violence, and philosophy – Curtis’ journey to visit Wilford recalls Neo’s quest to find the Architect, and both heroes are in for something of a surprise when they arrive. But Snowpiercer is a more coherent and satisfying film, and it’s not surprising Bong Joon-ho has gone on to become such an acclaimed director. Not perfect, but an impressive movie nevertheless.

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Non-Natural History

I think most people would have been surprised, for the vast majority of the last quarter-century or so, to learn that Armando Ianucci would be directing an adaptation of a Charles Dickens novel. It’s only comparatively recently that Ianucci started directing films at all, with 2009’s In the Loop: before that he was best known as a writer, producer, and occasional performer of comedy and satire. The words ‘glittering career’ do not seem inappropriate, given he was involved in On the Hour and The Day Today, the early years of Alan Partridge, bringing Stewart Lee and Richard Herring to the BBC, and much else besides. Since becoming a film director, however, his philosophy seems to have been to pick the most surprising projects he can think of – the title of his last film, The Death of Stalin, didn’t exactly scream comic potential, but it turned out to be one of the best black comedies of recent years.

Now, the question is, can he find the funny in Charles Dickens to the same extent? Is he even going to try? The film in question is The Personal History of David Copperfield, based on the book of (roughly) the same name. Now, I’m going to own up to the fact that while in recent years I have come to appreciate and enjoy the very real merits of the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Jane Austen and Wilkie Collins, I have never actually read a Dickens novel in my life. Yes, yes, I know. So when I tell you that David Copperfield was apparently Dickens’ favourite of his own works, probably because it was semi-autobiographical, you can just thank Wikipedia – pretty much the extent of my exposure to the story has come from watching dear old Barry and Terrance’s BBC TV adaptation over thirty years ago.

As the title perhaps suggests, the film concerns the life of David Copperfield, a young man growing up in the mid-Victorian period. He is played for most of the film by Dev Patel. His father dies before he is born, but his early years with his mother are happy ones; then she re-marries to a hard and stern man, and David is eventually sent to London to earn his keep working in a factory. Here he meets the impecunious but eternally optimistic Micawber (Peter Capaldi) and his wife. Eventually he learns of his mother’s death and, rebelling against his treatment, seeks out his sole remaining relative, his aunt Betsey Trotwood (Tilda Swinton), who lives near Dover with her own distant relative, the amiable but eccentric Mr Dick (Hugh Laurie).

The story goes on in a roughly similar vein for most of the film – it came as no surprise to me to learn that Dickens apparently had no particular structure planned out in advance for the story when he wrote it. This is a substantially trimmed-down version of the plot of the book, with various characters and plotlines wholly or partly excised, but it still feels discursive and picaresque. Characters appear and reappear, and everyone seems to know each other in the most suspiciously convenient way. To be honest, though, the pleasure of the film – which is considerable – does not come from the plot, but from the performances and direction.

The most instantly noticeable thing about The Personal History of David Copperfield is that – well, he is Asian (Dev Patel’s background is somewhat complex, but his family is Gujarati Hindu). Agnes Wickfield is played by Rosalind Eleazar, who is Black; her father is played by Benedict Wong, whose family is originally from Hong Kong. The world being as it is, I am picking my words with some care, but: I always find myself a little bemused, at best, by the current tendency towards ethnically-diverse casts even when it is inappropriate for the period being depicted. If you are doing a contemporary or futuristic drama, then obviously it is absolutely laudable and correct to include performers from a wide range of backgrounds. I am likewise aware that, historically, the UK at least was somewhat more diverse than it has traditionally been depicted as in films and TV.

Neither of these things changes the fact that when I’m watching a film like Mary, Queen of Scots and a character like Bess of Hardwick is unexpectedly Chinese, it kicks me out of the story. I’m not sure what this achieves beyond creating a false image of the past, where it is like an idealised version of the present. Are the casting choices in David Copperfield therefore a problem? (I have already been asked if the new film is ‘a send up’, because of Dev Patel’s involvement.) Well, definitely not if you’re not someone who worries about this sort of thing in the first place, and not for me, either, because it seems very much of a piece with the rest of the film either. There are bold and interesting creative choices going on throughout: the film starts with Copperfield about to deliver a reading of his life story to a theatre audience, and the painted backdrop falls away to allow him to walk into his own past, where he appears as narrator alongside the characters and his younger self. In addition to being clever and inventive, this makes it clear the film is not affecting to present a naturalistic version of Victorian England, but a staged, mediated one. In this context, the ethnicity of the characters doesn’t really matter.

In any case, you can hardly accuse Dickens of studied naturalism. His characters are big and memorable ones, which demand a more heroic style of performance – and Ianucci has certainly found performers capable of delivering what is required. There are big comic turns from Peter Capaldi and Hugh Laurie in particular; Ben Whishaw plays Uriah Heep, and if I have a criticism of Ianucci’s adaptation of the novel it’s that this character and his plotline seems a bit too marginalised – it seems to me that there is potential for depth and pathos here which goes untapped, as it is suggested that it’s Heep’s desperate desire to climb socially which is what turns him into such a sour individual.

One of the impressive things about the film is that despite the fact it is largely pitched as – and has been marketed as – a comedy film, you do come away from it with a strong sense of more serious themes having been addressed. Social mobility is one of them – ‘rags to riches’ being just another way of describing a change of position in society – with class also being a significant element, along with the issue of poverty. The salvation of all the characters proves to be the strength of the affection binding them together, and the film does have a wonderful warmth and feeling of camaraderie suffusing it.

I’m not sure this really qualifies as one of the great literary adaptations of recent years, for the plot does feel like a bit of an afterthought and the more serious elements of the story have arguably been a bit neglected in favour of the lighter scenes. But it is an immensely likeable film, filled with fine performances and made with ceaseless wit and invention, and containing just enough seriousness to give it proper heft. A funny and sincere movie.

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As Dead as a Pan

If you had asked me to come up with a list of actors I would expect to see pump-actioning and machete-swinging their way through a mob of zombies this year, I think it would be reasonable to say that neither Adam Driver or Bill Murray would have been particularly near the top of it, and yet this is what we find ourselves seeing during Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die. Is it therefore the case that this film is a particularly odd one, or simply the case that zombie films have become so ubiquitous everyone is bound to end up in one?

Well, I’m not sure about the latter part – it’s starting to feel a bit silly talking about ‘the current boom in zombie movies’, considering it’s been in progress for the vast majority of the current century, but on the other hand there hasn’t been a major English-language entry in the genre for a bit. The Dead Don’t Die is a fairly odd movie, though. Here is where I make one of my occasional confessions and admit that, feted independent American film-maker though he is, I have never seen a Jarmusch movie before. I think I came fairly close to seeing Ghost Dog and Only Lovers Left Alive, but seeing films isn’t like playing horseshoes – ‘fairly close’ means nothing in this context.

Therefore I have no idea how representative the new film is of Jarmusch’s output, although I can at least be confident about saying that, up to a point, it does a reasonable job of looking and sounding like a movie by the late George A Romero (who is duly acknowledged in the credits). We find ourselves in the small country town of Centerville, apparently ‘a nice place to live’ according to its own publicity, in the company of police chief Cliff (Murray) and his deputy Ronnie (Driver). Something odd seems to be in the air – the times of the sunrise and sunset are a bit off, and Ronnie’s watch and cellphone have packed up too. Could it be connected to worrying news reports that fracking at both poles have accidentally thrown the Earth off its axis? (Shades of The Day The Earth Caught Fire.)

Well, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise when the dead start clawing their way out of their graves and attacking the living. One of the first to do so is Iggy Pop, who makes a predictably convincing zombie given that he has looked rather cadaverous for many years. The cops, along with various other town residents and visitors, find themselves taking cover from the shambling horde, wondering what to do next (Ronnie repeatedly opines that it’s all going to end badly). Could salvation lie with the town’s eccentric sword-swinging undertaker (Tilda Swinton)?

There are many perplexing and distracting things about The Dead Don’t Die, but the most perplexing and distracting one of the lot is Swinton and her character. Given that most of the film is a tongue-in-cheek cruise through B-movie tropes and other Americana, one has to wonder about the inclusion of a funeral director with a samurai sword, not really a stock character in this kind of film. But wait! It gets even more whimsical – Swinton doesn’t just play a samurai-sword-wielding undertaker battling the undead, she does it while deploying a Highland Scots accent somewhat reminiscent of Maggie Smith in the Harry Potter films, and a peculiarly formal mode of speech reminiscent of no person ever. And Tilda Swinton’s character is named Zelda Winston. It is enough to make one scratch one’s head at some length.

Still, if nothing else, it does reveal Jarmusch’s ability to get a good cast for this movie. Quite apart from Swinton, Murray and Driver, it also includes Chloe Sevigny as another cop, Steve Buscemi as a Trump-supporting racist farmer, Danny Glover as the local store owner, Rosie Perez as a news reporter (her character is named ‘Posie Juarez’), Selena Gomez as a visiting hipster, and Tom Waits as ‘Hermit Bob’, an unhinged fellow who lives in the woods.

So, a good cast, and the zombie apocalypse is one of those scenarios which will always have potential provided you approach it with a new spin in mind. However, quite what Jarmusch had in mind when he came to make this film is difficult to discern – given the background of many of the actors, and some of the character names, you’d be forgiven for assuming it’s meant to be a parody of the classic Romero zombie film – it certainly cleaves particularly closely to the formula, virtually paraphrasing dialogue about how the risen dead are compelled to seek out the things that mattered to them when they were alive – thus we get the spectacle of zombies shuffling about muttering about coffee and wi-fi.

The thing is that if so, it’s a comedy where it feels like they’ve forgotten to include most of the jokes. There’s the odd good invariably deadpan moment, but the film mostly just trundles along being neither particularly funny nor really trying very hard to be frightening. Everyone knows how this story goes, and it unfurls here pretty much as you’d expect (the odd apparent nod to Plan Nine from Outer Space notwithstanding). It’s more like a pastiche than a parody or spoof – a technically competent one, but one with serious issues in the script department. There’s a lot of cross-cutting between the different characters, which ends up more or less going nowhere – they tend to get the odd good moment, before the film seems to run out of things to do with them. One group of characters dies off-screen, another seem to get completely forgotten about. The film also seriously underperforms when it comes to the climax and ending.

The sense that this is a movie which has just been slapped together is only heightened by the inclusion of a bunch of jokes I can only describe as seeming lazy. There’s an in-joke about Adam Driver being in the stellar conflict movies. At one point the film’s theme song plays on the radio, and Murray’s character wonders why it sounds so familiar – Driver’s character tells him it’s because it’s the theme song of the movie. At one point Murray wonders about Driver’s weird prescience and is told it is because he has read the whole script of the movie, not just the scenes he is in. If this is supposed to feel knowing and witty, it does not; it just feels rather tired.

As I say, this is not a complete disaster, but the odd good moment and a generally well-staged zombipocalypse do not make up for a film which often feels stilted and self-conscious, narratively baggy and no real sense of what it’s supposed to be and why it’s here. I am assuming most Jim Jarmusch movies are better than this one; it’s certainly a disappointment as a zombie film.

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A Swine Romance

I am increasingly aware that I am, in many important ways, a man out of time – not to the extent of wearing double-breasted pyjamas or being hailed as a possible future Tory Prime Minister, but I’m fully aware that many of my views are, well, rather old-fashioned. One of these is that the best place for watching a new film is the cinema. This may just be dyed-in-the-wool traditionalism, or possibly simply the fact that going to the pictures a couple of times a week often makes up most of my social life (there are other people there, after all, even if I don’t speak to them or actually know their names).

Nevertheless, the world moves on, and new films are starting to show up in places you might not have expected a few years ago. Investing heavily in films, along with much else, is a video streaming site which is not paying me for advertising and so which I will not name. (Suffice to say it rhymes with Get Clicks.) One thing you can say about these guys is that they do not skimp when it comes to things like actors or production values: they show every sign of making proper big movies which would be quite at home getting a (proper) traditional theatrical release.

For example, let us consider Okja, directed by Bong Joon-ho, a movie which appeared on the site in question. There are some extremely odd things about this film and the manner in which it has been presented, but it is no more extravagantly weird than many other films which I’ve seen recently.

Tilda Swinton plays Lucy Mirando, newly-installed boss of a major corporation, who as the film starts reveals her plan to start a ten-year programme of raising a litter of unusual ‘super pigs’ in different locations around the world. The new breed of pig offers hope of an end to the problem of global food shortages forever!

Hmm, well. Ten years pass and we meet Mija (An Seo Hyun), a young girl living in the remote mountains of South Korea with her lazy and skinflint grandfather – and Okja, one of the Mirando super pigs they have been entrusted with. Okja is an impressive beast, having grown from cute piglethood into something resembling an endearing hybrid of a particularly big hippo and Lockjaw from The Inhumans. Needless to say, Mija and Okja have a very strong bond, and as they have purchased Okja from the corporation, their rustic idyll can continue forever.

Except, of course, that her grandfather has been lying about buying the pig, and Mirando’s apparatchiks turn up, accompanied by their zoologist shill Dr Johnny (Jake Gyllenhaal), to take Okja off to Seoul and then New York for the final of the Giant Super Pig Contest. Okja is spirited away without Mija’s consent (spiriting away an animal the size of a small van is a neat trick, I have to admit), and she is outraged when she learns of her grandfather’s deception. Mija equips herself for an epic quest and sets off in search of her beloved animal…

Now – and I hope I’m not breaking any confidences here – my sister has a thing about pigs. Hmm, perhaps that didn’t come across quite the way it was intended to. I should clarify things and stress that she is just inordinately fond of our porcine friends. No, that’s not quite right either – well, look, she’s a pig person, all right, just not in any peculiar or unwholesome way. And so it occurred to me that I might end up recommending Okja as a film she would want to watch, perhaps with her kids. Certainly, the opening set-up has that slightly grotesque and outlandish quality of a Roald Dahl story, and the first movement of the story feels intentionally ‘classic’ in its elements and tone.

But I will not be suggesting Sister-of-Awix check this movie out, and especially not with her children around. This is indeed a film about a young girl’s quest to recover her giant, slightly magical pig, with a somewhat fantastical tone. But it is a fantastical film about a young girl and her giant magical pig with a monumental F-bomb count, some startlingly brutal violence, and also a no-holds-barred visit to an abattoir at one point. It’s all a bit more Tom-Yum-Goong than it is a Disney film.

General consensus seems to be that Get Clicks have dropped the ball when it comes to its handling of Okja, not least because it is still listed on its UK site as a ‘G’. This in itself is slightly confusing, as it’s not a standard British certification – I assumed it stood for ‘General’, but apparently it means ‘Guidance recommended’. The BBFC, by the way, appear to have given Okja a 15 certificate, which seems to me to be entirely appropriate.

But you can’t really blame Get Clicks, except in the most general way, for the fact that Okja is utterly bizarre in its tone – this is definitely not a children’s film. But it has the same kind of subject matter as a children’s film, and is largely made in the style of one. So, what exactly is going on here? I fear the worst, readers, specifically that this film has been made to appeal to the dreaded Ironic Sensibility. Many of the English-language scenes not concerning Mija and Okja have a very knowing, tongue-in-cheek quality, which after a while set my teeth to aching. The film seems to be inciting at least part of its audience to be complicit in its own weirdness, while assuring them that it is absolutely sound in terms of its politics and morality and so on. I know I am on the thinnest of thin ice here, but I have a very low tolerance for the whole phenomenon where adults sit down and have earnest conversations about (for example) the admirably progressive gender politics of a cartoon about talking kittens. It seems to me to represent a retreat from maturity and actual engagement with the serious issues of life – except where serious issues are handled only in the most simplistic way. The looming threat of right-on smugness is a constant danger.

So I found it with much of Okja. This is, obviously, a film with a message to deliver about animal rights and the practices of the food industry – you could quite probably label it as a piece of pro-vegetarian propaganda, to be honest. Fair enough – there are arguments to be made here. But the style of Okja means its sheer sentimentality grates with the graphic nature of many of its scenes. This is a shamelessly, brazenly manipulative film, so much so that it actually becomes irritating rather than affecting. My first instinct after it finished was to go and have a sausage baguette, just on principle.

This is not to say that there is not much to enjoy in Okja – the staging of the early scenes with Mija and Okja in the forest is honestly magical, and the depiction of Okja is genuinely stunning – CGI never ceases to improve, of course, but I have absolutely no clue how some of the shots in this movie were achieved. Then again, the film is almost wholly about Okja (hence the name), so I suppose getting the CGI right was a priority. There are also a raft of good performances from people like Swinton, Gyllenhaal, Shirley Henderson, and Paul Dano (who appears as an animal rights activist).

In the end, though, I couldn’t help thinking that Okja is only a few more script drafts away from being a really great children’s film – Babe, quite literally on steroids. But as it stands, there’s too much profanity and darkness in this film for it to be suitable for normal kids, while at the same time it’s too childish and eccentric to function as a piece of entertainment for mature audiences. Definite talent at work here, but in a very undisciplined way.

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Medicine Man

You may relax, your calendar is not broken: there are, as usual, two Marvel Studios films on release this year, it’s just that one of them hasn’t come out until now – not quite the first time the studio has done something like this, but not exactly their standard practice either. Anyway, not content to rest on their laurels and do another sequel with an established brand, Marvel have opted to press on with bringing what sometimes feels like their entire catalogue of characters to the big screen (well, except the ones that Fox still have the rights to, anyway). This time, Scott Derrickson has been put in charge of adapting one of Marvel’s less prominent properties, a bit of a cult character from years gone by, if the truth be told. Yes, finally, it’s a movie version of Night Nurse!

Well, not quite, although one of the Night Nurse characters does appear (another one is sort-of in the Daredevil TV show, of course). No, the new movie is Doctor Strange, based on one of the few major Marvel characters not to primarily be a Stan Lee-Jack Kirby creation – on this occasion Lee worked with Steve Ditko. This was the same pairing which created Spider-Man, so you would think that the omens were good. Well, sort of, but we’ll come to that.

Stephen Strange, a brilliant but egotistical and obnoxious neurosurgeon, is played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who is probably overdue to be making a major appearance in this kind of movie. (Yes, this does mean that Dr Strange is technically one of those superheroes who operates using his real name.) Strange has sort of nibbled around the edges of a romance with fellow doctor Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) – the Night Nurse character to whom I alluded earlier – but having a relationship is tricky as he is really much more in love with himself.

Things inevitably change when Strange is involved in a serious road accident which leaves him with severely damaged hands, thus ending his surgical career. Exhausting his fortune in pursuit of some kind of treatment for his condition, he eventually learns of a school in Nepal where apparently-miraculous cures have been known to happen. (The school obviously isn’t in Tibet, because Marvel want to sell their movie in China.) There, he encounters a mystic teacher known as the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) and her disciple Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and rapidly discovers that this is actually a school for your actual magicians and sorcerers…

Well, this isn’t enough to rattle a character played by a performer of the magnitude of Benylin Thundercrack, and so Dr Strange signs on to learn to become a magician, though he is excused the scene with the Sorting Hat and also quidditch practice. What he doesn’t know at first, however, is that a fallen disciple of the Ancient One (played by Mads Mikkelsen) has entered into a pact with the dread Dormammu, tyrant of the Dark Dimension, and is planning to conspire in the world’s destruction in exchange for eternal life. Is there a doctor in the house?

It may seem a little odd for Marvel to have held Doctor Strange back until eight years into their franchise-of-franchises undertaking, especially when more minor characters (Ant-Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy) have already made their movie debuts. Maybe so, but Dr Strange has always been a slightly tricky proposition as a character – Steve Ditko’s extraordinary psychedelic artwork in the early issues from the 60s led many observers to assume that the only magic involved came from mushrooms, while from a story point of view, Dr Strange is often presented as so nebulously omnipotent that he can be very difficult to write for.

So, very nearly full marks to Derrickson and his team for coming up with a movie that is distinctively Strange while still remaining wholly accessible (I would guess) to the uninitiated viewer. (I’m sure casting a very popular performer like Cumbersome Bandersnatch won’t hurt the box office numbers either.) Marvel’s policy these days seems to be to offer up something which is partly very familiar and partly rather new, and it continues here.

I feel I should mention that one of my friends who I saw the film with disagreed, suggesting that every Marvel adaptation sticks close to exactly the same formula, basically that they all end with a city on the verge of spectacular destruction, and that this one is no exception – I should quickly add that he still thought this film was enjoyable. Personally I don’t agree – neither Ant-Man nor Civil War ended that way – but on the other hand, I do think Marvel have played it a bit too safe in the characterisation of Strange himself. At the beginning of the film, at least, he is wise-cracking and self-centred in exactly the way Robert Downey Jr was at the beginning of the first Iron Man, to the extent where they almost seem like the same character. I wouldn’t be surprised if the studio were attempting to position things so that Bellyhatch Cummerbund can take over as a mainstay of the series once Downey Jr’s salary requirements finally prove too exorbitant, but even so: for me this doesn’t excuse a scene where the traditionally reserved and courteous doctor calls an opponent a name for a body part which is not normally found in a medical textbook.

On the other hand, this film isn’t afraid to make some slightly eccentric choices, and I don’t just mean using a harpsichord on the soundtrack: there’s a very trippy sequence early on which seemed to me to be very faithful to the spirit of Ditko’s artwork, while the climax itself is considerably weirder than anything comparable from other Marvel movies. The film is well played by a strong cast and visually very striking, rather skilfully repurposing some Inception-style visuals in a more traditional fantasy-adventure context. I can even just about forgive the decision to make much of Dr Strange’s sorcery look basically like CGI-enhanced kung fu. (Not all – by the end of the movie his ability to warp space and time is so developed that one wonders just how they will be able to meaningfully challenge him during future appearances, although as mentioned this is a problem with the comics version of the character too.)

Once again – and by the hoary hosts of Hoggoth, how do they keep doing it?!? – Marvel have produced a movie which is very comfortable with its own identity while meshing seamlessly with their wider franchise – although, to be honest, the rest of the world is kept in abeyance, at least until the closing credits. Dr Strange looks like being an engaging addition to the ensemble, and I’m looking forward to seeing Clumsylatch Bandicoot spar with some of the more established faces of the series. No one in the world is making more consistently entertaining and accomplished genre movies at the moment – Doctor Strange won’t change your life, but I suspect you’ll have a good time watching it. A good adaptation of a challenging book.

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Emperors Certain, Clothes Doubtful

I am well aware that in respectable film-watching circles it is absolutely unacceptable not to like the Coen brothers. And I can see why: their films are unfailingly soundly made, well-performed, and interesting – often interestingly off-beat, of course. One of the films which impressed me most at the back end of last year, Bridge of Spies, was based on a Coen script. And yet I honestly can’t call myself a fan – there’s something just a bit too arch and mannered, too cerebral, about most of their films, as if they’re little formal exercises in film-making rather than genuine attempts at art or entertainment.

But hey ho. Their films look good and are generally well-liked and promoted, and currently drawing the usual happy critical notices is Hail, Caesar!, a film about (I suppose) the Hollywood studio system in the early 1950s. The central figure is Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a very heavily fictionalised version of a real-life studio fixer whose job basically involves managing the complicated and colourful personal lives of movie stars so nothing embarrassing or compromising gets into the papers.

As the movie opens Mannix is contemplating a move to a lucrative and less-weird job in the aviation industry, but he doesn’t have much time to think about that. In the space of one day, the filming of a major Biblical epic is jeopardised when its star (George Clooney) is kidnapped by Communists, hissy fits ensue when a singing cowboy (Alden Ehrenreich) is forcibly inserted into the cast of a serious society drama, a solution must be found for a pregnant-out-of-wedlock swimming-spectacular star (Scarlett Johansson), and so on. Will any or all of these things be resolved to the studio chiefs’ satisfaction?

I suppose this qualifies as another behind-the-scenes-in-classic-Hollywood movie, although all the actors involved are fictional, and the Coens have fun inserting pastiches of various genres which were popular in the 50s into the movie – there’s the titular Hail, Caesar!, which appears to be riffing off movies like The Robe and Quo Vadis, a comedy western, a black-and-white drama, a couple of musicals, and so on. These all seem to be very affectionate, and the attention to detail is (as you’d expect) highly impressive.

And there are also some very funny moments in the movie: one of the best appears (at some length) in one of the trailers, when Ralph Fiennes’ film director tries to coach Ehrenreich’s heroically dim cowboy in one of his line readings, while another concerns a meeting where Mannix has assembled a group of religious experts to ensure his latest Biblical epic will not prove theologically offensive.

A lot of other stuff in this film, however, is more baffling than actually funny – Tilda Swinton appears in a dual role as a pair of identical twin gossip columnists, but quite how this serves the story is never clear. The idea is odd more than anything else. The film is stuffed with little nuggets like this, most of which remain resolutely undeveloped, just as most of the storylines never really seem to go anywhere or connect with each other. The Coens have certainly assembled a great cast, but despite their prominence in the advertising, many of them only appear in one or two scenes each – I feel it would be remiss of me not to mention that this in addition to the people I’ve already mentioned, performers like Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, and Michael Gambon are also prominent in this film – while making very unexpected cameos are people from (shall we say) different film-making traditions, for example Christopher Lambert and Dolph Lundgren (although Lundgren’s scenes appear to have been very heavily cut down).

The sheer profusion of characters and storylines, together with the period setting, rather put me in mind of Spielberg’s 1941, a far from perfect movie but still one I’m rather fond of. Hail, Caesar! doesn’t have the same kind of irresistible energy or gleeful sense of excess. The appearance of scenes where characters discuss theology and political theory (the movie deals with some of the same ideas as Trumbo, albeit in a totally different style) might lead one to assume that there’s actually some sort of serious theme going on beneath all the sketch-like comic scenes and dance routines, but if so I’ve no idea what it is. The movie ambles along amiably enough for nearly two hours and then it comes to a gentle stop.

This film is unlikely to offend anyone and as a tribute to old-fashioned Hollywood film-making it is amusing and quite charming. But it seems to me that there is very little of substance here, not just thematically but in terms of things as basic as characters and plot. Most importantly, it just isn’t funny enough: you sit there for long stretches thinking ‘hmm, this is a theoretically amusing concept’ but without actually feeling the urge to laugh out loud. Lots of talent – and I mean lots – has gone into making Hail, Caesar!, but there’s a real question mark over whether it actually provides more in the way of entertainment value than any of the corny old films it so cheerfully spoofs. I think there is less to this film than meets the eye.

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