This is the kind of movie I desperately hope for when I go to the cinema: A great story with great acting - everything else is window dressing. The British withdrawal from Swaziland forms a quite distant backdrop for this family melodrama. Absolute powerhouse performances from Gabriel Byrne (as an alcoholic divorcée) and Emily Watson (as an out of place American) join a watershed performance form the young Nicholas Hoult (from About a Boy), whose transformation from young boy to young man was one of the most compelling and convincing I have ever seen. The plot moves very rapidly through an endless cycle of unhappiness, family breakdown, drunkenness - and yet somehow, in the midst of this relentless pace, we feel for every character, and experience every emotion.
This directorial debut goes so many places - staging a musical, many puppet shows, exploring the clash of three cultures, the ugly face of racism, a boy's coming of age - and yet the central narrative of a boy trying to find grounding in the midst of a tumultuous family life is brilliantly conceived, and always at the forefront. The auburn palette of the film is accentuated by over-exposed shots and intimate camera angles; this movie brings a small, insular circle of families to life, and while it makes no pretension to explore African culture (this itself is pointed, since the Brits were so racist), it explores the crisis of the modern family as well as cinema can possibly hope to.
The tragic, show stopping revelation at the end concerning Byrne's character demands the whole movie be re-watched; it is an epiphany for Hoult, and it just may leave you thinking for a long time to come: What is the essence of a family? If love isn't enough, what is? There is a scene in the middle of the film where Hoult is transposed with Malclom McDowell's character from A Clockwork Orange. By the end of the movie I had my mind made up: Yes, Wah Wah can indeed stand proudly alongside the great films of cinema history, it's just that good.
This directorial debut goes so many places - staging a musical, many puppet shows, exploring the clash of three cultures, the ugly face of racism, a boy's coming of age - and yet the central narrative of a boy trying to find grounding in the midst of a tumultuous family life is brilliantly conceived, and always at the forefront. The auburn palette of the film is accentuated by over-exposed shots and intimate camera angles; this movie brings a small, insular circle of families to life, and while it makes no pretension to explore African culture (this itself is pointed, since the Brits were so racist), it explores the crisis of the modern family as well as cinema can possibly hope to.
The tragic, show stopping revelation at the end concerning Byrne's character demands the whole movie be re-watched; it is an epiphany for Hoult, and it just may leave you thinking for a long time to come: What is the essence of a family? If love isn't enough, what is? There is a scene in the middle of the film where Hoult is transposed with Malclom McDowell's character from A Clockwork Orange. By the end of the movie I had my mind made up: Yes, Wah Wah can indeed stand proudly alongside the great films of cinema history, it's just that good.