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Reviews
Kleo (2022)
Uncannily like Killing Eve. How is it even legal?!
The similarities in style, plot and theme to Killing Eve cannot be overstated.
Kleo is the latest in a series of espionage comedies that have almost complete disregard for the espionage. Kleo, the protagonist, is utterly unbelievable as an assassin. One scene in particular she holds a woman by the throat, runs her backwards across the room and impales her on a coat hook. It is one of the most pathetic, transparently staged fight sequences I've ever seen. At one point towards the end, her endearing sidekick finds the necessary clue in seconds and breaks the fourth wall in a moment of humour to acknowledge the improbability. That ironic, meta sensibility pervades the series.
The climax of the plot is outlandish, and the ending in which Kleo targets her anger not at the mother who rejects her but at her sidekick whose cunning saves the day is very unsatisfying (as is the dubious analogy between her mother and West Germany). But it's well-produced, recreates the period well and is funny throughout.
Oppenheimer (2023)
If this is the future of blockbusters count me out
To me it felt like an exceedingly long film trailer. Short scenes, constant soundtrack, whirlwind storyline.
It is not a difficult plot but Nolan does his damnedest to make it seem that it is. The scientific exposition is derisory. Pretty much all the humour comes from sassy, immature ripostes.
I'll begrudgingly acknowledge that it is considerably more ambitious than the average biopic, and there is a certain, exhausting thrill from having your senses bombarded for three hours. But it's ultimately a vacuous film that fails to do justice to the man because the director is too busy imposing himself.
Das Leben der Anderen (2006)
Evocative and gripping, but naive
I first watched this about ten years ago and thought it was excellent. Rewatching now, having lived some time in Berlin, I'm somewhat less impressed.
It offers a crude portrayal of East Germany. Like all socialist societies East Germany valued its artists, who were often supporters of the system. The film shows the Stasi agent reading Brecht as though it was illicit literature, but Brecht, who famously supported the crackdown of early protests in the GDR, would have been widely available. East Germany wasn't devoid of art. A key moment is the Stasi agent hearing Beethoven played on the piano and being moved to tears, but classical music would have been more common in socialist countries than in the West!
It's pompous and naive to portray art as having the power to overthrow authoritarianism. This is exacerbated by the brief theatre scenes which, while evocative of the theatre, are reminiscent of the type of student dramatics that only the players ever enjoy. The idea that cryptic messages in theatre was the frontline of the resistance is just pathetic.
Someone made the point in a six-star review here that our hero, the agent, is not moved to intervene by recognising the humanity of the people he's surveilling but instead because of his reaction to art. The final minutes of the film show the playwright on the verge of introducing himself to the agent but who instead goes and writes a novel dedicated to the agent, eschewing human contact. Why is that to be celebrated?! The crimes of the GDR stemmed from an absence of humanity, not an artlessness.
Victoria (2015)
Go into it without any spoilers
Pretty mesmerising. The single-take is staggeringly successful, especially considering the complexity of the set pieces and the freewheeling photography. The acting spans a spectrum of emotions and doesn't feel forced.
Victoria's thwarted piano career and the stunting effect that had on her personality is such a simple premise but made her actions entirely believable to me. Her piano playing and the unexpected brilliance of it has a dream-like quality and is a perfect pivot for the film's abrupt change of direction.
If I were to criticise, I think the plot should have stopped earlier. Once they leave the club for the second time, I was emotionally exhausted and no longer yearning for them to succeed. And taking the baby from her mother was monstrous and made me lose all sympathy for Victoria.
Deutschland 83 (2015)
Entertaining and stylish, with a glimpse into German social history, but very far-fetched
The opening episode is fantastic and immediately subverts cliches about the GDR. The first scene is an interrogation at a border crossing involving a guard who will become the protagonist of the series. He shouts communist dogma at the cowering West German students who have been caught 'smuggling' books, but once they've left, the guards burst out laughing to themselves signalling that the series will go beyond the usual cliches. The next scene shows Martin arriving at his home in East Berlin where a garden party is taking place. Although the series will depict plenty of drab, linoleum East German interiors, it was a brave and commendable decision to start by showing that East German life was not relentlessly bleak.
But the series fails to develop on this promise and instead gets sidetracked by silly dramas in the plot. One issue is that the protagonist is just not very good at his job as a spy. He fumbles a secret message in front of his unit, he fails to perform a covert pass-by, the bug he plants gets discovered by a cleaner, and he is overheard phoning his girlfriend in the East from inside the General's house. All inexplicable mistakes.
And the writers seem almost uninterested in military realism. The drop-off location for Martin's instructions is in a tree near the base that he's stationed it. In order to retrieve it, we see him straying from his unit during a group run and during a military drill. It's just inconceivable that he could do that unnoticed! That is just one of many plot-points that stretch believability beyond breaking point and give the series a feeling of immaturity.
The acting is generally good and locations and stagings are evocative of the time and place. Could have been very good if they had tightened up the plot.
Normal People (2020)
A flaw at the heart of the series
A well-produced and faithful adaption with a major flaw: Paul Mescal is badly miscast and misdirected as Connell.
If you were to meet someone as good-looking and physically imposing as Connell at a party and they stammered and cringed as he does, you would think they were severely emotionally dysfunctional. It would be shockingly unusual. And with that Normal People goes from being a universal story of youthful love to the story of one young man's crippling social anxiety and the devastating effect that has on him and those around him.
Frustratingly Marianne is played as being blind to this (along with the countless people who have lauded the series!). One of the turning points in the series is Connell's refusal to ask if he can stay with Marianne, his girlfriend, over the summer instead of being forced back to his rural hometown to work. Rather than sensing his patent insecurity that he has displayed throughout their relationship and doing what any girlfriend with a huge house to themselves would do, she takes offence, interpreting his feigned casualness at the development as indifference to their relationship. The book skilfully portrays this as somehow agonisingly inevitable. In the series it's a childish, inexplicable misunderstanding.
There's another flaw with this portrayal of Connell. We are told repeatedly that he is exceedingly intelligent. '600 points' and a competitive academic scholarship at Ireland's most prestigious university. But it's simply inconceivable that someone exceptionally talented in an arts discipline would be incapable to the point of disability of gathering and expressing his thoughts - it is precisely this skill that arts subjects develop and reward. Add to this that he is apparently also a gifted creative writer, which demands a certain emotional acuity.
This is significant because the defining stylistic feature of the series is the lingering close-up shot of the protagonists' faces, forcing their unspoken thoughts on the viewer. It works well, but in the case of Connell we aren't given reason to think that he is someone who if only we could have access to his thoughts we'd see a rich internal dialogue. When he's staring at a painting in the Italian gallery, all I imagine is, 'Erm..yeah..well, it's..erm..a nice painting..erm..with nice colours, I guess, and..erm..yeah...' If you want me to imagine an intelligent, incisive thought process you've got to show me occasionally that he's capable of that in speech.
Alongside my criticism of Connell, an over-earnestness pervades the series. The realism is so heightened that it undoes itself by becoming affected. Connell and Marianne are boring people. Their extended conversations are utterly tedious. The sex scenes are as prim as a Victorian novel, which the nudity does it's best to conceal.
There is much to like in the series, but when it has received such unanimous adulation, my attention is drawn to what I see as glaring flaws.
A few more thoughts that don't have much bearing on the series.
Daisy Edgar Jones's Irish accent is superb
but her 'soft t' (the characteristically Irish pronunciation of the letter t at the end of a word) is way overdone for someone who isn't your granny. As well, opposite a mumbling Connell, her drama school enunciation is jarring and robotic.
Jamie is a painfully one-dimensional character. He exists only as a villain (and a feeble one considering he is so slight next to Paul Mescal). Several times Marianne shows questionable judgement - she abandons her friends to care for Connell on the night they've gathered to celebrate her scholarship; she goes on a solo cycle with Connell in Italy leaving her boyfriend upstairs sleeping - but because Jamie is so unremittingly obnoxious it generates no moral qualms.
Marianne's family has three houses, the most modest of which is somehow her family home. In the book Marianne's family is the type of rich that a poor student at the same rural school can feel inferior to. But anyone who has a three-storey town house and a villa mansion in Italy as their second and third homes is the type of rich that elevates them so far beyond everyone else in the rural town that it's no longer a meaningful inferiority. This has the effect of undercutting the central dynamic of Sally Rooney's avowedly socialist novel.
The Trip to Italy (2014)
Disappointing sequel to The Trip
I adored the original 'Trip' but was disappointed with this sequel (which I watched in the form of the original episodes). Part of what made The Trip so compelling was the tension between the characters. Coogan could barely stand to be in Brydon's company. That tension has all but disappeared here, robbing the conversation of its edge. At times it's almost indistinguishable from what I imagine an actual travel documentary with Brydon and Coogan would be like.
The homely character of The Trip is lost. Italy is fabulous but it overwhelms the unassuming plot. The beautiful theme song of The Trip is used inconsistently and jarringingly. Every time it is played it forces barely existent pathos where before it had heightened it.
This may sound like a complaint that it wasn't a repeat of the first series but my point is that the elements that made it so charming are gone and aren't replaced with anything. The imitations lose their novelty and the viewer experiences the irritation with Brydon that Coogan experienced in the first series.