Night Moves.

Far from perfect and not the directors best film, Night Moves (2013) is the story of three miss matched environmental warriors who set out the blow up a hydroelectric dam by purchasing a boat, from which the film gets its name, and packing it with fertiliser. The three protagonists are the dour environmentalist Josh played by an equally dour Jesse Eisenberg an actor that does not have ‘smile’ in his repertoire and tends to be typecast as the ‘defeated human being’, Dakota Fanning is the little rich girl who has dropped out of college, and the brains behind the project is ex marine Harmon a role that really suits actor Peter Sarsgaard. In the first half of the story we witness them planning the action, moving the boat up to the dam and attaching a timer device to carry out their act of sabotage. In the second part we observe how each of them deals with the aftermath of their environmental activism and what effects it has on their fundamentalist mind sets.

 

Peter Sarsgaard provides the brains behind the operation. 

I’m sure director Kelly Reichardt, who co wrote the movie with her regular writer Jon Raymond; set out to make what she deemed to be an important cinematic statement in which she poses a morale question ‘would we be capable of carrying out acts of terrorism to coincide with our own personnel beliefs’?  Admittedly we can all sit at home and become cyber worriers but have we got the bottle to carry out a direct action that could endanger your own life and possible others in the collateral damage that normally follow’s such an action? Reichardt’s movie is telling us what we already know, our world is deemed to be in danger, in peril, and would we act, how do we value human life, most of us will value it highly but others may be of the opinion that the end justifies the means! Radicalism[1] is the description that the media would give this group of three people who join forces to carry out the political act demonstrated in the film. The films narrative, as I have opined, involves the affect that this type of act has on the people involved, who admittedly start out with an enthusiastic zeal that may or may not last after the incident. The director admits that film does not deliberately set out to mimic any other political group of the present or in fact of the past and is deliberately set in a post 9/11 world where the penalties are very high for acts of terrorism, - environmental or otherwise.  

 

Dakota Fanning provides the finance.

and Jesse Eisenberg  never smiles!

I did not have a great deal of time for Reichardt’s Old Joy (2006), but both Wendy and Lucy (2008), a road movie without a car and Meeks Cutoff (2010), a western without a cowboy, are fine examples of Independent American film making. But this latest movie, although thought provoking, did not grip me, which I believe is partly down to the non-charismatic portrayal of the characters.  A better movie that cover’s similar territory, and one I would urge you to see, is Zal Batmanglij’s The East (2012).

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[1] Politics advocating major changes.

Effie Gray.

There was an unusually strong difference of opinion at this weeks Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre’s Film Club showing of Effie Gray (2014). Which included a walk out by a regular film club attendee part way through the film and following the screening a lively debate about the pro’s and cons of this divisive movie. I can only give you my personnel opinion which I think was shared by a number of the audience but not, I must say, by all those that were present.

 

Euphemia Gray.

This humourless Victorian period drama tells the true story of Scottish born Euphemia Gray (Dakota Fanning) who married the art critic John Ruskin (a rather unconvincing Greg Wise) when she was 19 year old and he was 37. She left her husband without the marriage being consummated and after it was annulled she married the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge) in 1855.  

 

John Ruskin.

Directed by Richard Laxton, best known for his television work, it has a screenplay written by Emma Thompson, who also appears in the film as Elizabeth Lady Eastlake an art critic in her own right and wife of Sir Charles Eastlake who was the director of London’s National Art Gallery. The film's release was delayed by lawsuits alleging that the Thomson’s script was plagiarised from earlier dramatisations of the same story but she won her case and the movie was eventually released to mixed reviews two years after it was completed.

 

John Everett Millais.

This is in fact another story about cruelty to women, which I am sure we are all aware happens in all works of life. Earlier this week I saw The Homesman (2014) that dealt with the way women were treated in America’s mid west farming community. Now we get the same problem but involving the rich and privileged classes. The difference is wealth and how in the upper echelons of English society the problem is dealt with in an entirely different way, approaching people with the right connections, and the money to engage men of legal standing to “serve papers” – problem solved!!

 

Something about this painting brings to mind Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue? (http://youtu.be/lDpnjE1LUvE)

The movie is very much like the John Ruskin portrayed on our screens, a great lump of cold emotion. A story of a man who is incapable of giving what his wife what she most desires: love, happiness and respect. But again I’m drawn to say that there can’t be a less engaging story to make a film about.  And like the Scottish locations chosen for the film it is a stark and emotionless tale of people that are not very likeable - really that sums up the film for me?