Il cento notti di orore PART 3- THE HOLE IN THE GROUND (2019), GERALD'S GAME (2017) & THE WIND (2018)

Here comes the No. 3 in the Il cento notti di orrore or The One Hundred Nights of Horror series. Two major horror outputs in the intervening months that probably require separate write-ups are (Item No. 6) Jordan Peele's Us, not surprisingly making a killing at the worldwide box office, and (Item No. 7) AMC's The Terror, a miniseries adaptation of Dan Simmon's fictionalized account of the disappearances of the British warships Terror and Erebus attempting to discover the "Northwest Passage" that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans below the Artic continent. They are both terrific, although not without flaws naturally, and also intriguingly not quite what they appear to be at the outset. You can accuse me of cheating but I have added these titles to the counts. So we shall begin with No. 8 in this installment.  The rating system as usual: a white star ☆ counts for twenty points, a black star ★ for five points.     

8. The Hole in the Ground (Ireland, 2019). A Savage Productions/Bankside Films/Head Gear Films/Metrol Technology/Wrong Men North Co-Production, distributed by A24 and DirecTV. 1 hour 30 minutes.  Widescreen 2.35:1, Filmed with Arri Alexa Mini. Directed by Lee Cronin. Screenplay by Lee Cronin & Stephen Shields. Cinematography by Tom Comerford.  Music by Stephen McKeon. Production Design by Conor Dennison.  Rented: Amazon Prime Video, February 2019.  Having debuted to generally positive reviews at Sundance Film Festival and picked up by A24 for the US distribution, The Hole in the Ground is an Irish horror film that may be succinctly described as a hybrid between Luis Berdejo's The New Daughter (2009) and Jennifer Kent's Babadook (2014). Like the former, it deals with the inexplicable and terrifying changes taking place on one's child (with sinister ties to malevolent underground presences, here more explicitly shown to originate from a large sinkhole in the forest) and like the latter, the film is essentially an exploration of the psychological terrors visited on an anxiety-ridden mother, here Sarah O'Neill (Seána Kerslake) who, with a preschool-age son Chris (James Quinn Markey), moves into a rather desolate town next to a gigantic expanse of forest, presumably running from an abusive husband and/or a failed marriage.  

Recent Irish horror films are often terrific in terms of building the atmosphere of dread and paranoia, and The Hole is no exception.  The debuting writer-director Lee Cronin, obviously a huge fan of the horror genre (the film pays tribute to some classic shock scenes, including the multiple-fracture arm-wrestling bout from David Cronenberg's The Fly), expertly plays with the viewer expectation and sympathy, making full use out of Kerslake's wide-eyed, on-the-edge-of-hysteria emotional outbursts.  Markey is also excellent as young Chris, whose explosive and seemingly irrational sways of emotion and behavioral norms at first seems to be a direct response to the familial trauma as well as his mother's neurosis.  Kati Outinen, a wonderful Finnish actress and a regular in Aki Kaurismäki's films, provides a key supporting role as a neighboring old woman, absolutely terrifying in early scenes, who first warns Sarah that Chris might not be what he seems. 

It is somewhat disappointing, then, that, for the final third leg, The Hole, unlike Babadook, embraces more conventional narrative solutions.  I am glad that Cronin eschews a self-consciously "ambiguous" or "downbeat" denouement (the kind that mars The New Daughter, which nonetheless has some impressive monstrous beings as Kevin Costner's opponents) but I also wish that the film really went for broke, ambitiously detailing the nature and purpose of the Hole Dwellers.  As it stands, The Hole does not quite become a modern horror masterwork that it could have been, yet fans of the genre will find much to enjoy and admire in this film. ☆☆☆★

9. Gerald's Game (US, 2017). An Intrepid Pictures Production, distributed by Netflix. 1 hour 43 minutes, Widescreen 2:35:1, Arri Alexa 65. Directed & edited by Mike Flanagan. Written by Jeff Howard & Mike Flanagan, based on a novel by Stephen King. Cinematography: Michael Fimognari. Music: The Newton Brothers. Special Effects Makeup: Robert Kurtzman.  Streamed: January, Netflix.  Over the last decade, Mike Flanagan has proven himself a talented and smart explorer of domestic terror, with a noted penchant for classically-informed ghost stories. The film that made me turn my head and notice him was 2014's Oculus, which wittily commented on its Gothic setting yet took its spooky thrills refreshingly seriously.  Subsequently, he went into a greatly profitable partnership with Netflix, filming an ambitiously expanded adaptation of Shirley Jackson's classic The Haunting of the Hill House, an apex of his filmmaking career in terms of his stature in the horror field.  However, for my money, his best work so far is this astoundingly faithful adaptation of Stephen King's short novel-- which, given its extremely self-reflexive, interior orientation, many had regarded unfilmable-- that rivals David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone, John Carpenter's Christine and Frank Darabont's The Mist as one of the best cinematic incarnations of the ever-popular Maine writer's opuses. 

Given that Gerald's Game is an outlier of sorts for a King novel, at its heart a deeply felt psychological examination of Jessie (Carla Gugino, definitely delivering the best performance of her career up to now), an attractive but demure middle-aged woman and something of a trophy wife to a successful lawyer, entrapped in a dangerous yet deeply humiliating situation-- a bedroom sex game gone horribly wrong, as the husband, the eponymous Gerald (Bruce Greenwood, Captain Pike from Star Trek Into Darkness, equal parts menacing and funny), drops dead from a heart attack, leaving her handcuffed to their bed. This emotional core of the novel is then somewhat awkwardly dressed with more familiar horror-novel conventions, reining in the readers with intensifying thrills as a very hungry stray dog as well as what may or may not be a supernatural bogeyman begin to intrude into her bedroom, where she lies supine, dehydrated and starving, painfully cuffed to a bedpost.  

Flanagan, operating with a supreme level of care and finesse, dismantles and reconstructs the building blocks of King's narrative.  By introducing Gerald as a spectral interlocutor for Jessie, he stages a terrific Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  dynamic to unfold between Gugino and Greenwood, without sacrificing any suspense for the viewers rooting for Jessie to escape her predicament.  Equally impressively, the flashback to Jessie's childhood is handled with good taste and intelligence. Indeed, Gerald's Game is one of those extremely rare American movies in which child sexual abuse is shown to be causing such lasting damages, not because it is about sex per se, but because it "trusses" the victim with its intimations of harm and suppression of truths, ultimately robbing her of the capacity to trust others and to forge meaningful relationships. The cruelest scene in the film, in that sense, is one in which Jessie's father (Henry Thomas), his voice dripping with sincerity, seals her lips, not to tell anyone about "their secret."   

Moreover, Flanagan deftly handles what some might consider the novel's major weak point, i.e. the Moonlight Man (called Space Cowboy in the original), the bogeyman character that comes across in the original either slightly redundant, as if he wandered into the story from another segment of the King universe, or overtly literary-symbolic, endowing him with a credible and scary physical presence yet making sure to have him serve the larger theme of Jessie retrieving her control over her life from her "men," finally escaping from the shackles of secrecy and deception that had imprisoned her twelve-year-old self all these years.  

Make no mistake, Gerald's Game is not an "art-house" film and does not stint at all on the suspense or gore department.  Those who carry traumas or fears about paper cuts or having your fingers or toes caught in doors and such are well advised to pace yourself during agonizing scenes of Jessie struggling to escape the cuffs.  Nonetheless, Flanagan here manages to present a superior case study of how to adroitly adapt a difficult literary source, while remaining strikingly faithful to King's characterizations and themes. ☆☆☆★★★

10. The Wind (US, 2018). A Soapbox Films/Divide/Conquer/Mind Hive Films Co-Production, distributed by IFC Midnight.  1 hour 26 minutes. Aspect ratio 2:39:1. Directed by Emma Tammi. Screenplay by Teresa Sutherland. Cinematography by Lyn Moncrief. Production Designers: Courtney Andujar, Hilary Andujar. Special Makeup Effects: Jennifer M. Quinteros. Rented: April, Vudu. First showcased at Toronto International Film Festival, The Wind is the kind of genre crossover that I wish were produced with greater frequency-- a Western-horror hybrid (ok, please don't bring up Bone Tomahawk: I am aware of that movie, I don't like it and I don't consider it a prime example of such a hybrid). Starkly yet beautifully filmed by Lyn Moncrief (Midnight Son [2011], Orion [2015], among others) in the extra-wide scope ratio that emphasizes vast expanses of nothingness, The Wind has an ambitiously complex narrative structure, first showing a failed bloody Caesarian section on a woman half of whose head is missing from a gunshot wound, and going back in time to introduce principals and their relationships. 

Written and directed by women, the film is ultimately about the profound isolation and alienation of its protagonist, Lizzy (Caitlin Gerard, Insidious: The Last Key [2018]), tending to household chores and the needs of her husband Isaac (Ashley Zuckerman, the TV series Childhood's End [2015]).  She also plays a generous host to their only neighbors, the less experienced (and perhaps less mature) Harpers, Emma (Julia Goldani Telles) and Gideon (Dylan McTee), yet there is an undercurrent of unarticulated tensions among their relationship, especially when Emma, very pregnant, claims to have seen the "demons of the prairie." 

At first, I thought the movie would be about Wendigo (as it turns out, Wendigo, a being from the Algonquin-speaking tribal myths, might be geographically misplaced as far as this film is concerned. It does get a mention in the new Pet Sematary, which is culturally appropriate given that it is set in Northern Maine, I suppose) and indeed it does feature a few competently done scenes of (seeming) demonic possession and Poltergeist-like incidents in the middle section.  However, the movie is really not interested in the precise nature of these "demons:" they could easily have been Biblical ones, and the Sutherland-Tammi team make it clear that these supernatural beings are more like spiritual resources rather than actual entities, that a lonely and depressed heart-and-mind grasps in desperation, like spoiled food that might satiate hunger for a short while, but would bring on worse problems later.

Director Tammi, for whom The Wind is the debuting feature, only missteps a few times in wrangling the various strands of timeline, in which Lizzy's own background of pregnancy and loss of a son is revealed, and the Reverend (Miles Anderson) is shown to be a thoroughly ineffectual spiritual counsel, even a bringer of a cure-worse-than-the-disease. More importantly, by patiently illustrating the everyday routines of the pioneer couples in their toilsome details, Tammi convincingly puts the viewers in the minds of these young women, completely unaided by their taciturn and uselessly "rational" husbands, daring us to judge them for gradually losing their grounds to the creeping madness born out of inhuman desolation.  Caitlin Gerard gives a restrained but powerful performance as Lizzy, a strong "pioneer woman," always appropriately attired for the occasion and capable of expertly handling firearms, yet at a loss to address the unnamable emotions and anxieties building up inside her.  It is a measure of the filmmaker's good judgment that we never lose sympathy for either Lizzy or Emma, despite the awful things done to and by them progressively revealed, as the narrative threads twine themselves to a resolution.

The Wind is not an easy film to enjoy or like, but I would definitely recommend it as a compellingly told, successful Western horror, seditiously driving a sharp knife into the liver of a triumphant American narrative of the pioneer hard work paying off in familial bliss in the settlement communities.  It does not really need a Native American bogeyman to show the horrors of human heart-and-mind dying with scream, driven mad by the blowing dust of the vast plains.☆☆☆★★

"Ex-terminate!"-- Peter Cushing's DR. WHO Films (1965-66) in Blu Ray

DR. WHO AND THE DALEKS. An AARU production, distributed by British Lion Films Limited. United Kingdom, 1965. 1 hour 23 minutes, Aspect ratio 2.35:1 Panavision, Mono soundtrack. Director: Gordon Flemyng.  Screenplay: Milton Subotsky, based on the characters created by Terry Nation for BBC TV. Producers: Milton Subotsky, Max J. Rosenberg, Joe Vegoda. Cinematography: John Wilcox. Music: Malcolm Lockyer. Electronic Sound/Music Effects: Barry Gray. Art Direction: Bill Constable. CAST: Peter Cushing (Dr. Who), Roy Castle (Ian), Jennie Linden (Barbara), Roberta Tovey (Susan), Barrie Ingham (Alydon), Yvonne Atrobus (Dyoni).

DALEK'S INVASION EARTH 2150 A. D. An AARU/British Lions Film Limited Co-production, distributed by Amicus Productions, Continental Releasing/Walter Reade Organization. United Kingdom, 1966.  1 hour 24 minutes, Aspect ratio 2.35:1 Panavision, Mono soundtrack. Director: Gordon Flemyng.  Screenplay: Milton Subotsky, David Whitaker, based on the characters created by Terry Nation for BBC TV. Producers: Milton Subotsky, Max J. Rosenberg, Joe Vegoda. Cinematography: John Wilcox. Music: Bill McGuffie. Electronic Sound/Music Effects: Barry Gray. Art Direction: George Provis. Editor: Ann Chegwidden. Special Effects: Ted Samuels. CAST: Peter Cushing (Dr. Who), Bernard Cribbins (Tom Campbell), Andrew Keir (Wyler), Ray Brooks (David), Roberta Tovey (Susan), Jill Curzon (Louise), Roger Avon (Wells), Kenneth Marsh (Conway), Eddie Powell (Thompson).

Likely the most influential and possibly the most beloved British science fiction TV series, Dr. Who, originally a staple at BBC for twenty-six years between 1963 and 1989, only to be resuscitated in 2005 and still going strong today after fourteen years (reflecting the times by having its thirteenth doctor embodied by a female actor), has surprisingly not received much exposure as theatrical features.  Considering its amazing longevity and chameleon-like ability to adapt to the trends, tastes and concerns of successive postwar decades, one would think that the Gallifrey-based Time Lord would by now be popping up regularly in theaters all over the world in a MCU-like franchise of his (her) own.  But for whatever reasons, that particular timeline, to employ the series' lexicon, has not materialized, at least for the world in which this blog is being written.  Perhaps the character is so firmly rooted in a TV serial universe, with its witticisms and insouciance unencumbered by limited budgets and cheap video effects as well as arch, burlesque-like performances delivered by variably eccentric "Doctors," that it seemingly has never felt any particular need to branch out into a wider (but not necessarily more sophisticated or intelligent) canvas. Or maybe it was just a matter of dumb luck (or lack thereof), the series having never encountered the right combination of ideas, talents and circumstances to launch a durable and profitable feature film franchise: after all, few people could have anticipated that the Rocky saga would be revived in late 2010s with his erstwhile opponent Apollo Creed's son as the designated inheritor of the boxer hero's mantle. 

In any case, so far (1963-2019) we have had only two theatrical features starring the time-and-space-faring eccentric scientist, the brainchildren of two New York-born entrepreneurs, Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg, the honchos behind the Amicus Productions company.  It is the old and young Dr. Who fans' relative good fortune, then, that both theatrical entries are delightful entertainments made with higher than requisite levels of professionalism and imagination. The Subotsky and Rosenberg team got several things right for these two outings, the two foremost among them being, first, the foregrounding of Dr. Who's most iconic villains, the Daleks, in their stories, and, second, the casting of Peter Cushing as the good doctor, although in 1965, the fact that they were shot in Technicolor, unlike the monochromatic TV shows, was possibly the more important selling point.

In actuality, Dr. Who and the Daleks rather faithfully follows the pattern of the premier TV episode, "An Unearthly Child," in which a precocious schoolgirl Susan accidentally ensnares her teachers into becoming "companions" to the doctor's sojourn through time and space.  In the TV episode, too, the Doctor, played by William Hartnell, is explicitly introduced as Susan's grandfather, with little hint that either or both of them are member(s) of an alien race.  So the film really predates development and construction of the elaborate Dr. Who mythos that we now take for granted: that he/she is not an Earthling but an alien from Planet Gallifrey, one of scientifically advanced near-immortal time-and-space travelers called Time Lords, and is capable of regenerating his/her body into different forms when the current one critically nears its expiration date (hence providing an ingenuous "scientific" explanation for different actors portraying the same character every half-decade or so).

Cushing's doctor is presumed to be an Earthling scientist, although brilliant enough to have invented and built on his own a TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space machine) that looks like an early '60s police box on the outside.  Also the time-traveler introduces himself to strangers as "Dr. WHO," as if "Who" is his surname. Cushing presents his Doctor as stereotypically absent-minded, kind-hearted and almost child-like in demeanor, without the irascible, near-contemptuous, finishing-anyone's-sentence-before-he-or-she-even-starts-saying-it arrogance associated with many subsequent TV incarnations of the character. 

Commensurate with Cushing's interpretation of the doctor, Dr. Who and the Daleks is possessed of a classic-era SF adventure ambience, like screen adaptations of Jules Verne, taking time for the main characters to explore the alien planet Skaro and introducing Daleks and their background history through the unfolding of the plot, rather than tasking the doctor to deliver it through boring expository dialogue. The key sequences such as the protagonists disabling a Dalek with a Thal cape and gooey foodstuff for human prisoners (and getting a tantalizing and disturbing glimpse of a Dalek in its naked form in the aftermath), and the climactic battle fought while the Thal-massacring Dalek bomb is ticking in the background, are quite suspenseful. 

The set design and the eerie alien landscape, expertly filmed by John Wilcox (The Skull [1965], The Legend of Seven Golden Vampires [1974]) and occasionally portrayed through impressive matte paintings, do their job nicely, and in the Techniscope widescreen, manage to convey a uniquely cinematic sense of wonder unmatched by the TV series, until after 1990s when the gap between the two media began to close up. Ur, yes, there are some laughably dated elements like a collection of lava lamps lining up a shelf of the Dalek Control Room, but you have to be a raisin-hearted snob not to find all these, too, sources of nostalgic fun. 

Seen today, the only possible incongruous element for the core fans is Roy Castle (who had worked with Cushing in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors [1965])'s broadly comic acting, although his bumbling pratfalls and awe-shucks reactions to the proceedings are not allowed to overwhelm the film's brisk pace. Susan, played with gusto and wide-eyed charm by Roberta Tovey (A High Wind in Jamaica [1965]), is a key character in both features and her rambunctious activism gives especially the first feature a tone of a children's literature-juvenile adventure story. Likewise, Barrie Ingham (The Day of the Jackal [1974]) as the Thal leader Alydon pitches his performance at the right twinkle-in-the-eyes level, maintaining his classically-trained dignity with aplomb, despite the golden-mascara, blue-skinned alien makeup he was subject to. To the filmmaker's credit, Dr. Who and the Daleks refuses to condescend to the youthful demographic, and there are snippets of genuine mystery and intrigue in the film, greatly abetted by the riveting presence of the Daleks, looking snappy in their shiny, color-coded metallic bodies with blinking-red-lamp "ears."

The Daleks are even more prominently featured in the second outing, The Dalek's Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., with their deservedly famous first appearance, wherein a Dalek emerges from the River Thames to accost Dr. Who and his copper companion Tom (Bernard Cribbins, decades later cast as Wilfred Mott, a recurring character for the tenth David Tennant Doctor Who [2005-2010] series).  

This time around, Dr. Who and his granddaughters, Susan and Louise (Jill Curzon, replaced from the last film's Jennie Linden), as well as Tom, who had run afoul of a gang of jewelry store robbers in the well-done present-day-set bookend sequences, now travel forward in time to the Earth in the year 2150. Unfortunately for our protagonists, England of that particular timeline has been decimated and conquered by the Daleks, who are mobilizing the captured population to work in a Bedfordshire mine, drilling a super-deep tunnel to reach the Earth's core.  Invasion Earth swaps the first film's classical SF-children's fantasy atmosphere with a grittier, action-thriller aesthetic. Daleks brainwash a select group of captured British citizens into radio-controlled, black-vinyl-clad Robo-men, and flies over the devastated London in a flying saucer.  

There are a lot more physical action, including a few very impressive stunt works, and an abundance of footages of Daleks blowing up things and people, and being blown up in turn.  Missing from the second film is the distinctive sense of wonder of the first film, but on its own terms Invasion Earth is no less enjoyable, a muscular and trim action-adventure with the good doctor ingenuously turning Dalek's own technology against them to carry the day. Opened up from the largely Shepperton Studio-confined first film, Invasion Earth does create a credible rubble-filled dystopian environment in which many citizens have been driven underground, although it certainly does not look as far removed from 1966 as the year 2150 indicates.  Flemying's usage of Scope cinematography, again supervised by John Wilcox, leaves positive impressions, endowing Dalek's menace with appropriate scales and dimensions.  

In both films, but especially in the second one, Daleks indeed come off as powerful villains, seemingly inscrutable yet mean and efficient, their famous electronic voices at once supremely grating in a robotic-bureaucratic manner, and juicily psychotic in their single-mindedly declarative inflection (all Daleks sound like they are shouting to one another at the top of their voices, not just when they are ordering human beings around).  Even their magnetic demises engineered by the doctor, wherein they plunge down corridors and tunnels at terrifically high speeds, are thrillingly executed.

The Dr. Who films, while obviously not great cinematic works of art, might pleasantly surprise those contemporary viewers who had missed them out when they were fresh, and approach them with inherently lowered expectations. The vitriolic reviews of the '60s that Gareth Owen, a Shepperton Studio historian, cites in one of the supplement documentaries do sound overblown in their relentless negativity. I doubt that many will object if I state that both Cushing and the Subotsky-Rosenberg team have certainly made less pleasurable films than these two in their respective careers.  Obviously essential viewings for the fans of the Time Lord, the films are also heartily recommended to the fans of Peter Cushing and the '60s Anglophone SF-fantasy adventures. 

Blu Ray Presentation:

Studio Canal. The British Film Series. Region B. Video: 1080p High Definition 2.35:1. Audio: English Mono. Subtitles: English.  Dr. Who and the Daleks Supplements: Audio commentary with Jennie Linden & Roberta Tovey, documentary Dalekmania, restoration documentary, Gareth Owen interview, trailers, stills gallery.  Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A. D. Supplements: Restoration documentary, Bernard Cribbins interview, Gareth Owen interview, trailers, stills gallery.  Street date: May 27, 2013.  Amazon list price: £13.00.  

As the restoration documentaries explain, both Dr. Who films had been digitally restored as a part of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the TV series, based on the inter-positive elements struck from negatives in 1969, with color timing corrected and debris, blotches and damages cleaned up without applying an excessive level of DNR. The resulting Technicolor colorfulness is miles ahead of the usual dreary beige-colored faded prints routinely employed for TV broadcasts. Dr. Who and the Daleks especially benefits from the restoration process, although the visuals are still early '60s Technicolor and covered with fine sheets of grain. Again, the young viewers should be aware that these films do not possess the near-metallic "cleanliness" of the contemporary cinema, and its warm hues are close reflections of what they looked like during their theatrical presentations. The mono audio is also excellent, with a robust mixture of electronic sound effects (supervised by Barry Gray of the U.F.O. and Space 1999 fame) and expansive, dynamic music scores of Malcolm Lockyer and Bill McGuffie (neither film uses Ron Grainer's super-iconic electronic theme from the TV series, by the way).

The supplements for the first film start off with a fun audio commentary with two actresses, Jennie Linden and Roberta Tovey moderated by the Peter Cushing expert Jonathan Sothcott: the commentary focuses not surprisingly on the pair's on-set experiences, with recollections of Cushing, director Flemyng, Castle, makeup jobs on the Thals, and of course acting alongside Daleks, operated within by diminutive personnel.  Also included is approximately one-hour long Dalekmania (1995), a thorough examination of both feature films plus an exploration of Dalek memorabilia and fan activities (including some seriously committed amateur productions starring Daleks), previously available stateside through Anchor Bay DVD (Alas, the documentary has not been anamorphically re-formatted).

The Invasion Earth Blu Ray includes an interview with Bernard Cribbins, beginning with his connection with Peter Cushing starting with the Hammer production of She (1965), going through production memories, including a funny episode about Cushing and himself unable to maintain a straight face when the chief Dalek wrangler Robert Jewell gave Dalek's "exterminate" command in an Aussie accent. He also reveals that he auditioned for the fourth doctor role that ultimately went to Tom Baker.  Gareth Owen's interviews in both titles nicely complement the information found in Dalekmania in terms of more detailed production histories, including Sugar Puffs serial's product placement in the second film, involvements of Subotsky and Rosenberg, and the dreadful contemporary critical reception Invasion Earth was subject to.  The restoration documentaries are also rather informative, with the archivist/historians Rorie Sherwood and Marcus Hearn participating to discuss the process of restoring the 35mm Techniscope films of this vintage to their former glory.

When Hunter is Hunted- ROGUE MALE (1976) Blu Ray Review

ROGUE MALE. A British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC Channel 2) Production. United Kingdom-1976. 1 hour 43 minutes, Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 (Eastman Color, 16mm). Director: Clive Donner. Screenplay: Frederic Raphael. Based on a novel of the same name by Geoffrey Household. Music: Christopher Gunning. Film Cameraman: Brian Tufano. Production Design: Tony Abbott. Costume Design: John Bloomfield. Producer: Mark Shivas. CAST: Peter O'Toole (Robert Hunter), John Standing (Quive-Smith), Alastair Sim (The Earl), Harold Pinter (Saul Abrams), Cyd Hayman (Rebecca), Michael Byrne (German Interrogator), Hugh Manning (Peale), Vaner (Michael McManus), Ian East (Muller), Michael Sheard (Hitler), Shirley Dynevor (Eva Braun), Robert Lang (Jessel). 

A surprise dual-format release from the BFI, Rogue Male (the intriguing title is apparently a reference to a bull elephant separated from its herd, yet who stalwartly survives, fighting the natural elements) is not so much a remake of Fritz Lang's Man Hunt (1941) as a return to the latter's literary source, Geoffrey Household's popular 1939 novel. Lang's film, despite its overtly propagandistic agenda pushing the US to join the anti-Nazi war, was a superbly crafted espionage thriller, with George Sanders in his best suave, cultured villain mode. Yet, the aggressive Americanization of the film probably departed from the British source novel to such an extent that it might have been unrecognizable for its island fans (as the BBC version's director Clive Donner, mincing few words, points out in the audio interview included herein). Man Hunt not only casts Walter Pigeon in the thoroughly reconceived (de-Anglicized) hero's role and gives him a perky love interest (played by Joan Bennett), but also substantially modifies (softens) its characterizations, for instance turning Vaner, a sailor who helps the protagonist smuggle himself out of Germany, into a young cabin boy (Roddy McDowall). Overall, the older film is much more stylized, taking place in a recognizably Langian paranoid universe in which an ordinary person could be sucked into a whirlpool of political conspiracies, blackmails and street assassinations. Rogue Male, filmed with obviously limited production resources, and admittedly less capable of generating suspense, nonetheless holds its own against the American adaptation, turning its fidelity to the source novel's gruff eccentricity and unadorned brutality into one of its virtues. The appropriate re-adjustment of the film's historical context also yields some additional pleasures. 

Rogue Male is quite openly critical of not only Neville Chamberlain's appeasement, which is to be expected, but also the chauvinistic and isolationist mentalities of the British elite society in late '30s (difficult not to notice some eye-rolling parallels with the Brexit in all these). These mentalities are illustrated through Robert's doddering Tory uncle, a funny yet chilling guest turn by Alastair Sim, and John Standing's hissable heavy Quive-Smith, who in this iteration much more specifically portrayed as a British fascist. He has the temerity to lecture Robert about patriotism, hectoring him to do the right thing for the kingdom, which, of course, means an alliance with the Nazis against "the Jews and the n*ggers." Unlike Man Hunt's George Sanders, he never shows up during Robert's interrogation in the introductory section, and probably fancies himself a more proper "British" than a "rogue" like Robert.

For me, however, the biggest surprise among the supporting cast was the Nobel-Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter as Robert's resourceful solicitor Saul. Pinter brings to his near-stereotypical role of a Jewish lawyer a measure of rueful reflexivity that clearly resonates with the great dramatist's own politics and life experience.  

At the center of it all, of course, tensely crouches Peter O'Toole, and he is the main reason, dare I say, that Rogue Male rises above being a competent political thriller and ultimately becomes an emotionally compelling, an almost haunting cinematic experience. His character is named "Robert Hunter," but in the spirit of the Household novel (in which both the protagonist and his dictator target are unnamed), only referred to as "Sir Robert" throughout the present film. O'Toole, with his crane-like, vertical frame, completely dominates all scenes he appears in, and delivers a stunningly sympathetic performance. While some of his line deliveries, especially in the slightly overwritten first third, are doubtlessly arch and theatrical, he manages to convey Robert's desperation, anger, sadness and twinkle-in-the-eye amusement with great economy and precision and a minimum of fuss and tics.

In some ways, the more intimate, claustrophobic screen space of a TV feature allows O'Toole to imbue his characterization with the kind of nuances perhaps easier to get lost in his larger-than-life screen performances. For one, O'Toole's steely gaze in the opening sequence leaves little doubt that he intended to kill Hitler after trying a dry shot. He manages to infuse a powerful sense of humanity and vulnerability into a role that could easily have been insufferable in its tweedy "Britishness" in wrong hands, unfussily communicating to the viewers Robert's internal agony and yearning, and soliciting them to root for his survival and triumph.

Interestingly, rather than an Everyman hero evincing righteous outrage against the Nazi evil in place of the viewers, O'Toole's Robert remains a true loner to the end. His performance makes it clear that, for Robert, avenging the unjust death of his lover would not be sufficient to integrate him back into the larger society. He appears happiest and most serenely alive when he all but dissolves into the natural landscape of the British countryside, with the black cat Asmodeus as his only companion.

   

Blu Ray Presentation:

The British Film Institute. Region B. Video: Academy Ratio 1.33:1, 1080p. Audio: PCM Mono 48khz/24-bit. English subtitles. Supplements: Frederic Raphael's The Guardian lecture (1982, audio only), Frederic Raphael interview (2014), Clive Donner on Rogue Male (2018, audio played over stills), Eva Braun home movies (1939), British Union of Fascists March footage (1937), a newsreel on a fox hunt (1921), an illustrated booklet. Street date: January 28, 2019.

The BFI deserves kudos for not only making this wonderful TV film available in a HD disc format, but also going above and beyond their call of duty to stack the package with customarily high-quality supplements.

IMDB lists Rogue Male as filmed in 35mm, but the package information makes it clear that the transfer was sourced from a 16mm A+B negative archived in the BBC. The color is vibrant (the tulips in the opening sequence in Germany are scorching scarlet), the contrast levels are excellent, and the high resolution brings out detailed texture from Robert's hunting jacket, among other items. The film stock is extremely grainy, however, especially in the nighttime sequences, so a measure of caution is needed for those more used to the kind of "polished" contemporary looks achieved routinely through digital intermediation. The lossless mono soundtrack is clear and robust, giving a good workout to Christopher Gunning's versatile score.   

The longest supplement is the audio-only lecture from the screenwriter Frederic Raphael, an accomplished novelist who also wrote screenplays for such notable motion pictures as John Schlesinger's Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Stanley Donen's Two for the Road (1967) and Peter Bogdanovich's Daisy Miller (1974). It clocks in 1 hour 12 minutes and can be played in lieu of an audio commentary for the feature. Clive Donner's interview, conducted in 2000 (he passed away in 2010), as indicated above, minces few words in disparaging Man Hunt, although he does reveal that Roddy McDowall at one point wanted to play Vaner's role as an adult in the present version. Raphael returns in a more recent interview (2014), a large chunk of which is devoted to a sort of verbal legerdemain concerning, who else, Harold Pinter, and a rather suspiciously Pinter-esque episode involving whether a line of Saul's dialogue ought to be changed from "What IS wrong with your hands?" to "What's WRONG with your hands?"

Two unexpectedly resonant historical-context supplements are excerpts from Eva Braun's home movies (approximately 7 minutes), somehow appearing slicker and professional movie-like than its recreation in the present film, and a reel of the British Union of Fascist March (about 9 minutes) from Millibank to Bermondsey. The latter, full of eager-beaver white Britishers, men and women, in comfortable, everyday getups, grinning and giving enthusiastic Sieg Heil salutes to the camera, is scored to an eerie, ambient electronic music composed by Chris Zabriskie (aptly titled "Raise Your Hand If You Think Evil is Increasing in This World"). Seeing this mesmerizing newsreel, one cannot help but be reminded of Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's absolutely frightening It Happened Here (also recently released as a special edition Blu Ray by the BFI), and, once again, of how much the Trumpist-Brexit world of today is in fact a farcical but deadly re-hash of this supposedly bygone era.  

Last but not the least, the Rogue Male special edition comes with the BFI's customarily judicious selection of academic and critical essays. Paul Fairclough sets down a persuasive list of the film's virtues and strengths (although he seems to think Robert's frequent flashback to his romance with Rebecca does not really work). Sarah Wood, in contrast, offers a more formalist reading of the film, focusing on its ambivalent view of nature (and the latter's relationship to man/civilization). Gustav Temple in turn contributes a brief "sartorial perspective" on Robert's attire throughout the film, arguing that wearing other people's clothes and wearing them well distinguishes him as a true (British) gentleman (Hmm…). Finally, David Morrell, an American novelist and the inventor of John Rambo in First Blood, appreciates Geoffrey Household's brutal efficiency as well as his honest approach to violence and human cruelty.

All in all, a first-class presentation by the BFI: here is hoping that more classic TV films from both sides of the Atlantic will turn up as special edition Blu Rays in the near future. 

This Great Fish Yearns to Swim in the Sky (Actually it's a Dolphin but...) BIG FISH AND BEGONIA (2016)- Blu Ray Review

BIG FISH AND BEGONIA 大鱼海棠. A Bian Tian Culture Company/Beijing Enlight Pictures/Horgos Coloroom Pictures Production, distributed by Beijing Enlight Pictures. China, 2016.  1 hour 45 minutes. Aspect Ratio 2.35:1. Directors: Liang Xuan 梁旋, Zhang Chun 張春. Story & Screenplay: Liang Xuan. Character Design: Zhang Chun, Guo Zikai, Zhao Zhicheng, Peng Wang. Production Design: Zhang Chun. Music: Yoshida Kiyoshi 吉田 Voice Cast (Mandarin): Chun (Ji Guanlin), Old Age Chun (Pan Shulan), Kun (Xu Weizhou), Qiu (Su Shangqing), The Soul Keeper (Chin Shih-chie), Grandfather (Wang De-shun), Rat Matron (Yang Ting).

A long-gestating project for the screenwriter and director team, Liang Xuan and Zhang Chun, Big Fish and Begonia takes its alleged inspiration from the ancient Chinese religious/philosophical text Zhuangzi, specifically the latter's fabulous vision of a gigantic fish, called kun, transforming itself into an even bigger bird peng. Stretching presumably thousands of kilometers in its wingspan, the peng is contrasted in the parable to tiny, infinitesimal creatures such as cicadas and quails, who laugh at sheer absurdity of the scale traversed by the Brobdingnagian aviator. However, Liang and Zhang are seemingly less interested in the Daoist spiritual lessons to be derived from this enigmatic myth, but in the image of a big fish swimming out of the ocean and metamorphosing itself into a bird. They have concocted an impressive array of mythological habitats out of this surrealistic imagery, in which several types of demigods, or in any case, supernatural beings, live and flourish in an ecological system existing coterminous to the "nature" as understood by us humans.

Basically, the heaven/sky of the protagonist Chun's world-- whose tribe might be characterized as, in a Western approximation, "tree witches/faeries"-- constitutes the ocean of the human world. When she turns sixteen, as a part of a ritual initiation to adulthood, Chun transforms herself into a dolphin (in this particular film, porpoises are referred to as "fish:" urr, they are mammals… but never mind) and ventures into the sea of the human world. Unfortunately, she is ensnared in a fisherman's net. She is rescued by a young human boy, Kun, but the latter is tragically drowned in the process. Grief-stricken and driven by a desire to settle her moral debt to the dead boy, she tracks down Kun's spirit: you see, when human beings die, their spirits are "reborn" in her world as fish. With the help of her childhood chum Qiu, Chun bribes the Soul Keeper, a drolly cynical one-eyed ogre, so that she could abscond with Kun in a tiny unicorn fish (dolphin, but never mind) form, with the intent to send him back to the human world. However, the latter grows into an enormous size, and her action ultimately upsets the balance between the two worlds, as the portal opened up to reach the human sea begins to result in cascading of water into her world, threatening to flood it and drown its inhabitants. 

Big Fish and Begonia, also incorporating into it various images of ogres, goblins and other fantastic creatures from such ancient texts as Classics of Mountains and Seas (Shanhai-jing) and In Search of the Gods (Soushen-ji), is a very ambitious animated feature, shooting for the rich texture and compelling characterizations of a higher-end Studio Ghibli film. It is certainly a laudable attempt, but is only halfway successful in meeting its goals. The film was a relative financial success in the Chinese domestic market, garnering approximately 85 million dollars during its theatrical run, although critical and audience responses were mixed, some finding in particular its visual elements charming and beguiling, others dismissing it as a pale imitation of the Japanese works of similar stripes.

Visually, Begonia is attractive-looking but never garish, with somewhat subdued color schemes and painterly background renderings. In my view, Zhang and Liang successfully avoid being branded as imitators of Miyazaki Hayao, although the influence of the latter's masterworks, especially Spirited Away, inevitably crops up throughout the film. Character designs are detailed and interesting: Soul Keeper nonchalantly picks legs off a stick-like bug, which then he proceeds to smoke like a cigarette: a stone lion might suddenly address Chun in a harsh yet not unkind voice. Rat Matron, a frothy, decadent and vaguely sexualized figure, suggests an inkling of burlesque performance tradition that perhaps could only be depicted as an animated semi-villain under the current Chinese censorship.

The main problem with Begonia, and perhaps one that prevents it from becoming a modern classic, is the overly archetypal, sometimes unimaginative, characterizations of the main protagonists. For one, Chun is altogether too willful, too single-minded, the texture of her character dominated by her determination to "save" Kun. Kun in turn loiters around for the most of the film in the form of a soulful-eyed, handsome dolphin/fish: this has the effect of making Chun's devotion seem at times like petulant unwillingness to let go of an overgrown pet, rather than a serious moral decision. Curiously, the filmmakers toys with but never commits themselves to the idea of romantic destiny binding these two youngsters, who never meet in the human form until the denouement (a la Ladyhawke): when they actually do, there is little romantic/erotic spark despite all that they had to go through together, including a near-annihilation of Chun's world (Both Kun and Chun's nudities are carefully sanitized as well, the former missing genitalia, but I suppose that is par for a Chinese feature intended to appeal to the youth demographic). Some striking supporting characters, such as Deer God who moonlights as a bar host (?), also regrettably remain underused.

Begonia is truly impressive in its ability to convey the cosmic scale of the narrative, in which multiple worlds co-exist with one another, divided by imperfectly defined, porous boundaries. What Zhang and Liang need to work on for their subsequent project, is refinement of their characters and plot. The best Pixar-Disney (or Miyazaki) characters, and the narratives they are incorporated into, are never as ponderously archetypal as they might appear at the outset: they are often surprisingly complex, and must reconcile different, sometimes conflicting drives that propel the stories in which they are protagonists. It is not as easy as it seems, either, to thread together the standard fairy-tale trope of a boy and a girl meeting and falling in love with one another, on the one hand, and the kind of momentous ethical dilemmas actually faced by Chun in the film, on the other, into a coherent whole. These are the things to ponder for the young, ambitious creative talents whose major achievements are still to be made in the future.    

Blu Ray Presentation: Shout! Factory. Region A. Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1, 1080p. Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Mandarin Chinese & English. English Subtitles. Supplements: Making-of Documentary, Flash animation (the original short film for Begonia and Big Fish), Music videos, Theatrical trailer. Street date: August 7, 2018. List price: $17.99 (Amazon.com January 2019).

The U.S. physical media distribution of Big Fish and Begonia is handled by Shout! Factory. The company, per their usual enthusiastic stewardship of genre cinema, has put together a dual-disc (Blu Ray and DVD) special edition, with an attractive slipcase design. The transfer qualities are, as expected, excellent, seamlessly capturing the 3D graphic dynamism integrated with the more static backgrounds and 2D renderings of the characters. The audio defaults to English: the voice actors are a tad more conventionally emotive than the cast in the Chinese track (which seems to include a few seasoned Taiwanese actors). Even though the Cantonese voice track data are available online, the current Blu Ray only includes the Mandarin one.

The making-of documentary (23 minutes 48 seconds) is thankfully not a Hong Kong-style jittery EPK material but a rather fascinating chronicle of Zhang and Liang's joint effort to launch a major animated feature film for twelve years, since they had formed a partnership as Tsinghua University undergraduates. The story turns unexpectedly grueling and touching, as lack of confidence in a domestically produced animated feature resulted in chronic deficiency in financing, eventually forcing Zhang/Liang's company Bian Tian Culture to turn toward video game design and file bankruptcy in 2012 (Zhang breaks down and weeps as he recalls having to disband the production team who had worked together for nearly a decade). Then, nearly as the last resort, they put an advertisement in Weibo (a popular social media site) and started a crowdfunding campaign, to which ultimately 27 million Chinese-- mostly younger generation film fans-- managed to contribute (according to the interviews, one person "donated" one month worth of his salary, and another newlywed couple the entirety of their marriage "dowry"), allowing the filmmakers to relaunch production (the docu does not hide the fact that, due to the constant production delays, there was some backlash against the filmmakers among the fundraisers).

There are fascinating cultural details in this real-life story, such as the absolutely critical presence of "Auntie" Liu, whose official position in the company was the caterer/chef but was clearly a far more important figure, a den mother to the overwhelmingly youthful production crew, and the essentially makeshift, hand-crafted nature of the production (basically a group of young guys and gals doing all-night shifts days on end, perpetually looking into a dozen computer screens, often sacrificing personal time, such as one set aside to meet their family members). The docu clearly shows that the Bian Tian Culture could not have afforded, even if it had wanted to, the "luxury" of spending valuable time and money to the R&D of story and characters, the way Pixar and other big American studios routinely do. This making-of docu is a valuable archival data for a future cultural historian charting the course of feature animation production in early 21st century China.

The disc also includes the 8-minute short film "Big Fish and Chinese Flowering Crabapple," that served as a prototype for the feature, presented in SD quality. It is much more lyrical and melancholier than the latter, with non-realistic, stylized figures and more grounded in contemporary, urban sensibility. It also has a nice stinger of a surprise ending that would only work in a short film format. Although technically crude, the short has merits of its own, distinct from the feature that it ultimately evolved into.

Can we use it in class? Beautiful and even moving as it is, I don’t think Big Fish and Begonia could be an appropriate material for introducing Zhuangzi or other texts of ancient Chinese philosophy/mythology to North American undergraduates. Zhang and Liang are more interested in creating their own fantasy world than providing interpretations of the original parable about the kun fish. The film is probably more useful for a cinema or popular culture studies course, specifically addressing the question of the positionality of constructed-world fantasies among popular media products currently made in East Asia, especially China. Having said this, I do believe Begonia does provide an interesting contemporary text through which we could examine various tropes and ideas associated with traditional Chinese culture-- the notions of seasonal change and life-cycle, the ocean rather than the heaven as a territory of human souls, and so on--, although, as with Spirited Away, the film probably reflects deliberate cultural eclecticism on the part of the filmmakers, and therefore caution should be applied in denoting what appear to be "exotic" to the North American eyes as automatically "Chinese."