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45 Years

(2015)

(SPOILERS) If you have the patience to go along with its unhurried, semi-slumbering pace, 45 Years may well creep up on you unawares. Writer-director Andrew Haigh nurtures the same seeds of doubt in the viewer’s mind that grow in Kate Mercer’s (Charlotte Rampling), as her inability to reconcile revelations concerning her husband Geoff (Tom Courtenay) leads to the unravelling of what appeared to be a very solid, very comfortable, very average marriage.

The trigger is news that the body of Katya, Geoff’s girlfriend prior to meeting Kate, has been found in a melting glacier. Geoff becomes preoccupied with reminiscences of decades past and Kate is initially understanding of the situation, albeit jealous of the space this former lover held in her husband’s heart. But when Geoff admits he would have married her, starts looking into travelling to Switzerland to see the body, spends time in the attic going through old pictures, begins smoking again and drinking too much, the burden becomes too much and Kate instructs him not to talk about Katya any more.

There’s something of the Michael Haneke about Haigh’s film, with its spectre of intangible secrets the viewer – like our protagonist – cannot grasp with any certainty. Initially, the underplayed narrative passes almost unnoticed, a non-descript depiction of a retired couple living unexceptionally in rural Norfolk; you wouldn’t be blamed for nodding off along with Geoff. But Kate’s increasing disturbance of mind gradually takes hold, and so Haigh cloaks the picture with an increasingly uneasy atmosphere, as the unrelinquished past encroaches on the present.

It’s thus understandable that some have read more into Geoff’s exhumed history than is intended, namely that he may have murdered Katya, jealous of her flirtation with their German guide, and dumped her in a crevasse (so explaining his nervousness about the glacier melting and eagerness to take a look, lest evidence of his crime be discovered). I don’t think this is the case; rather, it’s evidence that, once the floodgates are opened, and deception preys on the mind, anything seems possible. It’s clear that Geoff has lied to Kate when she views the pictures of the trip on a slide projector; she isn’t wearing the wooden ring he talked about (as a pretence of marriage in a less tolerant time), and most damningly, one photo evidences that Katya was pregnant.

It’s this, rather than any more culpable acts, that is the turning point for Kate; the underpinning of their decision not to have children comes into question, and with it everything she assumed to be real between them. In tandem, Haigh infuses an almost gothic undercurrent. Kate is haunted by Katya’s presence, smelling her perfume, and, as she stands beneath the open attic during a nocturnal wander, the door behind her closes apparently of its own accord.

But, even come their anniversary party (they didn’t have a fortieth due to Geoff’s bypass surgery), it isn’t wholly clear how affected she is. It’s only during the celebrations, as Geoff gives a speech (in which he breaks down, which he never does; earlier, Geraldine James has expressed the view that men always do on such occasions, “I think they just see the world differently to us”, but Kate notes he didn’t cry at their wedding), thanking her for putting up with all his nonsense, that her feelings become evident. Finally, during their dance, to Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, she pulls away from her husband when he holds her hand in the air; something has been irretrievably broken.

Rampling wholly deserves her Oscar nomination, probably her highest profile role since she embarked on an affair with a man in a chimp suit in Max, Mon Amour, navigating Kate’s inner conflict with subtlety and nuance. Courtney deserves great praise too, albeit his slightly incoherent, introverted partner is necessarily less readable. It’s Haigh, though, who is the real star of the show, gauging the picture expertly and precisely, leaving the viewer ruminating on events long after the credits have rolled.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

You’re never the same man twice.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

‘Cos I’m the gringo who always delivers.

American Made (2017)
(SPOILERS) This is definitely more the sort of thing Tom Cruise should be doing, a movie that relies both on his boyish™ charm and at least has pretensions of ever so slightly pushing the envelope of standard multiplex fare, rather than desperately attaching himself to an impersonal franchise (The Mummy) or flailingly attempting to kick start one (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back); remember when Cruise wouldn’t even go near sequels (for about 20 years, The Color of Money aside, and then only the one series)? American Made is still victim to the tendency of his movies to feel superstar-fitted rather than remaining as punchy as they might be on paper (Made’s never quite as satirically sharp as it wants to be), but it at least doesn’t lead its audience by the nose.

Two hundred thousand pounds, for this outstanding example of British pulchritude and learning.

The Avengers 4.18: The Girl From Auntie
I’ve mentioned that a few of these episodes have changed in my appreciation since I last watched the series, and The Girl from Auntie constitutes a very pronounced uptick. Indeed, I don’t know how I failed to rate highly the estimable Liz Fraser filling in for Diana Rigg – mostly absent, on holiday –for the proceedings (taking a not dissimilar amateur impostor-cum-sidekick role to Fenella Fielding in the earlier The Charmers). I could watch Fraser all day, and it’s only a shame this was her single appearance in the show.

By Jove, the natives are restless tonight.

The Avengers 4.17: Small Game for Big Hunters
I wonder if Death at Bargain Prices’ camping scene, suggestive of an exotic clime but based in a department store, was an inspiration for Small Game For Big Hunters’ more protracted excursion to the African country of Kalaya… in Hertfordshire. Gerry O’Hara, in his second of two episodes for the show again delivers on the atmosphere, making the most of Philip Levene’s teleplay.

Old Boggy walks on Lammas Eve.

Jeeves and Wooster 2.5: Kidnapped (aka The Mysterious Stranger)
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Jeeves: Tis old boggy. He be abroad tonight. He be heading for the railway station.
Gone are many of the imbroglios involving Stoker and Glossop (the estimable Roger Brierley), including the contesting of the former’s uncle’s will. Also gone, sadly, is the inebriated Brinkley throwing potatoes at Stoker, which surely would have been enormous fun. Instead, we concentrate on Bertie being locked aboard Stoker’s yacht in order to secure his marriage to Pauline (as per the novel), Chuffy tailing Pauline in disguise (so there’s a different/additional reason for Stoker to believe Bertie and she spent the night together, this time at a pub en route to Chufnell Hall) and …

I think we’ve returned to Eden. Surely this is how the World once was in the beginning of time.

1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Ridley Scott’s first historical epic (The Duellists was his first historical, and his first feature, but hardly an epic) is also one of his least remembered films. It bombed at the box office (as did the year’s other attempted cash-ins on the discovery of America, including Superman: The Movie producers the Salkinds’ Christopher Columbus: The Discovery) and met with a less than rapturous response from critics. Such shunning is undeserved, as 1492: Conquest of Paradise is a richer and more thought-provoking experience than both the avowedly lowbrow Gladiator and the re-evaluated-but-still-so-so director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven. It may stand guilty of presenting an overly sympathetic portrait of Columbus, but it isn’t shy about pressing a critical stance on his legacy.

Sanchez: The truth is, that he now presides over a state of chaos, of degradation, and of madness. From the beginning, Columbus proved himself completely incapable of ruling these islands…

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