Review: Strumpet (2001)
Director: Danny Boyle / Writer: Jim Cartwright / CE's role: Strayman
"Strumpet" was a rather strange career move for director Danny Boyle. He’d been commercially and critically successful with movies like “Shallow Grave” (starring our boy along with Ewan McGregor and Kerry Fox) and “Trainspotting”, and he’d just made “The Beach”, a big-budget Hollywood movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Then he took a contract to direct two no-frills short films for the BBC. (“Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise” is the other one.)
Strumpet is a magical little 72-minute film, shot in digital video and looking as rough as the lives of its lead characters. The word “fairytale” comes up in a lot of reviews, and that’s very apt.
The movie starts with the famous scene of Strayman reciting John Cooper Clarke’s “Evidently Chickentown” in a karaoke bar. Someone in chat (if you’re reading this, please speak up so I can credit you!) described him as having a “been-to-hell-and-back stare” in this scene, and that’s very apt too.
Chris’s rendition of the poem is better than Cooper Clarke’s, in my opinion; he slows it down and gives weight to all the words, whereas JCC’s version is too fast to really appreciate what’s being said. Even when JCC does it on stage these days, without musical backing, it’s at breakneck speed.
Eccleston’s character, Strayman, is burnt-out and barely articulate. At first he seems largely anti-social, growling at the audience in the bar and stealing eggs off the milkman’s truck. (The egg-stealing is a shout-out to Ken Loach’s 1969 movie “Kes”, which both CE and Danny Boyle mention as being very influential in their lives. By the way, “Kes” can be streamed on Netflix, and it’s worth watching, but the Yorkshire dialect is extremely thick. I’m usually good at that kind of thing, but I had to turn on the subtitles to understand parts of it.)
He shows his true nature when he protects Strumpet from the violent truck driver who’s picked her up. Then he takes her home and nurtures her: sees that she gets food, a bath, and some sleep. More than once during this sequence, the look on her face seems to say “Okay, now’s the time when he expects me to put out”, and she is not enthused. But that time doesn’t come. Strayman just wants to take care of her.
Excuse me while I have a melty fangirl moment and imagine Strayman taking care of me. I would gladly put out.
The time for putting out seems like it’s finally come after Strumpet wakes up and walks, naked, into the room where Strayman writes his poetry on the walls. He leers and approaches her, but the moment is bypassed with a few very jumpy edits, and then he asks her for a tune. She plays, he sings, and they collapse on the floor in the afterglow of a sort of musical orgasm.
The series of edits just before the song is actually one of the few things that bother me about this movie. That, and the part where the truck driver hits Strumpet. In both cases, the editing is choppy and you feel like you missed something of what happened. I don’t know if that was intentional on Danny Boyle’s part- did he want it to be ambigious? - or just a consequence of hasty filming or editing. [Edit: on later re-watching, I realized that there actually is no edit between "Get some of this down you" and "Give us a tune." The camera actually pans away and pans back, clumsily.]
There’s another flaw, but this one’s more amusing than annoying: Strayman’s magically reappearing shirt in the Top of the Pops sequence. He’s shirtless for about 30 seconds, then suddenly we cut to shot where his shirt’s back on, and he takes it off once again. Show of hands: how many people noticed that?
CE’s body language is different in this movie than any other role I’ve seen him in. He initiates movement suddenly and unexpectedly, mirroring the idiosyncratic turns and leaps that his mind must make. And his walk is not that usual confident swagger. Something about the way he lifts his knees and places his feet makes him look like a child whose boots are too big. I think maybe his boots actually *are* too big: notice how he kicks his heels against the back of the stairs after he puts them on, like he’s trying to slide his feet into the proper place.
I hadn’t watched the movie for about three months before I started writing this. In thinking about it, I mostly remembered the energy of the musical sequences and the poignant exchanges between Strayman and Strumpet, like when they talk on the gravel pile or he finds her in the trailer in London (is that called a “caravan” in Britspeak?) When I rewatched it, I realized I had forgotten how much of it is genuinely funny: the way Strayman sweeps everything off the table so he and Strumpet can eat. The whole bathroom-cleaning sequence. Knockoff, his gestures and his speech, especially when he’s making his video pitch to the record producers. The record producers’ deadpan reactions to him. The look of utter helpless “WTF?” on Strayman’s face the entire time they’re in the record company office. The seemingly random things he says: “Was one called Farting Ringo?” “I know a fat lady with a guest house!”
The shots of Strayman walking down the street with the dogs flowing around him are just beautiful. According to interviews, the dogs were actually all real strays. Is there anyone but Danny Boyle who’s mad enough to try something like that? CE must have had to bond with the dogs at least a bit in order to shoot those scenes. I wonder what happened to them all after the filming was over.
And the music, oh, the music . . . it’s like they attuned it specifically to my tastes. CE is deliberately trying to make his voice sound rough, I think, but I like that in a voice. He reminds me of early Richard Thompson or Dick Gaughan. Genna G.’s voice blends well with his. There’s a beautiful moment in the naked version where he ends a line on a note that doesn’t resolve, and she adds this little wordless run that brings the melody back where it should be. (The stuff she does with her real-life band is less to my taste, but you may like it. By the way, she's spelled "Genna" in the movie credits, but apparently she herself spells it "Jenna".)
According to one review I read, the song was “written by cast, director and writer during the making of the film”. I’d love to know more about their process. (Transcript and discussion of the lyrics can be found here.) I’d also love to be able to read every one of Strayman’s “words on the wall”. Someday when I reach the height (or is it the depths?) of obsession, I’ll freezeframe my way through the video and write down as many as I can. I haven’t gotten there yet. Alex from Art Thou Beguil’d Now has done at least a little bit of it: scroll down to #3 here to see it.
In addition to my baser fantasies about Strayman, I have a fantasy that he and Strumpet go back to Manchester and live squalidly ever after, releasing new music every year so that I can add it to my collection. I want to hear more.
I do go on a bit, don’t I? Have you seen Strumpet? What are your thoughts?
P.S. Art Thou Beguil'd Now's "Strumpet" review is here. They are an invaluable CE resource.
"Strumpet" was a rather strange career move for director Danny Boyle. He’d been commercially and critically successful with movies like “Shallow Grave” (starring our boy along with Ewan McGregor and Kerry Fox) and “Trainspotting”, and he’d just made “The Beach”, a big-budget Hollywood movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Then he took a contract to direct two no-frills short films for the BBC. (“Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise” is the other one.)
Strumpet is a magical little 72-minute film, shot in digital video and looking as rough as the lives of its lead characters. The word “fairytale” comes up in a lot of reviews, and that’s very apt.
The movie starts with the famous scene of Strayman reciting John Cooper Clarke’s “Evidently Chickentown” in a karaoke bar. Someone in chat (if you’re reading this, please speak up so I can credit you!) described him as having a “been-to-hell-and-back stare” in this scene, and that’s very apt too.
Chris’s rendition of the poem is better than Cooper Clarke’s, in my opinion; he slows it down and gives weight to all the words, whereas JCC’s version is too fast to really appreciate what’s being said. Even when JCC does it on stage these days, without musical backing, it’s at breakneck speed.
Eccleston’s character, Strayman, is burnt-out and barely articulate. At first he seems largely anti-social, growling at the audience in the bar and stealing eggs off the milkman’s truck. (The egg-stealing is a shout-out to Ken Loach’s 1969 movie “Kes”, which both CE and Danny Boyle mention as being very influential in their lives. By the way, “Kes” can be streamed on Netflix, and it’s worth watching, but the Yorkshire dialect is extremely thick. I’m usually good at that kind of thing, but I had to turn on the subtitles to understand parts of it.)
He shows his true nature when he protects Strumpet from the violent truck driver who’s picked her up. Then he takes her home and nurtures her: sees that she gets food, a bath, and some sleep. More than once during this sequence, the look on her face seems to say “Okay, now’s the time when he expects me to put out”, and she is not enthused. But that time doesn’t come. Strayman just wants to take care of her.
Excuse me while I have a melty fangirl moment and imagine Strayman taking care of me. I would gladly put out.
The time for putting out seems like it’s finally come after Strumpet wakes up and walks, naked, into the room where Strayman writes his poetry on the walls. He leers and approaches her, but the moment is bypassed with a few very jumpy edits, and then he asks her for a tune. She plays, he sings, and they collapse on the floor in the afterglow of a sort of musical orgasm.
The series of edits just before the song is actually one of the few things that bother me about this movie. That, and the part where the truck driver hits Strumpet. In both cases, the editing is choppy and you feel like you missed something of what happened. I don’t know if that was intentional on Danny Boyle’s part- did he want it to be ambigious? - or just a consequence of hasty filming or editing. [Edit: on later re-watching, I realized that there actually is no edit between "Get some of this down you" and "Give us a tune." The camera actually pans away and pans back, clumsily.]
There’s another flaw, but this one’s more amusing than annoying: Strayman’s magically reappearing shirt in the Top of the Pops sequence. He’s shirtless for about 30 seconds, then suddenly we cut to shot where his shirt’s back on, and he takes it off once again. Show of hands: how many people noticed that?
CE’s body language is different in this movie than any other role I’ve seen him in. He initiates movement suddenly and unexpectedly, mirroring the idiosyncratic turns and leaps that his mind must make. And his walk is not that usual confident swagger. Something about the way he lifts his knees and places his feet makes him look like a child whose boots are too big. I think maybe his boots actually *are* too big: notice how he kicks his heels against the back of the stairs after he puts them on, like he’s trying to slide his feet into the proper place.
I hadn’t watched the movie for about three months before I started writing this. In thinking about it, I mostly remembered the energy of the musical sequences and the poignant exchanges between Strayman and Strumpet, like when they talk on the gravel pile or he finds her in the trailer in London (is that called a “caravan” in Britspeak?) When I rewatched it, I realized I had forgotten how much of it is genuinely funny: the way Strayman sweeps everything off the table so he and Strumpet can eat. The whole bathroom-cleaning sequence. Knockoff, his gestures and his speech, especially when he’s making his video pitch to the record producers. The record producers’ deadpan reactions to him. The look of utter helpless “WTF?” on Strayman’s face the entire time they’re in the record company office. The seemingly random things he says: “Was one called Farting Ringo?” “I know a fat lady with a guest house!”
The shots of Strayman walking down the street with the dogs flowing around him are just beautiful. According to interviews, the dogs were actually all real strays. Is there anyone but Danny Boyle who’s mad enough to try something like that? CE must have had to bond with the dogs at least a bit in order to shoot those scenes. I wonder what happened to them all after the filming was over.
And the music, oh, the music . . . it’s like they attuned it specifically to my tastes. CE is deliberately trying to make his voice sound rough, I think, but I like that in a voice. He reminds me of early Richard Thompson or Dick Gaughan. Genna G.’s voice blends well with his. There’s a beautiful moment in the naked version where he ends a line on a note that doesn’t resolve, and she adds this little wordless run that brings the melody back where it should be. (The stuff she does with her real-life band is less to my taste, but you may like it. By the way, she's spelled "Genna" in the movie credits, but apparently she herself spells it "Jenna".)
According to one review I read, the song was “written by cast, director and writer during the making of the film”. I’d love to know more about their process. (Transcript and discussion of the lyrics can be found here.) I’d also love to be able to read every one of Strayman’s “words on the wall”. Someday when I reach the height (or is it the depths?) of obsession, I’ll freezeframe my way through the video and write down as many as I can. I haven’t gotten there yet. Alex from Art Thou Beguil’d Now has done at least a little bit of it: scroll down to #3 here to see it.
In addition to my baser fantasies about Strayman, I have a fantasy that he and Strumpet go back to Manchester and live squalidly ever after, releasing new music every year so that I can add it to my collection. I want to hear more.
I do go on a bit, don’t I? Have you seen Strumpet? What are your thoughts?
P.S. Art Thou Beguil'd Now's "Strumpet" review is here. They are an invaluable CE resource.