Munich Film Festival III
Two quite different but memorable movies from last year, neither of them shown in Germany yet, so they premiered at the festival. Both were co-produced by the BBC, but that's about the only thing they have in common.
The most interesting thing about The Edge of Love is that it defies expectations in not being a Dylan Thomas biopic, or a love quadrangle centered around Thomas (played by Matthew Rhys), but focuses instead on the passionate friendship that developes against the odds between his first love Vera (Keira Knightley) and his wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller). Indeed Dylan Thomas is easily the least sympathetic character among the four, a spoiled manchild unable to grow up (probably a good thing they cast Rhys, otherwise it would completely unbelievable these women ever saw anything in him at all). Cillian Murphy as Vera's war time romance and later shell shocked husband is the fourth party, but the film really belongs to Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley, who are gorgeous together. One wishes they'd run off alone, ditching the guys (the film takes other liberties with history, so why not that one), but it's not to be.
Five Minutes of Heaven, starring Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt and directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (who after Der Untergang/Downfall seems to have made it into English language films), is a very different kind of film. In 1975, Protestant teenager Alistair shoots a Catholic worker in front of his little brother Joe. Thirty years later, they meet again. It's essentially a two person chamber play that miraculously avoids all the obvious traps such a story could fall into. Early on, Joe, whose life after the death of his brother fell apart as did his family, pours scorn on the idea a handshake with his brother's killer so everyone around can feel better and pat themselves on the back, seeing this as an inspiring story about redemption, which tells you then and there this will not happen. Joe actually agreed to the meeting only so he'd finally have the chance to kill Alistair and have his "five minutes of heaven" - of satisfied revenge. But this isn't a revenge Western, either, and this, too, will not happen. It's not a story with easy answers, and it's a powerful one.
On a personal note, it's also the film that finally made me see what his admirers see in James Nesbitt, since I had loathed the Jekyll pilot and Nesbitt in the role (which meant the false rumour he might be up for the role of the eleventh Doctor on Doctor Who did not make me happy last year). He's truly fabulous here, conveying the long term damage done to Joe perfectly, with his nervous energy never over the top but the desperate outlet to what he thinks he needs to do. He's also suberbly balanced by Liam Neeson, whose performance as the adult Alistair is as low key and restrained as Nesbitt's is extrovert. Which brings me to more traps the film avoids: either to show more interest in the killer than in the victim, or to do the victim's story justice but feel compelled to demonize the killer in order to do so. Here, though it's a two leading men film, the narrative emphasis is on Joe's story, not on Alistair's; however, Alistair is a believable character, both the us-versus-them minded teenager who thinks gunning down a helpless man is a great thing to do, and the adult thirty years later who knows the consequences of murder all too well, "broken under his own wheel", as someone else put it.
A story about what happens after; after the violence, the deaths, i.e. the part movies usually focus on. Definitely a must.
The most interesting thing about The Edge of Love is that it defies expectations in not being a Dylan Thomas biopic, or a love quadrangle centered around Thomas (played by Matthew Rhys), but focuses instead on the passionate friendship that developes against the odds between his first love Vera (Keira Knightley) and his wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller). Indeed Dylan Thomas is easily the least sympathetic character among the four, a spoiled manchild unable to grow up (probably a good thing they cast Rhys, otherwise it would completely unbelievable these women ever saw anything in him at all). Cillian Murphy as Vera's war time romance and later shell shocked husband is the fourth party, but the film really belongs to Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley, who are gorgeous together. One wishes they'd run off alone, ditching the guys (the film takes other liberties with history, so why not that one), but it's not to be.
Five Minutes of Heaven, starring Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt and directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (who after Der Untergang/Downfall seems to have made it into English language films), is a very different kind of film. In 1975, Protestant teenager Alistair shoots a Catholic worker in front of his little brother Joe. Thirty years later, they meet again. It's essentially a two person chamber play that miraculously avoids all the obvious traps such a story could fall into. Early on, Joe, whose life after the death of his brother fell apart as did his family, pours scorn on the idea a handshake with his brother's killer so everyone around can feel better and pat themselves on the back, seeing this as an inspiring story about redemption, which tells you then and there this will not happen. Joe actually agreed to the meeting only so he'd finally have the chance to kill Alistair and have his "five minutes of heaven" - of satisfied revenge. But this isn't a revenge Western, either, and this, too, will not happen. It's not a story with easy answers, and it's a powerful one.
On a personal note, it's also the film that finally made me see what his admirers see in James Nesbitt, since I had loathed the Jekyll pilot and Nesbitt in the role (which meant the false rumour he might be up for the role of the eleventh Doctor on Doctor Who did not make me happy last year). He's truly fabulous here, conveying the long term damage done to Joe perfectly, with his nervous energy never over the top but the desperate outlet to what he thinks he needs to do. He's also suberbly balanced by Liam Neeson, whose performance as the adult Alistair is as low key and restrained as Nesbitt's is extrovert. Which brings me to more traps the film avoids: either to show more interest in the killer than in the victim, or to do the victim's story justice but feel compelled to demonize the killer in order to do so. Here, though it's a two leading men film, the narrative emphasis is on Joe's story, not on Alistair's; however, Alistair is a believable character, both the us-versus-them minded teenager who thinks gunning down a helpless man is a great thing to do, and the adult thirty years later who knows the consequences of murder all too well, "broken under his own wheel", as someone else put it.
A story about what happens after; after the violence, the deaths, i.e. the part movies usually focus on. Definitely a must.