Wednesday 30 November 2016

Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them

This new yarn from J.K. Rowling is akin to retreating from 2016’s horrid winter into an old blanket. It’s warm and cosy with familiarity, but the loose threads are becoming more obvious, and the cold still seeps in through little holes. Eddie Redmayne stars as magizoologist Newt Scamander with a case full of, you guessed it, fantastic beasts. The contents of the case are let loose on 1920s New York, where Scamander is befriended by wide-eyed ‘nomaj’ Jacob Kowalski, played by Dan Fogler, and hounded by plucky ex-Auror Tina Goldstein, played by Katherine Waterstone. As the trio scurry around in an attempt to return the creatures safely to the suitcase, another kind of sorcery stalks the streets. A dark force is causing calamity, and the Magical Congress of the United States sends the mysterious Percival Graves, the frightening looking Colin Farrell, to investigate. A second Salem movement is also on the rise, and, within its ranks, a reclusive teenager, played by Perks of Being a Wallflower breakout Ezra Miller, secretly rebels against his oppressive mother.

The film eases you into the flow with a good helping of earnest adventure before the underlying plot strands begin to convalesce. Much like the later Potter films, Beasts strikes a good balance between child-like immersion in the sparkling spectacle of a magical world, whilst still drawing out the darkness inherent in that universe. The production design alternates between gloomy, effervescent and gothic, and it’s very hard not to be won over by the overall aesthetic of the film.

When any franchise enters a new era, there’s always a great deal made of ‘bridging the gap’. With Newton Howard providing the musical connection, the character who guides us through is not Redmayne, but Miller, playing the sunken-faced and scary-haired Credence Barebone. Carrying more than a little Draco Malfoy in his glare and posture, he works wonders with a subplot that is occasionally misjudged in its intensity. The Potter universe is no stranger to darker themes (each film after Prisoner of Azkaban thrived increasingly on this), but the shadows here exist outside the wizarding world, in a place that feels all too real. The entire arc of Farrell’s character is revealed the instant we see his haircut, but he’s clearly having good fun. He certainly draws a far more rounded character than his nemesis, Newt; a Tumblr fanfic creation brought to life. Any investment we have in our heroes is channelled through Dan Fogler. His performance carries nuance, genuine emotion, and charm that doesn’t require a single wand wave.

Sunday 6 November 2016

Arrival

Someone a few rows below me clears their throat, and suddenly I realise that for the past 40 minutes, no-one in the cinema has made a sound. This moment came as Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker slowly advance into the belly of an alien spaceship; the culmination of Arrival’s first act. In Denis Villeneuve’s most adventurous film yet, twelve spaceships hover metres above the ground in countries across the world. Army Colonel Weber, played by Whitaker, enlists linguistics expert Louise Banks, played by Adams, and theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly, played by Renner, to attempt rudimentary communication with their visitors, to discover their ultimate intention.

Eements of the plot are comparable to other sci-fi favourites like Interstellar and alien invasion fare such as Independence Day and The Day the Earth Stood Still, but the experience of seeing this for the first time was utterly unique. For one thing, it’s the first time I’ve ever physically sensed a movie dividing the audience. While that innocent cough I mentioned above seemed to shake many from some kind of trance, it seemed a rallying call for an equal number of others to fidget or rummage around for another piece of popcorn. This divide was clear as the credits rolled, and personified by my colleagues in the office: I found it gripping up to a point, another loved it, and the other found it interminably dull.

Its construction is also a change from the norm: that looming spaceship isn’t necessarily there to frighten or devastate, but to enthrall, its featureless black shell an empty space in the skyline onto which we project our fears and questions. To relay these anxieties is Banks, giving us a similar bugs-eye view as Cooper from Interstellar, packed with an emotionally-charged parent-child dynamic to boot. However, whilst McConaughey’s character was constantly awash with philosophical wonder and scientific know-how, Adams' is the closest we’ve come to seeing a believably ‘normal’ person being sucked into the maelstrom of military action, political uncertainty and media hysteria that constitutes first contact.

This is not her first time making a close encounter (see Man of Steel), but without the shackles of a franchise, her character is allowed a level of depth more deserving of Adams’ talent. Here, she employs a look of great pain, awe and misplacement through her gaze alone. It takes an awful lot to make varying levels of confusion and fear interesting for two hours, but Adams makes it unbelievably gripping. Renner is playing the comic relief to a certain extent, but it’s more Hurt Locker than Hawkeye (smart without falling into snarky). Both leads actually look like they could do Banks and Donnelly’s jobs for real. Despite the slight, unavoidable shimmer of Hollywood make-up, they’re not glamorized, particularly as they spend a great deal of time enveloped in clumsy orange hazmat suits.

Visually, it’s a different tale. Bradford Young’s photography is polished to a mirror shine, doing more with blacks and whites than most cinematographers do with an entire rainbow, and Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score doesn’t come packed with the overwrought aggressiveness that’s so vehemently present in his other work. In fact, this score is quite the opposite: it slinks elegantly across the background before suddenly catching you out. At the apex of a simply flawless panning shot – in which Villeneuve and Young finally reveal the ominous black shell hanging over the Montana plains – Jóhannsson kicks the strings into motion, and an eerie wail sends a visible shiver through the audience.

Some dodgy CG hair aside, the visual wizardry is minimalist and beautiful, employed only when necessary and to incredible effect. Perhaps betraying that the film isn’t really about them, the aliens are nothing radical to look at. Their method of communication is remarkable, for sure, but it’s a cerebral wonder as much as a physical one, and the only special effect in attendance at the extraordinary finale is reserved purely for your brain.

As well as securing Villeneuve, Young and Adams as magisterial talents once and for all, Arrival is a critical, timely parable about communication and empathy. It’s the natural progression of sci-fi cinema, where contemporary and timeless themes collide with state-of-the-art filmmaking technology. Now if they could have only excluded the love story subplot - the film would have been perfect!