The Ainu are the aboriginal people of Hokkaidō, Japan’s large northern island. Following centuries of oppression, discrimination, cultural invalidation, the Ainu were officially recognised as indigenous people of Japan in 2008. AINU MOSIR (after the Ainu name for Hokkaidō) tells the story of an Ainu boy (Kanto Shimokura) in search of his own identity apart from his ancestry. The film is naturalistic to the point of feeling like a documentary; we see Kanto’s desire to leave his village, which is a popular attraction for Japanese and overseas tourists alike, and his further confusion at being asked to take part in the upsetting Iomante animal sacrifice ritual by his surrogate father figure (Debo Akibe). The film is captivating, quietly emotional and very beautiful, the Ainu’s bond with nature reflected in stunning landscape photography, their culture and traditions presented with reverence and without judgement. This understated gem of Japanese cinema is now available on Netflix so seek it out. SSP
Review in Brief: Ainu Mosir
Review in Brief: I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS is challenging, elusive, indulgent, alienating – a Charlie Kaufman film, in short. Like pretty much all of his work, reality is brought into question minute by minute, nobody ends up playing exactly the same character they were at the beginning and some may never have been there in the first place. If that last sentence doesn’t make sense then I’m only trying to replicate what the film does. Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons play a couple visiting parents in the country as a snowstorm closes in. After we meet the strange parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) even stranger things begin to happen to the passage of time, characters’ identities and backstories and reality itself. Don’t even get me started on the school janitor. Don’t be surprised by ballet interludes or the quoting of an entire Pauline Kael review. It won’t be for everyone, in fact it’s probably not for many, but it is unique, mesmerising and awkwardly amusing. SSP
Review in Brief: Rocks (2019/20)
The wonderful ROCKS completely broke me multiple times. It is the most loving tribute to friendship and the collaborative process of filmmaking. Thanks to director Sarah Gavron’s process involving classroom-based intensive workshopping and invaluable, grounding input from the young cast, this may become the only way to film a truthful school story in future. What the cast really manage to bring across is what’s great about being a teenage girl (hanging out with friends) and what’s not (falling out with friends) and the challenges so many experience every day (neglect, poverty, trying to avoid the attention of social services). I don’t think I’ve seen a better film about friendship, and particularly the damage caused by petty school arguments since WE ARE THE BEST! The cast of non-professional actors are excellent across the board (Bukky Bakray as the title character and Kosar Ali as her best friend stand out and have to do most of the dramatic heavy lifting) and any of them could be looking at a promising future in the industry should they want to pursue it. Rocks is hard-hitting but feel-good, frank and funny and always honest. SSP
Review: Tenet (2020)
Turn the music down when people are talking Nolan – you’ve been told before! TENET is perhaps Christopher Nolan’s most elusive film after MEMENTO, and not always for the reasons intended. Strap yourselves in for a thrilling, but frustrating ride.
The Protagonist (John David Washington) is recruited by a collective of secret agents to take down an arms dealer (Kenneth Branagh) who appears to somehow be using temporal reversal technology to bring about World War III.
Let’s get the obvious, and the good stuff out of the way first. The set pieces are stunning – muscular, visceral and as real as you can get while time keeps flipping backwards and forwards. You’d expect nothing less from the man who flipped an 18-wheeler nose-to-tail because he could. From a BOURNE-riffing kitchen scrap complete with lethal cheesegrater usage to to crashing an entire jumbo jet through a hanger, no one does big action quite like Nolan. This is the reason to see Tenet on a big screen, but perhaps not enough of one to keep cinemas open solely for.
Anyone can enjoy the spectacle, the scale and ambition of a piece like this. But how are you meant to understand the mechanics of how or why anything is happening? Suspension of disbelief is essential to enjoy any time travel film (which this is, even if Nolan doesn’t seem to like it being reduced to such in conversation) but if the characters seem just as bewildered by events as we the audience are how can anything connect dramatically?
The time reversal (sorry, entropy reversal) aspect of the set pieces achieved through a combination of complex stunt rehearsal and reversing footage is eye-catching, but unfortunately it can come across as unintentionally hilarious. Nothing like thinking of that backwards episode of RED DWARF to ruin the tension of the final battle between two teams of heavily armed operatives moving the opposite way through time.
The lead character known only as the Protagonist seems a sly comment on the way this and many other kinds of story are told – he’s doing what he’s doing because he’s the hero and that’s what heroes do. As Robert Pattinson’s Neil continually stresses to the Protagonist and the audience about how the time travel works here, “don’t worry about it”. It becomes clear that fate or something similar has a part to play, that the Protagonist is being guided along a particular path whether he wants to be or not. As the story progresses and more timey-wimey shenanigans pulled, you do have to ask whether everything we witness was predetermined by fate, even if we’ll never understand how.
Tenet is missing time and attention on characters and motivation, relationships and emotion. He’s sometimes described as a cold and distant filmmaker, but at least Nolan’s INCEPTION and INTERSTELLAR had people acting like people with wants and needs to back up their reality-and-physics-defying spectacle.
The money is all on screen, all the performers do their jobs well and you can’t fault Nolan’s ambition regarding scale and concepts, but this is a film impossible to truly engage with because you’re not made to feel anything. The characters are (intentionally or not) cyphers, the plot frequently breaks its own convoluted logic and you don’t get the impression all this time and effort amounts to anything meaningful. After seeing Tenet you’ll be dazzled, but you may well also be exhausted and not all that satisfied. SSP
Review in Brief: Rebecca (2020)
I really liked Ben Wheatley’s REBECCA. With the impossible task of competing with Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning black-and-white classic, Ben Wheatley and co take a different path, turn a modern eye to a vintage tale and have produced something sumptuous, grand and enthralling. This is simply gorgeous to look at, with lavish production design, rich colours and, in the latter stretch Wheatley’s usual twisted and surreal visuals invading the earthly plane. Clint Mansell’s eerie score envelops you and never lets go. Lily James is mesmerising, Kristen Scott-Thomas unsettling and Sam Reilly entertainingly oily. Armie Hammer doesn’t quite leave the mark he should as one of the most unlikeable characters in literature, but he certainly looks the part and you understand the soon-to-be-Mrs DeWinter falling head over heels for him far more easily than you did when he was played by Laurence Olivier. Give Wheatley some more classic Gothic adaptations ASAP! SSP
SSP Thinks Film 