Love is love. It's a simple sentiment, really, yet one that in practice continues to confound and confront the powers-that-be of Church and State. As Australia embarrassingly continues to stumble behind the rest of the Western world in recognising marriage equality, Jeff Nichols' Loving arrives not a moment too soon; reminding us of time when similar battles were being fought and, sadly, that the more things change . . .
Beginning in late 1950s Virginia, Loving tells the story of Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred (Ruth Negga), childhood sweethearts who, with the impending birth of their first child, drive to Washington from the still segregated Virginia to marry.
The Lovings are preparing to build a life together, however, the law in Virginia is not prepared to accept a white man and a black woman - or vice versa - living in holy matrimony. After several arrests, which include police raids in the middle of the night, the Lovings agree to a commuted sentence in return for leaving the state and the promise never to return. But in the city, away from her family and the country where she ran and played as a child, and envisioned her children doing the same, Mildred wilts.
A letter to the Civil Liberties Union catches the attention of Robert Kennedy, and before long the Loving's case for inter-racial marriage is being heard before the United States Supreme Court (comedian Nick Kroll plays one of the Lovings' lawyers to slightly distracting effect).
Nichols' film, just his fifth and his second in the past year after Midnight Special, is an understated and restrained piece of filmmaking that allows the emotions of the Lovings -- similarly restrained but no less palpable -- tell the story. Ruth Negga, who received a Best Actress Oscar nomination, and Joel Edgerton, who gives a career-best performance, convey the deep-rooted love of Mildred and Richard through looks, gestures and body language. There is no emoting or grand gestures by either actor.
The same goes for the drama. A typical Hollywood film would have us in that courtroom hearing the arguments and the history-making verdict handed down. Here, it's treated almost as second-hand news by way of a phone call. Nichols' approach is the opposite of Amma Asante's in last year's A United Kingdom; a similar story of inter-racial love overcoming prejudice which was old fashioned and far from subtle in its telling.
Richard and Mildred Loving had to wait almost a decade for that Supreme Court decision and legal confirmation of what they, their friends and family already knew: that love is love. Here's hoping Australia doesn't waste that much time in reaching the same conclusion.
It is not intended as a backhanded compliment or even a dismissal of Otto Bell's fine documentary, The Eagle Huntress, when I confess that for a lot of its brief 87-minute running time I found myself thinking, “This would be a great animated film”.
The story of Aisholpan Nurgaiv, a 13-year-old Mongolian girl to become not just the first eagle hunter in her family but in the country – defying tradition and patriarchy, as well as Mother Nature – is the kind of story Disney and Pixar often excel at. Even Laika, given their recent success with Kubo and the Two Strings, could work wonders with both the story and scenery.
Beautifully shot by Simon Niblett (and by drones, I would hazard to guess given some of the amazing aerial shots), The Eagle Huntress even looks like a fairy tale: the landscape of the Mongolian steppe, with its green expanses and snowy mountains, lending itself to the big screen.
For centuries, eagle hunting has been an integral part of Mongolian culture, both as sport and as a means of providing for one's family. As such, eagle hunting has always been a man's pursuit. Aisholpan, the eldest of three children, has grown up watching her father hunt and train with eagles and knows that she, too, will be an eagle hunter. Her father, Rys, has no issue with his daughter's dream, encouraging her every step of the way; whether stealing an eaglet from a rocky mountain ledge or training the bird to fly to her arm at her command, or teaching both she and her eagle to hunt for foxes in the winter snow.
Whether the male elders of Mongolia, who gather for regular eagle hunting contests, will be as accepting of Aisholpan's dream is another thing entirely, and is the thrust of Bell's film. Will she prove herself among her older, more practiced eagle hunters? Will her optimistic school girl spirit withstand the scrutiny and disapproval of the male elders?
Narrated by Daisy Ridley (who is also one of the executive producers, along with Morgan Spurlock), Aisholpan's fate is never really in doubt. But as the story of girl with a big dream and a big smile, Aisholpan's fairy tale come reality is an inspiring one - no matter what format it is told in.
Australian cinema doesn't have a great tradition of adapting local literature for the big screen which seems odd given the number of yearly bestsellers by homegrown authors, as well as a back catalogue of classic novels and world renowned writers to plunder. Look at the recent success of The Dressmaker for one.
Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey's 2009 novel, was a bestseller as well as critically-acclaimed, so its adaptation for the big screen (by Silvey and Shaun Grant, and directed by Rachel Perkins) seems like a no-brainer. It also targets a Young Adult audience, a demographic and a genre often under-served by Australian film.
It's the summer of '69 in the small West Australian town of Corrigan, and a murderer walks among the town's folk. Not that the locals will ever be aware. As far as they, and the local police are concerned, the eldest daughter of the mayor has disappeared: at worst kidnapped, but most likely to have run-off to the 'big lights' of Perth. But 13-year-old Charlie Bucktin (Levi Miller) knows better.
On a sweltering night, and days before the alarm is raised, there's a knock on Charlie's bedroom window. It's Jasper Jones (Aaron L. McGrath), Corrigan's half-caste outcast, and he's come seeking Charlie's help. Why exactly isn't made clear (though it is better explained in the book), but the bookish Charlie agrees to go with the older, bolder boy to see what he wants -- and he soon regrets it. For down by the river, in a secluded spot, a girl (the mayor's daughter) hangs lifeless from a tree.
The secluded spot is Jasper's hideaway and the girl, Laura Wishart, was his friend. But the good people of Corrigan aren't about to see it that way: a dead white girl, a guilty black boy. Case closed. Jasper wants Charlie's help in solving the murder, and Charlie -- having helped dispose of the only evidence that a murder has occurred -- reluctantly agrees.
Jasper Jones is a study of the insidious nature of small town Australia, of injustice and of barely concealed prejudice -- it may be Australia 1969 but it could just as easily be 2017, and not just in the rural towns -- with Silvey's nods to, and inspiration drawn from Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird (those parallels made apparent in the book, but, wisely, less so in the adaptation; and any comparison between those films would be detrimental to what Perkins has produced).
Jasper Jones is also a coming of age story, where Charlie has his eyes opened to the harsh realities of the world and the fallibility of his parents (Toni Collette and Dan Wyllie). But its not all heavy going. There's Charlie's blush of first love with Eliza Wishart (Angourie Rice), although tainted somewhat given she is the younger sister of the dead girl. And then there's Charlie's friendship with the indomitable Jeffrey Lu (Kevin Long), a Vietnamese migrant and cricket tragic who refuses to let the bigoted, small minds of the small town bring him down.
Sadly, just as in the book, McGrath's Jasper is a supporting player. But all of the young actors acquit themselves well, while Collette, Wyllie, Matt Nable (Corrigan's police sergeant) and Hugo Weaving (the resident crazy man, Mad Jack Lionel) provide solid support even if plot-wise, Jasper Jones is a little wobbly at times. It's a faithful if not entirely successful adaptation.
On a positive note, high school English classes will no doubt be taken along to see Jasper Jones, not only boosting the box office but hopefully fostering an ongoing interest in Australian film and literature. And that can only be a good thing: perhaps inspiring a new wave of local filmmakers, one's keen to take Australian stories from the page to the screen.
"Nostalgia!" one character says accusingly to another at one point in T2 Trainspotting. "You're a tourist in your youth." And that may very well sum up the reason for the existence of Danny Boyle's latest film, an intermittently entertaining but wholly unnecessary sequel to his 1996 breakthrough.
Like that film, which launched Boyle's filmmaking career, as well as that of leading man Ewan McGregor, T2 is an adaptation (again by John Hodge) of an Irvine Welsh novel (Porno). But this long-time-coming, though hardly highly-anticipated sequel only has flashes of both Boyle and Welsh's differing forms of brilliance.
Then again, maybe it's just too hard to shock and awe audiences in the 21st century? Trainspotting certainly had its share of memorable scenes of drug-induced horror and debauchery, and T2 is not without some squirm inducing violence, occasional vomit, and, of course, drug usage. But the emphasis this time around isn't on Edinburgh lowlifes looking for the next big high, rather a reconciling of the past and coming to terms with middle age.
Not that Mark Renton (McGregor) has aged badly. Having scarpered to Amsterdam to start life anew with the loot he stole along with Sickboy (Jonny Lee Miller), Spud (Ewen Bremner) and Begbie (Robert Carlyle) at the end of Trainspotting -- double-crossing and abandoning his friends in the process -- Mark has returned to Edinburgh to make amends. Or is he hoping to pick up where he left off all those years ago?
He's just in time to save Spud, the most vulnerable of the group, from a heroin-induced suicide but he may soon regret reacquainting himself with one-time BFF Sickboy, or Simon as he now prefers to be called. Simon, who has switched smack for coke, has aspirations of being a brothel operator, if only to keep his Bulgarian beauty Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova) from leaving him, and he sees Mark as the perfect business partner and foil.
And then there's Begbie. The psychopath with a penchant for punching on has been incarcerated for most of the previous 20 years but as luck would have it, he masters a prison escape just as Mark returns. And if he wasn't already dangerous enough, Begbie's had two decades to plan his brutal revenge against the man who screwed him over.
Yep, the gangs all here. And while there's a couple of other ghosts from the past (Trainspotting alums Shirley Henderson and Kelly Macdonald making token appearances), this is very much a boy's own misadventure; Boyle and his principal cast getting back together for one more (last?) hurrah.
But just as you can't live in the past, and you can never really go home again, T2 Trainspotting relies too heavily on nostalgia for the first film to feel fully alive or its own creation. No matter how much energy and visual flair Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle deploy, nor how game the quartet of actors are for reprising shithead shenanigans, T2 just doesn't provide the same buzz.
