Nicht echt Deutsch: The Reader and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

With ‘The Reader’ up for just about everything Oscar-wise apart from Best Tea-Boy, I feel the need to pull the plug, burst the bubble, spit on the icon and have a word with the sacred cow about McDonald’s.

‘The Reader’ isn’t that good a film. It is, at best, deeply average. The cast is heavyweight (Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Bruno Ganz, Lena Olin), the cinematography is by two of the best practitioners of the art currently working (Chris Menges and Roger Deakins), the script is courtesy of David Hare and Bernhard Schlink’s source novel a breakout success beyond its original German-language publication, and yet the whole thing never quite adds up to the sum of its parts. As a viewing experience, it’s curiously antiseptic.

I could almost feel sorry for director Stephen Daldry – if, that is, I wasn’t so sure that he’s going to clean up on the 22nd – because the man genuinely seems to want to make profound and thought-provoking films. There was the inexplicably popular ‘Billy Elliott’, which aimed for a triumph-of-the-spirit aesthetic set against the potent backdrop of the miners’ strike. There was ‘The Hours’, with another heavyweight cast and ‘literary’ source novel. But the former was bogged down with clichés – from the gay best friend to the gruff no-son-of-mine father who, awww bless, comes through for the lad at the end – and made ‘Brassed Off’ look like cinema vérité; while the latter was just plain bogged down.

Next up, Daldry is helming an adaptation of Michael Chabon’s ‘The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay’ and I could weep into my beer that such a wonderful and iconoclastic novel has fallen into his hands. Chabon’s prose deserves a Guillermo del Toro, a Christopher Nolan, a Darren Aronofsky. Not a Stephen Daldry.

I started this blog to rave about the films I love, so wasting words on ‘The Reader’ runs contrary to the remit. Besides, there’s a blandness, a tiredness to it that inspires a similar malaise in yours truly. One of my favourite bloggers on film, Tim at Antagony & Ecstacy, provided an eloquent review of some 1,200 words, and yet summed it up perfectly in his pullquote: “What if they threw a Nazi porno and nobody came?”

Similarly, you could throw at ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ the question “What if they told a Nazi bedtime story and somebody died?” Okay, I’ll admit it: that was snide. I’m a little more inclined to be charitable to ‘TBITSP’ – it’s adapted from a children’s novel and I’ll make the assumption that director Mark Herman has pitched the film at an audience of similar age range. Not that I saw many children in the audience when I went to see it. They were probably in one of Cineworld’s thirteen other screens, pledging allegiance to Pixar, Dreamworks or Disney. I tip my hat to them.

The problems with ‘TBITSP’ are several. Like ‘The Reader’, it has a director who wants to be serious and challenging but just doesn’t have what it takes to engage with the material. His previous outings, the aforementioned ‘Brassed Off’ and the terminally confused ‘Little Voice’ (is it a comedy? is it a drama? is it meant to be realistic? is it meant to be theatrical? does Brenda Blethyn have to screech all the time?), are not the work of a director ready to tackle the Holocaust.

Never mind if you’re doing it from a child’s point of view, if you’re making a film about the Holocaust then you’re making a film about the Holocaust. That carries as serious a responsibility as any subject a film-maker can pick. A responsibility, first and foremost, to historical accuracy. And yes, John Boyne’s novel is narrated in a deliberately naïve ‘voice’, the better to show the scales falling from his young protagonist’s eyes as he realises the lies his high-ranking SS officer father has told about “Outwith” (his mis-heard name for Auschwitz) are just that – lies – but a novel is a construct of words. Film is visual. So if you’re showing a concentration camp through the eyes of a child, then you’re still showing a concentration camp.

This is where the disconnect occurs in Herman’s film. All of the key scenes between the SS officer’s son and the young Jewish boy, an expanse of barbed wire separating them, take place in some forgotten corner of the camp where no guards patrol, no-one notices anything from the watchtowers, the boy can skive off work detail for long periods at a time and the other inmates in his work gang are unsupervised by guards.

And yet ‘TBITSP’ at least tries to do something, I think. More so than ‘The Reader’, which just says look at me, I’m a profound and important film about a thorny subject, I’d like to thank God, the Academy, my agent … ‘TBITSP’ at least tries to use its child protagonists to make accessible (if that’s the right word) to a younger audience a subject they probably haven’t encountered before and likely have no foreknowledge of. Also it boasts some good performances, most notably from Vera Farmiga – her work here is the equal of anything by this year’s quintet of Best Actress nominees.

Ultimately, though, in the current climate of German cinema demonstrating the fearlessness to tackle its own difficult history, ‘The Reader’ and ‘TBITSP’ suffer from being English-language productions with British directors and chiefly British casts. Had they been made by German directors, I have no doubt that the results would have been a lot more interesting.

PERSONAL FAVES: Wallace & Gromit in Curse of the Were-Rabbit

A second viewing might alter my opinion, but I have to admit to a slight feeling of disappointment at Nick Park’s latest Wallace & Gromit animation, ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’, screened on BBC1 on Christmas Day. An inspired title, but for the first time in their 19-year partnership, encompassing four shorts and one feature-length film, it seemed like Wallace & Gromit by-the-numbers.

Was it really 1989 that the incomparable duo – cheese-loving, mild-mannered eccentric inventor Wallace (voiced by ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ stalwart Peter Sallis) and his faithful, if much put-upon, pooch Gromit (voiced by no-one; a world of emotion is contained in the movement of his eyes) – were introduced in the offbeat ‘A Grand Day Out’? According to IMDb it was, and boy does that make me feel old!

It was 1993’s ‘The Wrong Trousers’, boasting superior production values, that fully realised Park’s 1950’s-tinged vision: the small-town Northern locale (not too dissimilar from the Holmfirth of ‘Summer Wine’); the genre-based storyline (the vaguely sci-fi musings of ‘A Grand Day Out’ here replaced by a heist caper); and a frenetic commitment to high-speed visual inventiveness (Gromit and the penguin’s lunatic and hilarious model railway chase).

Two years later came ‘A Close Shave’, arguably the best of the short films. Another crime plot (sheep rustling); Gromit set up to take the rap (a priceless in-joke has the incarcerated canine sitting morosely in his cell reading ‘Crime and Punishment’ by Fido Dogstoyevsky!); Wallace’s inventions taking on a ‘Thunderbirds’-style level of intricacy. Marvellous stuff.

But, for me at least, the high point was their triumphant transition to the big screen in 2005 with ‘Curse of the Were-Rabbit’, co-directed by Park and Steve Box. The narrative, entirely in keeping with Park’s nostalgic ’50s aesthetic, conjures up a plethora of cheesy horror genre B-movies.

Starting as it means to go on with deliberately lurid lettering for the title credit and ominous music, ‘C of the W-R’ sees the daring duo running a vegetable security firm called Anti-Pesto. Business is good and their clients sleep soundly knowing that their prize cucumbers and carrots and cauliflowers are being protected from a village-wide rabbit infestation. And with Lady Tottington’s Annual Vegetable Competition imminent, Wallace & Gromit’s very reputation is at stake should anything go wrong and the goods get gnawed or nibbled.

Something, of course, goes wrong. Summoned to Tottington Hall to rid the grounds of rapacious rabbits (note to self: enough with the alliteration already!), Wallace hits it off with Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter) who is particularly taken with his humane treatment of the captured bunnies: he houses them in the cellar of chez Wallace and feeds them while he puts the finishing touches to his mind-control device. In arguably the most imaginative send-up of ‘Frankenstein’ since Mel Brooks’ legendary spoof, Wallace hooks himself up to the machine, intent on brainwashing the rabbits into an aversion to all vegetables. More ominous music; flashes of lightning. The experiment goes horribly wrong. Wallace creates a monster.

A huge, bounding, almost criminally cute monster.

With said were-rabbit on the rampage, allotments attacked, vegetables violated and Anti-Pesto’s reputation ruined (seriously: enough with the alliteration, Neil!), Lady Tottington’s roundly rejected but pitifully persistent smug suitor Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes) proffers the services of himself, his hunting rifle, and his borderline psychotic bulldog. And he doesn’t care if Wallace & Gromit get in the way …

‘Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ spends a good half of its 90-minute running time setting out its stall: establishing characters, situations, locations, narrative and internal dynamics. Then Box and Park unleash a series of frenetic set-pieces culminating in a showdown at the vegetable competition which homages ‘Jaws’, ‘King Kong’ and – in the film’s standout mise-en-scene where Gromit and Quartermaine’s dog battle it out in model aeroplanes – ‘The Blue Max’.

The jokes come think and fast: “I think it’s a case of arson,” Peter Kay’s P.C. Mackintosh deliberates; “Arson?” someone echoes; “Aye, someone’s been arsin’ around.” There’s a “beware the moon” gag that’s worth the price of the DVD alone. Visual puns are everywhere, from Gromit’s graduation photograph (he went to Dogwart’s!) to a greenhouse being locked and alarmed by a keyfob as if it were a car.

There is something happening – some sly joke, or unexpected detail in the background – in every frame of ‘Curse of the Were-Rabbit’. I’ve seen it now, I think, half a dozen times and I’m still spotting things anew. It’s Wallace & Gromit at their finest and earned Park perhaps the most well-deserved Oscar the Academy has yet bestowed.

In Bruges

"Two manky hookers and a racist midget. I'm outta here," opines Ken (Brendan Gleeson). "I'm coming with you," his friend and fellow hitman Ray (Colin Farrell) replies mournfully, their evening's misadventures yet another blow to Ray's already jaded opinion of Bruges.

It's to this history-heavy and nightlife-light Belgian town that Ken and Ray have been sent by their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) after a bungled job. Ray, all bored sighs and mumbled disenchantment, is like a moody teenager. "If I'd grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me," he grumbles upon arrival, having barely seen anything of the place, "but I didn't, so it doesn't." He only brightens up when they come across a film crew shooting a pretentious dream sequence for an art-house movie. "They're filming midgets!" he exclaims delightedly, rushing off to watch.

Said midget, Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), prefers the epithet dwarf. Ray, however, isn't above demeaningly calling him Shorty when his coke-addled rant turns to the race question. Not that Ray isn't a walking xenophobe himself. He heaps abuse on Belgium in general and Bruges in particular, gleefully gets into a fight with an American (he twats the fellow with an almost cheery "that's for John Lennon, you fucking Yank cunt") and is visibly deflated when he discovers later that his antagonist is actually Canadian.

Or how about this exchange between Ken and Jimmy:

Ken: Are you American?
Jimmy: Yes, but please don't hold it against me.
Ken: I won't. Just try not say anything too loud or crass.

Martin McDonagh's debut film 'In Bruges' is essentially a two-hander for its first half, a post-Tarantino 'Odd Couple' with its contract killer heroes (I use the word 'heroes' loosely) bonding, bickering and bantering against a picture postcard backdrop, while Jimmy and on-set drug pusher Chloe (Clemence Poesy) weave in and out of their interactions. And it's very funny. McDonagh's script zings with hilarious and quotable lines, even if you wouldn't drop any of them in front of your mother. I can't remember a film since 'Sexy Beast' with so many instances of the 'c'-word.

Take the following conversation, the film having veered into darker territory with revelations about the nature of the bungled job and Harry's arrival in Bruges to take matters in hand. Ken stands up to his boss and offers him a few home truths:

Ken: Let's face it, Harry - you're a cunt. You've always been a cunt. The only thing that's gonna change is that you'll become an even bigger cunt. Maybe have some more cunt kids.
Harry: You retract that bit about my cunt fucking kids.
Ken: I retract that bit about your cunt fucking kids.
Harry: Insulting my fucking kids! That's going overboard, mate.
Ken: I retracted it, didn't I?

The 'Sexy Beast' comparison is apt, not just for the language but in the usually suave Fiennes's full-throttle performance as a dangerous mob boss, a la Ben Kingsley's in Jonathan Glazer's film. But whereas 'Sexy Beast' lost the plot after a rivetting first half, 'In Bruges' doesn't put a foot wrong, ramping up the tension and sense of danger once Harry puts in an appearance, but without sacrificing the surreal humour or losing sight of its characters' humanity.

This last is the ace up McDonagh's sleeve. You shouldn't really give a damn about any of these characters: Ken, Ray and Harry are killers by profession (Ray's blunder, revealed at a key moment, weighs heavily against him), Jimmy is a coked-up self-important bit part actor who parties with - well, Ken put it best - manky hookers, and Chloe deals drugs and wastes herself on a thuggish skinhead boyfriend. Shit, just typing that sentence is enough to make me appreciate just how heavy-handed and grim 'In Bruges' could have been in lesser hands.

However, Martin McDonagh, an acclaimed playwright set to garner the same kind of encomium in the film world, brings enough insight, intelligence and lightness of touch to the proceedings to make you care about the characters (even Harry is a man of principles who takes care not to endanger a pregnant woman), and - Peckinpah-esque ending notwithstanding - to make you laugh out loud. The performances are uniformly excellent, with Farrell proving a revelation.

'In Bruges' doesn't necessarily want to make me go to Bruges (at a guess, it wasn't endorsed by the Belgian Tourist Board) but I do want to go back to my local multiplex and see it again.