Brooklyn

The season of inviting most of a German forest to dwell in your sitting-room is upon us; so prickle yourself with holly, fall off a step-ladder hanging mistletoe, and spend the next eleven months trying to get pine-needles out from between your sofa cushions. Yes, Advent is here! And to celebrate, I trundled off to the Forum Cinema in Hexham – where the trees now dangle with pearly white lights (and Christmassy flood-water) – to watch Brooklyn.

Brooklyn was a novel by Colm Tóibín (no, I don’t know how either, but he’s definitely Irish), before it was adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby (who wrote the screenplay for the Carey-Mulligan-bejewelled glory that is An Education, and isn’t Irish) and directed by John Crowley (who is Irish, but in a more subtle way). The film was shrouded in ghostly mystery. All I knew about Brooklyn was the bridge, the Beckhams, and some faint notion that the girls in Girls are girls there. It was my mother’s idea to go and see it and she laid out strict, if slightly peculiar, guidelines: that because it includes “talking to dead people and Julie Walters” my father was on no account to be invited. Meanwhile, I had seen the aforementioned Walters J. on The Graham Norton Show, alongside the unlikely motley crew of Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, 50 Cent and Ellie Goulding. I had therefore seen clips of Steve Jobs, The Dressmaker, the music video for 9 Shots, and Brooklyn: the last of which consisted of five Irish girls in brightly-coloured dresses, eating dinner, rapping about being shot, inventing Apple products, and being reprimanded by Mrs W. – bedecked by an unconvincing wig – for their flippant attitude towards Jesus. Although, now I look back, I may have got slightly muddled. Anyway, it seemed pleasing, ineffectual, and faintly reminiscent of school; so I trotted along.

Beware: I am about to spoil this ripping yarn forever by revealing most of the plot for no reason whatsoever. You have been warned, and proceed – much like eating mutton-stew on a ship shortly before a great storm, but without a comforting Eva Birthistle to give you fashion advice – at your own peril.

Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) lives in Ireland, surrounded by hideous wallpaper, with her perpetually tearful mother (Jane Brennan) and unfeasibly older sister (Fiona Glascott). With the exception of underlying heart conditions, which are an essential secret for the good of the plot, no one can so much as say the word ‘begorrah’ or nibble a dainty shamrock without the entire community knowing about it. After helping her best friend Nancy (Eileen O’Higgins) secure the man of her dreams through the well-known romantic gesture of swaying, Eilis abandons her job in a bakery and sets sail for New York to begin a new life. And so the American dream begins: working in a department store and living in a boarding-house for Catholic girls, run by Mrs Kehoe (Julie Walters). Miserable and homesick, she soon meets Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen): a young New York plumber from an Italian family (Antonio Fiorello – call me Sherlock!), whose initial appearance as a sort of Joey-Tribbiani-Danny-Zuko-Don-Corleone figure is hastily eschewed when he transpires to be the world’s biggest sweetheart. Like a puppy who knows about U-bends. He only has two major flaws: one, that Eilis will need to learn to eat spaghetti to impress his family, and two, that they are the same height. After an exceptionally nosey priest (Jim Broadbent – because all films sign a clause saying that he can never be out of work) enrols Eilis in night-classes, she finally learns all those vital skills that a good Catholic girl ought to learn: putting on a swimwear under your clothes, making small-talk with strangers about the weather, and sneaking boys into your bedroom at night without detection. Life in Brooklyn is looking brighter, and to rather literally demonstrate this all the colours get brighter. Then, quite selfishly and without warning, her terminally pale sister dies from an unexpected narrative-twist. Eilis – pausing to do the only sensible thing when maddened with grief: secretly marry your boyfriend – makes the bumpy voyage back to Ireland. Unfortunately, Ireland has undergone some changes since Eilis’s departure and is now festooned with job security, weddings, – but without the hair-tearing stress of a real wedding, and only the dressing-up and girlish squeals – and of course the charming Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson). Jim seems to be knitted by nuns in the perfect boyfriend factory: he’s tall, he’s inheriting his parents’ country estate, and – as if all of that wasn’t reason enough to eschew your secret marriage to a distant plumber – he’s lovely. Like a puppy who knows about Ireland. But *drum roll of epic proportions to sustain romantic suspense while you think mournfully about Tony and then feel terrible for Jim* which life will Eilis choose? Dun dun daah!

I loved everything about this film. It is sweet and sticky, without inducing toothache; romantic, exquisitely performed throughout, and perfectly under-scripted. The cinematography is utterly delectable, making me truly believe that the 1950s is the most desirable time in all of history. It is such a rare treat and privilege to see Saoirse Ronan – the little girl from Atonement who grew up so that everyone feels ancient – blossom into a sublime and subtle actress with even more greatness ahead. She is dazzling.  In fact, the cast really doesn’t contain a wrong note. Emory Cohen is flawless as Tony. He is natural, believable and adorable! There doesn’t exist a film in which I can’t imagine him being an asset. This is his first major role, and with a few awards under his belt already, cinema audiences across the lands are praying to Father Christmas to see more of him in the future. The whole film is warmly and gently funny, mostly created by the girls in the boarding-house (Mary O’Driscoll, Eve Macklin, Jenn Murray, Nora-Jane Noone, Emily Bett Rickards) and their guardian. Julie Walters, be-wigged and be-accented, is marvellous as Mrs Kehoe, and each one of the girls glorious in their own eccentricity: whether bitchy or simply deranged. Much of their conversation is set around the dinner table, giving a comical glimpse into that constant struggle between manners and mischief. Finally, a quick shout out to James DiGiacomo: who knew eight-year-olds could be sweet and not nauseating?

It turns out, I want to live in 1950s Ireland. Deserted white sand beaches, emerald green countryside, idyllic town houses with brightly-coloured front doors (for which I am a sucker), snow, formal dances, really pretty girls’ names, wealthy young men, red hair, and an endless succession of paying jobs skidding your way. And the dresses. Oh, the dresses, the coats, the shoes… Every item of clothing and every scrap of fabric is fabulous, in a delicious array of colour palettes. Hats – trousers, skirts and blazers – off to costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux (real, and might I add superb, name)! Even Eilis’s swimming-costume is flattering and envy-making, thanks to a lovely scene with her boss, Miss Fortini (Jessica Paré), who recommends just the right shade of green. Whilst the terrible sunglasses have the ghastly quality of an elderly cross-dresser, Saoirse Ronan manages to rock a bow tie, pink and white candy stripes, and a little hat that looks like a dying piece of sea life. Meanwhile, every woman in the cinema is growing increasingly jealous of her ability to wear yellow without looking jaundiced, mentally unstable, or like a banana in a television series entitled ‘Yellow is the New Black’.

he must be standing on a box

I hope Colm Tóibín’s novel is going firmly on letters to Santa, and that right now you’re booking tickets: don your wellingtons, galoshes, hat, umbrella, and life-jacket, swim down to your local cinema, and bask in this film’s understated and delightful triumph.

Skylight

jumper envy

I have this uneasy feeling that some people always look stylish. Perhaps this is just a paranoid fantasy from which all twenty-something year old females suffer, but I can’t help but wake up screaming with visions of girls who apply mascara, straighteners or bras for the most trifling of social functions. Even trousers seem a far cry from my preferred outfit: pyjamas at all times (a possible title for my autobiography or epitaph for my tombstone). And, when pyjamas are absolutely socially unacceptable, skinny jeans and a baggy jumper. But it is reassuring, not to mention elating, that I have now witnessed the mother of all comfy jumpers as modelled the other night by actress Carey Mulligan in Sir David Hare’s play Skylight. And whilst she made the voluminous jumper more glamorous than if it had been a Vera Wang wedding dress – a feat that I, in its doppelgänger, seated in Row C of the Hexham Forum Cinema, alas cannot boast – it does at least allow me a review of the latest National Theatre production screenings. Hell of a segue, huh?

On booking the tickets for this show, I cannot stress how little I knew about this play. I hadn’t seen a review and I had avoided all mentions of plot twists. For all I knew it could have been an all-Japanese, ballet, farce set in the wake of an apocalypse caused by an evil god whose cruelty knew no bounds and who had unleashed, for reasons known only to himself, a plague of man-eating gerbils. The only thing I knew – other than the baffling and, ironically, unenlightening title, Skylight – was the cast list. But that was more than a recommendation. The words ‘Bill Nighy’ followed by the words ‘Carey Mulligan’ sent me into a fit of gleeful excitement, and I would have paid double the cinema ticket (yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen, a whole £22) to see them read the Encyclopaedia Britannica, dance the tarantella, or eat cheese. I was, if anything, slightly disappointed when, on popping to the loo before the play began – a treat afforded me because there was, for peculiar reasons, a woman sitting in my seat when I arrived, who had to be removed by the relevant authorities – I was diverted from the tedium of loo-going by reading the handily placed synopsis on the back of the cubicle door, and learned that it was not the Simon Pegg inspired rodent debacle that I had conjectured. I shall give you a brief and largely unhelpful summary. Basically, it’s one of those two-people-in-one-room, set-in-real-time sort of fandangos that sounds intrinsically self-righteous (which it is) and extremely dull (which, mercifully, it isn’t). Kyra – Queen of the pixie cut, Carey Mulligan – is an impoverished, do-gooding, teacher in the East End (think Slumdog Millionaire but with snow) living in a London flat with little more than a red scarf and some onions for company, when she is unexpectedly visited by three ghosts… No wait. That’s Muppet’s Christmas Carol. Or, if you prefer, Dickens’ Christmas Carol. Thirty year old Kyra is visited by two people. First by 18 year old Edward, who brings her some rap music, sulks about the death of his mother and his insufferable father, and then the two of them cosily discuss the joys of going out for breakfast. Edward then pootles off, and said-father Tom completely coincidentally drops by, played by none other than squid face, Bill Nighy. And so it begins. The play is a clash of political ideals, and Tom is Thatcher to Kyra’s Blair: a rich, greedy, entrepreneur restauranteur and recent widower, who just happens to be her ex-employer and ex-lover. Although their real life 35 year age gap is perhaps a touch Operation Yewtree. The story of their affair and the future of their relationship unfolds over a spag bol supper. The begging question is the cliched ‘will they, won’t they’, and the fate of their relationship hangs in the balance, dependent on whether they can successfully reconcile their opposing political beliefs before the pasta goes cold. With me so far? It is also suffice it to say that skylights, whilst they do feature, have a minor part to play in the action and are not recreated in the set by gouging a large hole in the roof of Wyndham’s.

fantastic set

Let me turn quickly, therefore, to the set. Wyndham’s Theatre is utterly enchanting and an absolute privilege to sit in, but the seats are narrower than the average twenty-first century viewer’s buttocks and therefore I was grateful to be reclining in luxury in a modern cinema seat. However, director Stephen Daldry, who directed the enjoyable, smash hit Billy Elliot and then regrettably took a nosedive directing Hare’s own adaptation of The Reader – probably the longest and most boring film about the Holocaust ever made – managed to restore my faith in him here. Although I do question the wisdom of setting Skylight in the 80s, complete with rotary dial phone and brown floral cooking pots, when the play is so obviously a product of the 90s. Aesthetically, it looked sensational and the space worked really well for what he wanted to create. The backdrop of the other flats and the layers of rooms, with a sliding wall to hide the bathroom if necessary, was fluid, easy and natural. It wasn’t fussy, it didn’t get in the way, and it didn’t gently rotate or do anything unnecessary just because it could. Kudos. The entire first half happens whilst Kyra actually makes dinner onstage. Pretentious? Yes, probably, but I loved it. A bit of pretension hurts nobody. And, while what I actually did was wonder how she didn’t cry whilst chopping onions, and whether the sound guys were kicking themselves as the bubbling sauce sounded like a freight train in a windy tunnel, my parents were busy grumbling that she seemed to be cooking a meal for fifty on her tiny pauper’s budget. But it turns out that I’m simply a sucker for a bit of onstage snow. When it happened in Stratford’s Beauty and the Beast, the Comedy Theatre’s La Bête and now at the end of Skylight, it’s all I can do not to applaud with teary and childlike wonder. What can I say? I’m easily amused.

The acting was utterly flawless, which I suppose is easier when there are only three actors, rather than Hamlet or Guys and Dolls where there’s a whole throng of them to forget their lines or overact. But fair’s fair. Even three people have the potential to make a hash of it. But Nighy and Mulligan were faultless in their contrasting and complementary performances. There is momentum, humour and purpose to Nighy’s rambling style; his chaotic descriptions, swearing and gesticulating. His tics and jerks are so incredible, so attuned to the character, that it’s hard – if not impossible – to discover where Tom ends and Nighy begins. How do you make Dupuytren’s Contractures so effortlessly and mesmerisingly part of a character?  His timing and pacing are impeccable, capturing and exacerbating every moment of comedy. His long speeches are broken up with confused fragments about his late wife and the room he built for her, the crumbling of their relationship and the revelation of what happened between him and Kyra. Nighy handles this with aplomb. It is not overly soupy, apologetic or caricatured anger. Tom is a man caught in the confusion of grief and relief: both longing for the past and yet wishing it had played out differently. As more is revealed, it is hard to say whether I felt greater pity for him or began to despise him. And it’s this conflict that he treads so artfully. He is a terrific actor, worthy of any award the powers that be can throw at him. Plus, if all teenage girls want to be BFFs with Jennifer Lawrence, does that mean that Carey Mulligan is going spare? And that I can have her? There is an understated quality and sincerity to Mulligan whose ability knows no bounds. She really listens. Her stillness is entrancing, as she doesn’t overact in the shadows, yet your eye is drawn to her. She is a simply superb actress who, I hope, goes far after this whirlwind of a West End debut. Unlike a whole host of pretty girls I can think of, she doesn’t hide behind her hair – she can’t! And it may be a strange thing to say, but she isn’t afraid of her face. She isn’t frightened of laughing, smiling, crying (on which note, she evidently attended the same school as Tom Hiddleston and is capable of filling the auditorium in a Noah-esque deluge) and all those other emotions that unappealingly scrunch the porcelain features. What I’m saying is that Mulligan is confident enough in her abilities and beauty to look ugly. It’s her greatest gift. Oh, and Matthew Beard as Tom’s son Edward, who I fear will be forgotten and overlooked by critics everywhere. I don’t know whether he was an avid stalker of Bill Nighy before rehearsals kicked off, but to hit every mannerism so completely on the head like that must have taken some work, and possibly night vision goggles and a zoom lens. It’s clever stuff, this acting business.

Yes, if the play had a fault, or anything less than five blazing stars lighting every headline, it was not because of the actors. Sad, and far less fixable, is the truth. The problem with Skylight is the play itself. Like more and more plays I see at the moment it had real second act problems. The first half was quick, witty with a touch of pathos and mystery, and even a bit of sentimentality that didn’t have me (and more astoundingly, my mother) reaching with exaggerated gasps for the sick bucket. But that was it. All the plot and drive and excitement, over and done by the interval, with the result that when we returned, after ice cream and a costume change, it was to an equally long and sanctimonious sermon. We get it David. You’re a Blairite. Duly noted. Now please feel free to say something else. No, really. Don’t hesitate. We get that you think teaching is a worthwhile and under-paid profession. And somewhere through the fifth hour we’ve grasped that you admire public servants. And whilst the live audience in London applauded these over-egged sentiments in a ‘yah boo sucks Mr Cameron’ sort of way – ‘bring back the liberal haven of the 90s and down with the bankers’ – Hare’s writing was about as subtle as a herd of rhinos at afternoon tea in Claridges. It was more broken teacups and irate cucumber sandwiches, than sophisticated satire. Not to mention Hare’s apparently somewhat hazy memory of the 90s. Does anyone else remember the idyll of socialist freedoms under Mr Blair in which bankers were forced to donate their annual bonuses to needy children? No. Me neither. Does the word Iraq mean nothing to you, David? But I digress. To have produced such an intricate, intelligent and tangly first half, it was disappointing for the curtain to rise on a preachy and artless one note samba of a second half. There was no hint of nuance to the argument that takes place between Tom and Kyra. Nor was there any hint that it would ever end. It was just a Groundhog Day snooze-fest of the same obvious points: ‘I’m all damaged and liberal and unvalued by society’ versus ‘I may be a pig, but I’m rich and you’re jealous so stop living in a fairytale’. Let me add that this goes on for a good forty minutes of my life. Forty minutes which I must stress I will never get back. Ever.

On a side issue, may I just ask why directors feel the need to have women take their tops off in the middle of arguments? Culturally ingrained casual sexism is something I value so much over my tub of vanilla ice cream. Still, considering that for the sake of realism we were forced to watch the preparation of actually spaghetti really bolognese earlier, I’m not convinced that women, in the throes of political debate, feel the need to strip down to their bras. Vulnerability is not something people search for when quarreling. I’ve never watched a live international political debate per se, but I’m sure it is not the mainstay of Merkel’s technique. Nor, for that matter, was it Thatcher’s.

And so at last, with a sigh of relief, I turn to the ending. I won’t tell you if there is resolution between Kyra and Tom, what it is (if there is any), and whether at this point we care. But – spoiler alert – Kyra is left alone until Edward comes back, most uncivilised at some ungodly hour of the morning. With breakfast. I think it’s meant to be symbolic. She misses going out for breakfast because it represents Tom, his restaurant and the days when they were a family. But Edward’s too naive to realise that his father and Kyra were having an affair, so to him it’s just… eggs. I can instantly think of better ways to have ended the play, but Hare gives it a cyclical nature that GCSE creative writing students would beam upon, and it’s only very twee rather than actively nauseating. But David Hare, in amongst his didactic politics, has got something right. And it is the lasting message which, several weeks on, will journey through the ages as the cornerstone of Skylight‘s philosophy. Going out for breakfast truly is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

The Great Gatsby

It’s taken me two days, three sessions and about four hours, but after much perseverance of mind and fork I have finally finished my five-tier slice of red velvet cake. And to celebrate I appear to be quite unintentionally rewatching The Great Gatsby. I say ‘unintentionally’: I mean, I did rent it from LoveFilm (now snappily renamed Amazon Prime Instant Video) but I’d already seen it at the cinema and had no intention of seeing it again until it plopped through the letterbox, having accidentally been allowed to sneak its way to the top of my rental list. So I think a review is in order. Apologies.

In 1925, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald – a splendid name, eh? – wrote The Great Gatsby. And when Baz Luhrmann got his hands on it he transformed a classic 180 page novel into a 142 minute film. That’s just over one page per minute, following an uncomfortable trend in modern movies for those of us who like our films to bing-bam-boom finish-before-the-popcorn-goes-cold; instead taking nearly an hour to start and seeming to take place in real time. Judging by other recent trends, somewhere deep in the earth’s core the powers that be are probably plotting a 2017 sequel, The Great Gatsby 2: Finding Miss Daisy starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Yet in this tediously-too-long adaptation, Luhrmann still cut crucial sections and subplots from the book. Or so is my understanding. For you see (I am making this confession early on) I have never got through more than the first chapter of the novel. To be fair, I have read that chapter three times, leaving some confused memory of wests, easts and Eggs.

Now, put the book down and turn to the film. Something your mother will never say. In 1920s New York, a time of extremely pronounced left-side partings and terribly loud ties, Leonardo DiCaprio plays deluded fool, suspected murderer, moonshine peddler and wannabe-Kardashian, Jay Gatsby: a man whose biggest secret is that he is a very angry florist. He throws huge parties to ensnare a girl he hooked up with half a decade ago. Hopeless romantic or creepy stalker? You decide! Meanwhile, Tobey Maguire, whilst not being able to spell Toby, redeems himself in my eyes by proving himself to be an actor in his portrayal of Nick Carraway, who moves in next door to Gatsby. He is our narrator and gets tangled up with another pair of these ever-so-common star-crossed-lovers Gatsby and his cousin Daisy Buchanan. She’s played by the jaw-droppingly beautiful Carey Mulligan. I confess I feel a little green bubble of envy popping as she flits about in beautiful costumes, bedecked with a great haircut. I wish I could pull it off but alas can’t, and know few who can.

This is a film full of juxtapositions and clashes… which are not to everyone’s taste, but I love them. Give me Jay Z, Amy Winehouse, will.i.am and Lana Del Ray thrown together with 1920s jazz any day of the week. If this is what people hate about dearest Baz, then I shall defend him with my life, or at least a blog. I adore the interplay between 1920s icons and modern day culture. It stops people seeing The Great Gatsby, and the 1920s in general, as a cemented historical event like the Aztecs or the Hanoverians. Slapping a bit of Beyonce in the mix helps the audience remember that the 1920s was modern and ‘cool’ in the 1920s. It wasn’t aware that the word ‘spiffing’ was soon to be dated and ridiculed. Jazz wasn’t some sort of nostalgic yearning for a past century and a signifier of ye longe time ago. It was the equivalent of Radio 1. To Nick, he is listening to Florence Welch. Oh, and Mr Luhrmann also commits the cardinal sin of changing the ending a little to fit a more hopeful agenda. Tweeking it, as t’were. Again, something I have no problem with. If you love a book, a film adaptation will inevitably make you angry. Just clench you fists and hide in the airing cupboard until it’s all over. Worked for me and Brideshead.

However, Luhrmann does employ every film technique in the book (a book he presumably downloaded onto his Kindle called ‘film techniques for dummies’): sepia, black and white, text, flashbacks, car chases, POV, dramatic irony, voice-over, framing narrative, nausea-inducing 3d, aerial shots, newspaper headline bridging shots, extreme Tom Hooper-esque close-ups, slow motion… Honestly, it’s exhausting watching him try. And oh the sweeping, gushing orchestral music at dun-dun-daah Important Moments.

In fact, now I’m on a roll, if you were caught up in woozy excitement and fell in love with this film, stop reading now. My review is unerringly going to spiral into a sort of hit-man’s list entitled ‘things that bugged me’:

1. Are we meant to like Gatsby? I sort of got the impression that women (and men) everywhere are meant to swoon like giddy morons at his appearance and feel in their gut that he’s the perfect man for Daisy. Well, frankly… he’s an arse. He’s a violent, lying, stalker who represents the ultimate perils of Golden Age thinking. Who tries to recapture the past to that extent without being tested for a serious underlying mental illness? And for all of his ‘oo I’m so thoughtful’, he chucks all his shirts about with reckless abandon, I bet not giving two hoots about who is going to have to fold them all later. And, to be honest, although it’s claimed that he’s cheated out of an elderly gentleman’s inheritance, funnily enough elderly gentleman’s inheritance goes to elderly gentleman’s family; not some deluded teenager who rocks up and then sticks around impersonating the elderly gentleman in hope of pocketing a coin or two when he snuffs it. Is he every girl’s ultimate dream: a money-grasping, jealous, control-freak with a God-complex? Yum.
2. And, while we’re about it, why are his eyes so blue? Turn down the filter, Baz!
3. Some people didn’t think that the film captured quite enough homoeroticism and Nick’s questionable sexuality: a theme that allegedly permeates the book by the bucketful. But these people are clearly morons. Subtlety is not Baz’s middle name. Just rewatch the dancing scene. It’s all very Cabaret and a little bit how threesomes get started. Let’s be honest, it’s all a bit… well, gay.
4. For all the millions Baz spent on special effects, why was the hat continuity still a nightmare?
5. Many characters suffer from a strain of amnesia common in literature: Nick forgets that it’s his thirtieth birthday until midway through it, Jordan forgets meeting Gatsby five years previously, despite all of her best friend’s tears and pearl scattering on the stricken wedding morning from hell. Maybe they should take more water with it.
6. Vie are some of ze Buchanan’s staff French?

I promise that I actually quite enjoyed this film and would consent to watch it again with or even without a gun thrust into my temple. It just had it flaws. And they were many. I hate the unnecessary sanatorium framing narrative with its constant foggy motif. But I also hate aubergines, and that doesn’t stop me liking their amazing colour or cradling them like babies. It’s totally possible to despise and quite enjoy a movie (or vegetable – how did I get into this tangled web of simile). I’d just probably rather watch Romeo + Juliet. That’s all.