Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (12A)

This Oscar nominated (Best Original Song) biographical film of the late former South African President's life is still in cinemas.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (12A)

This review was first published in The Methodist Recorder (www.methodistrecorder.co.uk).

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, based on the late leader’s autobiography, chronicles his struggles against Apartheid South Africa, his time in prison and subsequent election as President.  It’s a rise to power uncharacterised by corruption, and famously hinging on forgiveness which has inspired millions.

The film opens with a brief but electrifying glimpse of Mandela’s childhood, as he undergoes a ritual to become a man in his home town of Mvezo.  Flash forward to his mid-twenties, and we see the respect he already commands from his oppressors, as the young lawyer proves more than a match for his white opponents.  It isn’t long before his ambitions outgrow this career, and he turns his attentions to the resistance movement of the African National Congress.

Director Justin Chadwick spends a surprising amount of time dwelling on Mandela’s love life, as a combination of affairs and overwork tear his first marriage apart.  Scenes and dialogue are included that disappointingly dismiss God, and rule out any real exploration of his religious beliefs.  This is likely more a reflection of the script writer’s worldview, and symptomatic of the supposed need to pander to audiences as Western culture drifts ever further from it’s God-fearing roots.

The film never mentions that Mandela was partly educated by Methodist schools, nor that during his almost three decades in prison was visited by a Methodist chaplain.  His grace and forgiveness of course seem as fruits of the Spirit, but being a very private man for whatever reason he kept his personal beliefs to himself.

Hackney born actor Idris Elba does a fine job in the title role, particularly in the latter half of the film as Mandela’s greying hair accompanies his ever greater pragmatism.  The stand out performance however comes from Naomie Harris as his second wife Winnie - she fills the part with heartbreaking humanity, even as Winnie eventually endeavours to humiliate her husband after his release from prison.  The tragedy is palpable as her attitudes become ever more separate from Mandela’s, and she spirals into bitterness and constant calls for violence, which the film makes clear Nelson only resorted to when all other means failed.

Long Walk to Freedom movingly dramatises key moments in Mandela’s career, investing enough in each for the film not feel like a highlights reel, whilst still giving a compelling sense of his life as a whole.  No easy feat in under two and a half hours.

Kelly + Victor (18)

This two star film is out on DVD and Blu-ray Monday 13th Jan.

Kelly + Victor (18) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

Kelly + Victor is the feature debut of Welsh director Kieran Evans.  On his search for a story that spoke to him he discovered the 2002 novel by Niall Griffiths, a no holds barred harrowing romance about young love gone bad.

Victor is something of a watered down hipster, and Kelly is a petite lost soul with a broken heart.  They meet on Victor’s birthday when he’s out celebrating, and lust strikes without hesitation.  After a hasty night filled with sadomasochism, neither can get the other out of their minds, much less the marks left off of their bodies.  After this fiery start they try something bordering on conventional, a date to a museum, where they ponder what love means to a Godless couple, and whether what they have can be beautiful.

In their own ways the two characters become afraid of what the other means to them, and they take a hiatus to lick their wounds, emotional and otherwise.  Antonia Campbell-Hughes and Julian Morris give admirably raw performances with only a paper thin script to draw on.  Tellingly, Evans removed a lot of the book’s rich narration from his adaptation, leaving Kelly and Victor as unfinished skeletons of characters crying out for flesh and blood.  Promising subplots go nowhere, and the director only demonstrates any inventiveness in the shooting of the sex scenes, which aren’t much more than eye candy for the marketing campaign.

Budget constraints meant a reduced crew and humble resources, and Evans and his cinematographer Piers McGrail admittedly do a splendid job of creating a haunting and unusual portrait of Liverpool, and it’s broken youth underbelly.  But some obvious visual metaphors bring down the level of sophistication, and the overall style is disappointingly derivative of many other better gritty British films.  The typically indie soundtrack plays it safe, and the incongruity of it’s cutesy feel compared to the film's darker side has been done before and much better in films like 2010’s Blue Valentine.

Whilst the photography is sharp and modern, the performances brave and immediate, Kelly + Victor commits the one true sin of filmmaking - being boring.  The story is so slight and the dangers it warns of self-evident; you’re left thinking did we really need another down-and-dirty Brit flick to state the obvious?

DVD & Blu-ray extras: Trailer, Q&A with Kieran Evans

8 1/2 (15)

Italian classic 8 1/2 is released on Blu-ray and remastered DVD today.

8 1/2 (15) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

In 2013, the question for Italian director Federico Fellini’s seminal work 8 1/2 is does it stand up to it’s reputation as an iconic masterpiece?  The answer is a hearty yes, if your cinematic vocabulary hasn’t solely been taught by hobbits and terminators.  Though coolly influential and often breathtaking, 8 1/2 belongs to a bygone era and culture of filmmaking.

The fantastical episodes that make up this celluloid tapestry follow film director Guido Anselmi, a cypher for Fellini himself, struggling to find the reason behind his next film, which is already underway.  He thought he had something important to say, but now that he’s started saying it he’s not so sure.  Harried by colourful characters including a producer who doesn’t care what decisions Guido makes as long as he makes them, a mistress plagued by sudden fevers and a wife with the questionable gift of always seeing through her husbands lies, Guido retreats ever further from reality and hides in a fantasy world made of memories and wishes.

Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido, a handsome and elusive dreamer, mysteriously quiet on the outside, a swirling pool of confused ideas inside - the personification of still waters running deep.  Anouk Aimée is disarming as Guido’s troubled wife Luisa, Sandra Milo fantastically portrays the director’s forbidden lover as a hilarious caricature of a rich married woman capitalising on her voluptuousness, and Claudia Cardinale ignites the screen as a movie star who Guido casts as his dream woman, also called Claudia.

Gianni Di Venanzo’s black and white cinematography certainly stands the test of time, dazzling with inventive and adventurous camerawork right from frame one.  Likely alienating to present day audiences however, are techniques such as the use of an old Italian tradition of dubbing all the dialogue in post production, whereby the actors are filmed mouthing nonsensical lines, leaving no hope for lip-synced dialogue!

Fellini’s use of cinematic language, grammar and technique to wrestle with his own demons, and his use of craft to rediscover his muse, are mightily personified by Guido, an artist who feels an alien in an industry populated by shallow moneymakers and divas, an industry he depends on for his art as much as he tries to escape from it.  Fellini’s brazen honesty in committing these internal and private thoughts into a very public piece of art still makes for a potent sucker punch of entertainment.

Fifty years on, much of the homage critics lay at Fellini’s feet when 8 1/2 first hit a silver screen in the glorious gloom of a Cannes cinema, is undoubtedly still deserved.  Technical mastery, daring honesty and dispassionate liberality are intrinsic to the identity of 8 1/2, one of the few films still snapping at Citizen Kane’s heels as one of the greatest works of art created by a filmmaker.

DVD & Blu-ray extras: ‘Lost Sequence - Fellini on Fellini’ 50 minute documentary, Interview with Lina Wertmuller, Tribute to Fellini, Theatrical Trailers