Michael (2011)

“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE IN AUSTRIA. SERIOUSLY.”

                            - Mike D’Angelo

D’Angelo’s above tweet after watching Michael (2011) at Cannes Festival, although not quite politically correct, conveys the difficult to describe feeling that makes you question why you would torture yourself by voluntarily watching something with this sort of subject matter.

Markus Schleinzer is better known as a casting director, however he has now tried his hand at directing and his debut, Michael premiered at Cannes to mixed reviews. 

Michael is about a man, unsurprisingly, called Michael. He wakes up every morning and drives to work selling insurance. He drives home and cooks dinner. His day seems to generally follow a routine. His routine differs from the norm, however, because he keeps a young boy locked in his basement. The relationship with the boy at times appears to be almost paternal, but there are serious implications of sexual abuse throughout, and the boy, Wolfgang, fights, kicks and screams at almost any opportunity he has. The situation appears to have been inspired by the famous Fritzel and Kampusch cases, which only serves to make the narrative more disturbing. The fact that this fictional film has its roots firmly in reality is also established in its plain, almost voyeuristic film style. There are only diegetic sounds, the only time we hear a song that isn’t being played from within the film is over the credits. The shots are generally all mid-shots, avoiding close-ups or establishing shots. There is no fast paced editing, no dissolves of image or sound making the transition from shots and scenes incredibly obvious. Nothing is clarified for the audience through cinematic trickery which supplements the idea of voyeurism.

Although he has little to no social skills, Michael is able to blend into his surroundings, he’s able to hold down a job and even be considered for a promotion, and he’s clearly known in and around his neighbourhood, enough to have short conversations with people in the neighbourhood. Michael, while not obviously attempting to fear-monger, points out that a paedophile could be living behind any door in your neighbourhood, unknown to you, or even their family.

One of the key aspects of the film is the relationship between Michael and Wolfgang, his young captive. The reason that this key aspect is so interesting is because if you put aside the locked doors and the molestation, the relationship is almost paternal, with day trips, Christmas spent together, dinner eaten together, washing up and despite all of Wolfgang’s attempts of kicking and screaming behind closed doors, he acts docile and causes no scenes outside of the house, when he has the best opportunity of escape. This is not to say that Wolfgang has Stockholm syndrome, because it’s clear that he feels no love for his captor, but the relationship is certainly an interesting one.

Despite the opening statements of this review and the subject matter, the film achieves an appearance of banality. The bland routine that Michael has (not including his fetish of imprisoned children), mixed with the unexciting film’s style make for an almost forgettable film. The audience are unable to relate to either character, although we can sympathise with the young Wolfgang, we know nothing of his past; all we see is his current suffering, which makes empathy almost impossible. Even if we ignore the child molestation that seems to be the driving force for Michael, he seems to have very few social skills, and with the exception of his family, has little to talk about past the small talk of short encounters. However there are constant implications that remind the audience of horrific situations going on behind the mundane exterior. These are not just implications of the molestation (because thankfully this is never really shown explicitly), but also implications to time, subtle words in conversations that imply that this has been going on for years. 

Another factor that makes it seem bland is the plain style, almost making the audience a distanced voyeur, watching from a distance and also keeping an emotional distance from the characters, which doesn’t tap into anything out of the ordinary. Recently, films about human monsters (murderers, rapists, paedophiles) create even more feelings of disgust by humanising these characters. This allows the audience to be lulled into relating to them, sympathising with them, or even liking them, only to be even more horrified later on when they commit their horrible acts. Michael stays away from this technique, it appears that the aim of the film is not to create the feeling of disgust within the audience; it is not to make the audience feel uncomfortable. The aim is also not to simply raise awareness of situations such as this one, because the film was clearly made with a fairly low budget and is not the classic idea of a commercially successful film. If the idea was to bring an important issue that people don’t want to openly discuss to the mainstream it would have been better to follow the path of Taken (2008) which used the very real problem of kidnapping and forced prostitution in Europe as a sub-plot for an action-packed thriller. So if the aims aren’t to horrify or raise awareness, what is the aim of Michael? Here lies the issue with the film. Why? It doesn’t entertain, it doesn’t educate, and it doesn’t show a new angle to a familiar story. The reason why the film was made is just another aspect of the film that remains unexplained; it is there, but like the details inside the frame, but there are no close-ups to clarify this for the questioning audience. It is almost the textbook definition of Roland Barthes literary concept ‘The Death of the Author’ and ergo the birth of the reader – taking the power away from the filmmaker and giving it to the audience to draw their own conclusions. 

The subject matter of the film means that it is not a fun film. The banality of the film’s style means that it is not an interesting film to watch. However, the putting the two together was a shrewd move by Schleinzer and makes the film, not only a very respectable film, but almost respectful of the situation it portrays. It doesn’t belittle the plight of the families of missing children, it doesn’t belittle the suffering of the children, and yet it doesn’t demonise the paedophiles. It simply places it all on the screen, announcing that is continues to happen, and then allows the audience, the watchers who are unable to intervene, the unfortunate voyeurs, to draw their own conclusions.

Written by Edward L. Corrigan on 28/02/2012

How does on-screen loneliness differ from being alone?

“The prospect of loneliness is probably one of the biggest fears that humans have to contend with. More often than not, this is reinforced by the state of actually being alone, but it’s not automatically synonymous with it.” – Robert Zak

Robert Zak’s blog-post for The Independent: 'Tyrannosaur and Drive: The difference between loneliness and being alone' touches on something interesting, but doesn’t fully develop the theory. After watching Drive (2011) and Tyrannosaur (2011) back to back, he began to ponder the difference between loneliness and being alone. While it was an interesting thesis, Zak only touched the surface of the differences leaving the reader to either think about it more, or to want more. Hopefully this piece will finish where Zak left off.

Drive and Tyrannosaur are from different worlds. They were made in different nations, in different genres, with different narratives and different target audiences. Despite these differences both films have some essential, common themes: rage, protection and being alone. Of course, through the immense differences of the two films, these themes are explored completely differently.

Drive follows the protagonist, Driver (Ryan Gosling), a loner who fills his time with cars, whether it’s fixing them, driving them for races, driving them for petty crooks or for films and in his spare time, he studies car parts. He  builds a relationship with a young mother who moves into his apartment building, but the relationship still manages to maintain a certain isolation for him. This is similar to the film itself, which although has many Hollywood stars, is set in Los Angeles and has a narrative that would not be out of place in most Hollywood studios, the director, Nicholas Winding Refn manages to use a certain stylization to give the film a more ‘independent’ atmosphere, maintaining a certain isolation from Hollywood.

Tyrannosaur drops all pretenses about being slick, glamorous film and adopts a social-realist style well known to British filmmakers. The lead character Joseph (Peter Mullan) isn’t totally alone; he has a couple of friends: his dog Bluey, a racist pub local, Tommy, who doesn’t really know him, and a friend who is dying of cancer. Joseph very quickly drops that number down by kicking Bluey to death in the opening scene.

The key themes of both films, rage and protection run through the lead characters, it is the concept of being alone that makes them so different, and this is due to the difference between being introverted or extroverted. Many people believe that to be extroverted you have to be a happy, charismatic people person. This would rule out Joseph, but the reality is that to be extroverted means that you draw your power from the people around you, in the same vein being introverted means to draw your power from within. Through these definitions Joseph is definitely an extrovert. His power is drawn from his relationships, no matter how small or shallow they appear to be. His power is not the standard idea of strength, but of self-control. When left by himself, Joseph can’t stop his rage from destroying things, whether those things are his dog, a shop window, his shed or a group of youths in the pub. His crippling loneliness allows, or even encourages, his rage and anger to build to the point that it can’t be contained. When faced with another human being though, Joseph is calmed. For example, the constant presence of a young boy across the street stops Joseph from engaging in conflict with the man dating the young boy’s mother. It is this need for a connection that makes Joseph’s first encounter with Hannah (Olivia Colman) so strange. 

Hannah is equally lonely, stuck in an oppressive and violent marriage, her only form of release is religion, but even that is used against her by her husband, James (Eddie Marsan). Joseph first meets Hannah when he has a break-down and finds his way into her charity shop. He shuns all of her beliefs using location and money as a way of distancing himself, but the most interesting way he keeps his emotional distance is with his name. In an attempt to help the man hiding behind a rail of clothes, Hannah asks his name, to which he replies “Robert DeNiro.” He doesn’t want her to know who he is, even down to very basics. Names are the basis to our identities. We are defined by who we are and what we do, but in order to communicate those things every relationship has to begin with introductions and those start with names. It takes both characters’ fears of being alone to bring them together. Although their relationship is built on the foundation of loneliness, it is a co-operative relationship where they both put in as much as they receive and that makes it both genuine and touching.

“Whoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.”

- Aristotle

The theory of anonymity helping to isolate characters has been well used in cinema. In Layer Cake (2004), Daniel Craig’s character is not named to prove that he is more intelligent, and therefore at an intellectual distance to the audience. But it doesn’t have to create distance. In literature, Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s had an unnamed protagonist, but this only allows for a greater connection with the reader. ‘George’ as he’s referred to, is a blank canvas, a person in a situation, almost vague enough to for anyone to project themselves onto.

So what makes The Driver an introvert (as opposed to Joseph’s extrovert) and what makes him different to Craig’s ‘X’ and Capote’s ‘George’? While Joseph acts completely differently when alone as opposed to with people, the introverted Driver tries to spend as little time with other people as possible and when he does work with others, there is little to no personal connection or effort made on Driver’s part.

Along with having no name, The Driver has no exposition. The audience doesn’t know where he came from, the sort of friends he had growing up or any information similarly needed to judge somebody. He constantly keeps himself busy, and yet doesn’t have any relationships made from what he does. His only real relationship is with his boss Shannon, but even that is a very one-sided conversation.

Whereas Joseph and Hannah’s relationship is genuine, Driver’s relationship with Irene (Carey Mulligan) – the young mother who recently moved into his apartment building seems almost one-sided and shallow. Driver seems happy when with her and clearly goes out of his way to help and protect her and her son, but there is no depth to their relationship. Apart from the apparent happiness he gains from it, Driver puts all the effort in to protect Irene and Benicio, putting himself in constant danger. Or maybe it is the satisfaction of this protection that he strives for, that drives his character, not rage. The blank character allows the audience to conjure as many possible back-stories or possible motivations that they want to, without either confirming or denying them. Unlike Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Drive is too vague, not giving enough of a canvas to project onto, creating not only a distance with the other characters, but with the audience as well.

It is worth noting that there are many other ways to represent loneliness and being alone on the screen. Steve McQueen, for example, creates an incredible world for Michael Fassbender’s Brandon in Shame (2011) to find solidarity. It is not so much that he likes being alone, or that he has nobody, but he is forced into closed off lifestyle by his shame of his sexual addiction. However, returning to the two case studies that Robert Zak originally begun with, it is fair to summarise that both characters despite similarities, deal with the issue of being alone completely differently, but this is as much due to the genres the films as it is to the introverted and extroverted personalities of the protagonists. The British ‘Kitchen Sink, social-realist’ dark and gritty film needs to be open and upsetting to provoke the intended feelings and to fairly represent the issue of domestic violence. Loneliness, as Zak noted, Loneliness is a big fear in our society, and Paddy Considine (Tyrannosaur’s director) manipulates that fear to draw sympathy for an almost unsympathetic character. On the other hand, Drive is almost as much about style as it is about content; it’s about standing out and being different. In an industry full of escapist films, Drive succeeds in not only being different and being escapist, but having a completely unsympathetic and yet utterly compelling and interesting lead character. To summarise their differences in a sentence: Joseph hides his loneliness with aggression, while the Driver hides his aggression by being alone.

Written by Edward L. Corrigan on 17/02/2012

For Robert Zak’s original blog post, see: http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/02/10/tyrannosaur-and-drive-the-difference-between-loneliness-and-being-alone/

Shame (2011)

Before Michael Fassbender was a household name with performances in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2010) and the latest (or earliest as it is indeed a prequel) X-Men adventure, he shocked audiences with his performance as Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s directorial debut and tour-de-force Hunger (2008). McQueen opened with constant close-ups making it visually stunning before he allowed his lead to bring the film to life with a fifteen minute long single shot and a duologue with a priest that brought vivid images to the audience’s mind without the need of the camera portraying what is being discussed. This is all before Fassbender undertook a medically monitored crash-diet in order to portray Sands in his final days.

Needless to say, McQueen’s follow up has been hotly anticipated and he has once again teamed up with Fassbender, who, with his recently acquired fame, has caused even more buzz for this feature. Shame (2011) follows Fassbender’s sex-addicted introvert, Brandon. His carefully cultivated private life helps him to indulge his addiction until the arrival of his extroverted, exhibitionist sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan).

The concept of addiction has been tackled widely on screen; from alcohol to narcotics, from comedies to biopics. However the idea of sex addictions is still hidden from the mainstream and is still considered a taboo. McQueen dives straight into this theme with little regard for the taboo it may appear to hold. McQueen purposefully chose sex because of the stigma it holds as opposed to drugs or alcohol. But why make this film? McQueen has stated in an interview that his films are personal. That’s not to say he’s a sex addict, or an addict of another variety, but with addiction comes other characteristics. Brandon is an introvert partly due to his addiction to sex which has been described as “an illness of intimacy”. This cut-off way of life leads to a feeling of loneliness, it’s like being lost. McQueen said that “Brandon in Shame is my response to being lost – I’ve not been there in the sense of sexual addiction, but I’ve been lost.”

This idea of feeling lost is precisely the reason for setting the film in Manhattan. Shame views New York from the point of view of a citizen as opposed to that of a tourist, and could well be due to that fact that McQueen studied at NYU. The film doesn’t focus on the many views and sights that people think define New York, not once does the audience see Central Park or the Empire State Building. The film shows New York as somebody who lives there sees it: just another city and a place to live. It’s a cliché to say that New York is a cultural melting pot, but McQueen doesn’t use New York as an example of how a wide range of cultures can have their own input into a city’s wider appeal. The cultural diversity acts as camouflage in New York’s concrete jungle:

“Everyone there is from somewhere. It’s all about immigrants, always a new wave of cab drivers – Haitian, then Pakistani, then Russian. It’s a city that can always reinvent itself and that’s what I wanted for my character, somewhere to hide.” – Steve McQueen

The film’s subject matter is so powerful and hard-hitting, which makes Fassbender’s withdrawn performance all the more impressive. Brandon doesn’t speak much, and when he does the subject matter never really has any depth. There’s a scene early on in which his sister Sissy tries to ask for help, Brandon ignores all of the important questions and talks about breakfast. There’s almost a monotony about Brandon when around other people that seem to be close to him; a wall that tries to stop people getting too intimate. This wall has seemingly worked, but fails with his sister. The relationship between Brandon and his Sissy is complex. The two characters differ so much. Brandon is an introvert who has made himself as independent as possible in order to hide his addiction and the shame he feels toward it while Sissy is an extroverted exhibitionist who needs to feel loved, and this need for love and attention turns into dependencies; she is caught calling one-night stands repeatedly and wanting more than is on offer. It’s this unashamed neediness that succeeds in breaking through Brandon’s wall where others fail. That’s not to say their relationship works, it is clearly the most dysfunctional relationship in the film and suggests that both parties need to question boundaries, but there are moments when Sissy inadvertently causes Brandon to attempt to change his way of life.

In a film which never shies away from full frontal nudity or sex scenes, it is, in fact, the subtlety that really provides makes this film as powerful as it is. Brandon never seeks help or announces “I’m Brandon and I am a sex addict!” He deals with his personal problem personally and it is never spoken about. There is a moment in which Sissy performs a song at a club, and Brandon, who has avoided watching her for so long, listens and cries a single silent tear. The reason that her rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” could bring a grown man to tears is never explained, but left to the audience: is it pride in his sister? Is it the lyrics in the song striking a connection within him? This is a credit to Abi Morgan, the writer, keeping the film so in tune with the main character, but the subtlety isn’t confined to the script. McQueen often holds his shots for long periods of time. Scenes often rely heavily on long shots resting the responsibility for the scene on the shoulders of the cast and the locations (the backdrop often has as much to say as Brandon) as opposed to relying on cinematic trickery.

The film mixes a powerful subject matter and a no-holes-barred, unashamed way of putting it onto the screen with a sensitivity in the way it portrays the characters. It’s the right balance found that makes this film as compelling as it is.

Written by Edward L. Corrigan on 01/02/2012