REVIEW: The Look of Silence

This chilling companion piece to 2012's The Act of Killing may lose much of the surreal spectacle of its predecessor, but it absolutely retains its substance. In fact, this quieter, more insistent film may be the more important of the two, in that it relocates its focus from the perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide to the families of its victims, and dares to question the future direction of the country.

The film follows Adi, an optometrist whose older brother was slaughtered horribly before he was born. Through watching footage shot by Joshua Oppenheimer, the film's visionary director, and through conducting interviews with the men responsible, Adi discovers how his brother died, and he attempts to grasp the implications of history and communicate to those responsible the importance of moral responsibility. Yet these are dangerous men who openly admit they drank the blood of their victims, or castrated their sexual organs in order to kill them, and in a country that celebrates their kind as heroes there is little to no motivation to renounce their crimes - instead, they almost relish reliving the grisly details.

Much as the title suggests, there are long period of silence and introspection in The Look of Silence. Adi could become angry over the men's refusal to confront the past, yet instead he engineers gulfs of silence in the interviews - perhaps in the hopes that they will fill the gaps with their guilty ramblings. Of course, unlike The Act of Killing, there are no dramatic moments of realisation to equal Anwar Congo's horrifying rooftop retching - the moments are, instead, more subtle, and relate more to the suffering of the victims. An extraordinary scene occurs when Adi talks to an ex-general and his daughter. The latter accepts the public view of her father as a hero, yet when Adi tells her of the army's tradition of drinking blood to avoid madness, doubts creeps into her face, and she admits that her father sounds like he was a sadist. A connection blossoms between the two - Adi hugs her at the end of the interview, and she tearfully insists that he treat her as family. Out of a horrific moment of history has emerged a culture of shared grief, that infects all those who have been denied answers or justice by a corrupt political system. Among the most affecting victims of the film are Adi's parents: his father is both blind and deaf, being cared for by his stooping, frail mother, and one heartbreaking scene sees him scared and confused, crawling around the floor of a house he does not recognise, as if literally trapped by his own grief.

Indonesia will not change overnight, but both The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence at least attempt to hold a complex national culture under the microscope, which makes them nothing less than compulsory viewing. See them together, if you must - though be warned, your soul will not emerge unscathed.

★★★★★

SERIES BLOG: True Detective - Season 2, Episode 1

Season 2, Episode 1: The Western Book of the Dead

Season 2, Episode 2: Night Finds You

Season 2, Episode 3: Maybe Tomorrow

Season 2, Episode 4: Down Will Come

Season 2, Episode 5: Other Lives

Season 2, Episode 6: Church in Ruins

Season 2, Episode 7: Black Maps and Motel Rooms

Season 2, Episode 8: Omega Station

* * * * *

"Change will come to those who have no fear."

These were the words that echoed throughout the teaser trailer for True Detective's second season, and they couldn't feel more appropriate. In early 2014, True Detective was the hottest show on the schedule thanks to its tripartite talent; newcomer and writer Nic Pizzolatto, esteemed director Cary Joji Fukunaga, and, of course, a gargantuan performance from Matthew McConaughey as Rust Cohle, who seemed to reach out of the television set and growl Nietzschean proverbs down your throat while still maintaining the overpowering charisma of a genuine, one-of-a-kind movie star.

Quite an act to live up to. For True Detective's second season as part of an anthology series - which means ditching the original cast and setting for an entirely new, self-contained story - the show had to exhibit fearlessness, confidence in its ability to move on to something new while still retaining its core appeal. The early production signs were a bit discouraging. Art house director Fukunaga was replaced by Justin Lin (of the Fast and Furious franchise), and while the new acting talent included Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams, it also included Taylor Kitsch (John Carter) and, well, Vince Vaughn. Not exactly Dallas Buyers Club material. But I went into the series premiere with an open mind, and I can safely say it was better than I thought it would be - though still to hit its stride.

The new series is attempting to be bigger, broader, and, most of all, different. The action has been relocated to California, to a fictional city that exists in the shadow of Los Angeles, all winding intersections and impersonal, dimly lit spaces. The key players have been doubled in number, of course, yet we don't immediately see how the drama will connect them. Farrell plays Ray Velcro (sorry, Velcoro), who we first see trying to bond with his son. It's later revealed he was a product of rape, which connects him to corrupt local businessman Frank Semyon (Vaughn), who sold out the rapist in return for the odd enforcement job. Ray may be burnt out and unhinged - even beating up the family of his son's bully - but Frank's got his own problems, as his business partner Ben Casper has disappeared on the day of an important pitch. More on that later.

Meanwhile, detective Antigone Bezzerides (yes, that is her real name, I looked it up) carries out an unsuccessful raid on a suspected prostitution ring, only to discover her sister doing camgirl work. While chasing up leads she visits their spiritual guru of a father, Eliot (played by the brilliant David Morse) who urges her to take up a more chilled-out view of things. Maybe that's why she's called Antigone. And finally, traffic cop Paul Woodrugh pulls over an attractive movie starlet, whose offer to "pay" for her speeding ticket backfires when he's suspended and forced to return to his randy Filipino girlfriend. Ain't life a bitch, Paul.

It's a bizarre hour of television, and for the first half an hour or so I wasn't convinced it would work, partly because the plot and dialogue are so overwhelmingly dense. But then, I started to see the connections between the characters. I saw a recurrent thread of male masculinity in crisis; Ray has turned to drink in the wake of another man asserting sexual dominance over his family, and his relationship with his son is dangling by a thread; Frank is trying to conceive with his wife (Kelly Reilly, in full Lady Macbeth mode) but is infertile, and has turned to IVF; and, if you pay close attention, you'll realise that Paul, ironically, has erectile dysfunction. The only thread I struggled with was that of Antigone (you know what, we'll call her Ani from now on); though interestingly, she focuses a bubbling undercurrent of hostility towards the men in her life, including a hapless one night stand who tries - and fails - to get her to talk about her feelings.

Again, Pizzolatto has managed to weave an engaging story about the complexities of those who work inside (and outside) the law, with a real focus on the psychological toll of their work. It is undeniably more challenging than his previous work, which may be in part due to dropping the self-reflexive interview structure to guide us through the more complex philosophical issues. We'll have to wait and see how this slow-burning series plays out, of course - yet when Ray, Paul and Ani were united by the body of Ben Casper propped-up on a park bench, I knew I was probably hooked.

TV REVIEW: Game of Thrones

Season 5 (All Episodes)

Golly. This year has certainly been a mixed one for Game of Thrones, a roller coaster of emotion - and not always in a good way. The series, which looked set to squash two of George R. R. Martin's weakest novels together, started promisingly enough, lining up a few decent storylines and discarding the more useless ones. It also finished spectacularly - the cinematic finale of its eighth episode, "Hardhome", momentarily caused me to lose my professional restraint and squeal like a 16-year-old. But in the middle, and hovering around the edges at all times, were niggling doubts and irritations, that can really be pinned down to one thing - bad writing.

Don't get me wrong, I think Game of Thrones is imaginative, escapist entertainment that we should consider ourselves lucky to be experiencing. But I don't think for a second that it's anything really more than that - for all its interesting ideas about fantasy and historical realism, about subversive characters and pushing the limits of the form, it is still a drama whose pleasures are mostly derived from its spectacle - notably the "shocking" moment, which reared its head a-plenty this season, perhaps even more so than the last. But the problem with the "shocking" moment is that, once it's passed, it can't be repeated again. And if you think about it for too long, everything can begin to fall apart, and you begin to question whether you really enjoyed everything that preceded it in the first place.

I mean, even though I consider myself a fan of Martin's books - which are, in spite of everything, superior - I still don't consider them the Ulysses of fantasy fiction. They're just good stories. And that's fine. But the thing about the books is that there's a thread of consistency running through them, even in their most sluggish moments. Martin is a good writer who writes good stuff (maybe a little too good, considering the length of his working process), yet too often the show drops the ball by excessive simplification, by misunderstanding characters, or, more often than not, by dropping offensive examples of stupid, clunky dialogue.

This was the year that (SPOILERS!) Daenerys' dragon Drogon (eh) dropped in to save the day and re-enact a scene from The NeverEnding Story, where Sansa's sacrifices in character meant she was subjected to more abuse by men, where the writers crammed in two 1,000 page books worth of material and STILL managed to make everything feel dull and plodding and worthless, at least until the end. Perhaps the most criminal offender was the events in Dorne - a quietly engaging story about Jaime Lannister traversing the Riverlands was transformed into a ludicrous buddy quest with Chuckle Brother sound-a-like Bronn, that contained a fight scene the Wachowskis would be ashamed of and one of the most toe-curlingly awful lines ever uttered by a living breathing person. (Sand Snake 2: "You want the good girl, but you need the bad pussy." Everyone else: "WHAT.")

Again, by sacrificing nuances in character and action, the show only seems to work with big action setpieces and those "shocking" moments. When it does work, it's terrific - Queen Cersei's walk of shame, Jon Snow's Ides-of-March moment - but it's always over too soon, and then we're back to "bad pussy". It's just not good enough.

REVIEW: Slow West

Slow West might be one of the weirdest films I've seen all year, and that's no bad thing. Hearing it's a Western might inspire certain feelings of trepidation - you might wonder, how much more can Hollywood really get out of this well-ploughed genre? There's a reason why Tommy Lee Jones is the only guy making them anymore. But, thankfully, this film shows that a story set at the dawn of civilization in America still has a lot to offer, thanks to some inventive direction from first-timer John Maclean and a charismatic performance from star Michael Fassbender.

The story begins with a boy laying on the grass, pointing out star constellations with his gun. He's a dreamer, an optimist in a cruel world, and, through a voiceover, we find out he's riding West to find the girl he loves. A refreshingly simple premise, if there ever was one. The boy is Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and the soft, Irish voice belongs to Silas Selleck (Fassbender), an outlaw who first announces his presence by shooting dead a man in uniform then rifling through his belongings for valuables. We're back to the early era of the genre, where men are still travelling West, away from their savage homeland to the promise of civilisation; which, as one character puts it, translates into "dreams and toil". Silas convinces Jay that he needs a dangerous killer to accompany him on his quest, otherwise he's likely to come a cropper at the hands of even more dangerous killers like hulking outlaw Payne (Ben Mendelsohn) and his gang. And so, like Ethan Edwards and Martin Pawley before them, they begin their journey across the wilderness and develop an unlikely, uneasy friendship.

Only this wilderness is rather unlike anything we've seen before. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan paints his landscapes with unconventional vividness, where neon yellow is just as likely to dominate as customary browns and greens, and it all feels decidedly dreamlike - not least because Maclean populates his world with oddballs and eccentrics, with impossibilities and stylisations. The duo's quest has them encounter a trio of black French musicians, a family of starving immigrants robbing a grocery store, and a rambling novelist in the middle of the desert with a strange penchant for garden furniture.

What's effective about the film, though, is its ability to straddle the line between the absurd and the sincere, often flipping between the two several times during a scene. These characters have all seen death in its savage reality - except Jay, whose innocence is gradually eroded throughout - and have decided that the best way to cope is through black humour and the acceptance that they might, and perhaps should, die at any time. When Jay is shot in the hand by an arrow Silas remarks "Nice catch" and brutally yanks it out of him. Similarly, the final shootout at a remote cottage alternates between tense, brutal, hilarious and tragic so many times I would have gotten whiplash if Maclean wasn't so good at managing tone.

Much of the film's success hinges on Michael Fassbender, who takes what could have been a thin character and gives him a rugged and poignant depth. At what point he transitions from nihilistic outlaw to responsible father figure is unclear, but Fassbender is effortlessly compelling as a closely-guarded man wrestling with his emotions. Kodi Smit-McPhee is pretty good as well, bringing an ethereal boyishness to the role, though the film is almost stolen by Ben Mendelsohn (so terrific in Animal Kingdom and recently Bloodline) sporting a natty fur coat. The film's far from being a classic - the dialogue clunks obnoxiously at times, and its short running time is both a blessing and a curse - but, as an entertaining take on a supposedly exhausted genre, filled with personality, it's really quite something.

★★★★

REVIEW: Top Five

The subject of this new* Chris Rock comedy is hardly groundbreaking stuff. It's one of those films made by people who've been hanging around Hollywood for too long, wanting to get off their chest all the stuff they've learnt about celebrity culture, with all its creepy casting agents and people who eat egg-white omelettes and the like. You might think about films that appeal almost exclusively to industry experts, films like Stardust Memories, Somewhere, Maps to the Stars and, obviously, Birdman. But the film successfully dodges the pitfalls of its genre - namely sounding whiny and self-indulgent - with a sharp script and some good performances, and it actually manages to stay funny in spite of some overtly obvious ruminations on fame, relationships, and artistic integrity.

Andre Allen is our man, our struggling B-list anti-hero, but he might as well be called Chris Rock - more comedian than actor, Rock slides into an overtly autobiographical role without so much as a hiccup. Allen used to be funny, but he was also an alcoholic, so after he got clean he decided he didn't want to be a clown in a bear suit named "Hammy" any more (though I can think of worse things than starring alongside Luis Guzmén in a bear-cop movie trilogy). Andre tries to transform himself into an artist, an auteur, who gets to make a serious - though rubbish - film about the Haitian Revolution. As he explains in an interview, it's about "a slave rebellion... it's when slaves rebel." And no, there won't be a Hammy 4.

Scenes revolving around tiring press junkets and awkward celebrity encounters are not particularly original, and for a film trying to be as contemporary as possible I was surprised to see some of the production elements beginning to feel dated even as I watched them (at one point there's a startlingly tired joke about Angry Birds). I was also surprised to see that it was produced by Jay-Z and Kanye West, two hyper-celebrities whose very lifestyles were being lampooned on the screen. The film was trying to have its diamond-encrusted cake balanced on a stripper's arse and eat it too, though I suppose it lacks the acidic wit of many of its forebearers that might have deterred such investors.

However, in spite of all this Top Five comes to life in its surprisingly natural scenes of interaction between its characters. The film kicks off with a rambling argument between Andre and Chelsea (Rosario Dawson) a magazine journalist who's pressing for real answers. He's pretentious, she's a little obtuse, but there's a spark between them. They carry on their conversation as he goes about his day, preparing for his imminent wedding to a media starlet (whose name definitely isn't Kardashian, by the way). The film sometimes launches into flashback mode, replaying amusing anecdotes of a terrible hotel room hook-up and an embarrassing use of hot sauce and a tampon, but always returns to its most comfortable element - Rock and Dawson spend most of their time talking in cars, bars and shops, yet not once does the pace drag.

Dawson is clearly the shining star here, somehow stealing the spotlight from Chris Rock in the Chris Rock Movie, though the screenplay, as most good rom-coms do, presents them on even ground. Rock, in his third and best feature, has crafted some keenly observed characters, and it's a joy to watch them all play against each other. Perhaps the best scene comes in a thoroughly convincing scene of a reunion with old friends - there's some great input from Sherri Shepherd and The Wire's Hassan Johnson, and a surprisingly poignant appearance by Tracy Morgan - where they discuss their "Top Five" favourite rappers. (For the curious, mine are: Kanye, Dre, André 3000, Wiz Khalifa, Eminem).

Some of the later plot contrivances obfuscate the message a bit, but Rock keeps the energy up with a conveyor belt of famous friends - Jerry Seinfeld is, by a country mile, the funniest thing about the film, though I'm ashamed to admit I laughed at Adam Sandler - and the payoff by the end is nice and satisfying. Hey, it's no Birdman, but it works.

★★★

*I realise it came out a while ago, but I've only just got around to seeing it, mostly because I'm poor and live on an island.

OFF-TOPIC: Just when I thought I was out...

...they pull me back in!

HOLY SHIT.

No words.