Michael Fassbender’s performance and Steve McQueen’s backdrop mutually excel in a film that provokes a glut of probing questions on modern life, and the polarization between love and cold, soulless lust that lies therein.
‘Shame’s release to the cinema has brought with it a raft of publicity and attention purely because of its subject matter. In a nutshell, it revolves around sex. And I won’t lie to you, there is lots of it. (And Michael Fassbender’s, eh, wedding tackle) Generally,‘sex sells’. Just ask the editors of low end thrash lads mags ‘Nuts’ and ‘Zoo’. While we can joke about the kind of publicity that that kind of market seeks, the attention Shame has brought with it merits much more thought, and presents a very discomforting and brutally real exploration on emotional attachment, or should we say, detachment from the act.
Fassbender plays Brandon, a supremely slick but emotionally distant character, who seems to have only one focus in his life, women, and uncontrollable sexual urges towards them. He is successful and works in an impossibly gleaming yet soulless corporate office, surrounded by fellow alpha males and a reprehensible boss. His apartment is also utterly modern and coldly sleek, thereby lacking any warmth or character. In both these environments, Brandon’s tunnel vision revolves solely around inviting hookers around, voyeur cams via hardcore websites, and just plain old fetish browsing and relentless masturbation. It’s an entrenched bachelor existence to say the least, until his sister Sissy arrives, cramping his style and by staying on his couch, along with her unstable emotional outpouring.
The picture McQueen paints of Brandon and New York is one of modernity laid bare, all surface and no feeling. Manhattan is lonely. Brandon is lonelier. In his attempts of denying this, his need for primal sexual urges relentlessly brush it under the carpet. His approach to sex, and his endless quest for pushing sexual boundaries does indeed smack of addiction. I’d liken it to the chemical addiction of a cigarette. Brandon needs and wants one instantly, seeks it out, consumes intensely and without any feeling whatsoever, before discarding it away. Given that this addiction isn’t chemical, it warrants more exploration, is more intangible, and certainly makes Brandon’s way of life a more complex, inexplicable and distant way to be.
While his approach to sex and lifestyle is relentless, the arrival of drifter jazz singer Sissy (Carey Mulligan) begins to frustrate him, and sway him off course. On the surface, he wants nothing to do with her, and swats her away at every attempt. She is unstable, wild, and ultimately tragic, and amplifies the sorrow felt by both siblings in the desolation of New York. There are ambiguous hints as to where they have come from emotionally. Without his admission, she slowly ekes out his awareness of relationships and depth, illustrated by his tears at one of Sissy’s gigs. But Brandon’s way of dealing with this is to plunge further into his obsession, giving the viewer a blunt polar view between what is needed, and what is dangerously indulgent.
Fassbender is amazing. The audience feels his piercing sexual glare just as much as the unsuspecting subway users do, or the women who frequent the same bars as he does, before he immediately begins to pursue them ravenously and objectify them. He plays the icy cool, primal Patrick Bateman type with ease. However, the depth of the performance is etched out in the moments where we realize Brandon knows there is a deep rooted problem in his inability to love. He attempts to date a co worker in a polite and ‘formal’ manner, only to find himself utterly inexperienced, and more importantly, incapable of engaging in the emotional depth such a commitment requires. His struggle becomes obvious, wretched and pitiful.
McQueen illustrates the backdrop to all of this in a stunningly affective way. A true artist, he perfectly explores that line between tragedy and beauty, through Brandon’s exploration of his own problem. It’s all wonderfully epitomized when Brandon pushes all boundaries on a sex crazed splurge in one impossibly hedonistic night. An epic (and beautifully shot) but utterly discomforting threesome scene becomes the pivot of the film’s entire premise. It is a brutal and harrowing portrayal of a modern man so deeply indulged in his own problem, whilst desperately struggling to get a grip on its emotional understanding.
Shame is highly charged, visual and evocative. Its dialogue is sparse, but utterly crucial when it counts. Its an artistic tour de force, and highly thought provoking, as any piece of magnificent art should be, thereby showing Steve McQueen as an artist at the top of his game. Like any film worth its salt, it makes you mull over its subject matter long after the credits roll. Indeed, it can be termed highly ‘squeamish’, and not something we as society are totally comfortable with yet, as it is an area exacerbated by the darker sides of our modernity. As it continues, emotional capability and depth get left behind, exposing raw vulnerability. The tragic figures of Brandon and Sissy are common now, and slowly grow in number in vast, lonely and tragic places like New York. This all occurs without much acknowledgement, and the polarization and definitions between such primal acts as love and sex becomes more gaping. Thanks to its superb protagonists and backdrop, this is highly relevant cinema for modern times, and as a film, has pushed all boundaries. Go and have a think about it.
The film that is. Not the ‘wedding tackle’.
View a trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24cjqfVv1fs
He’ll probably never make anything quite as astounding as ‘The End Of It All’ ever again, but John Tejada is still a name that worth keeping an eye on. Not least for the fact that he’s probably one of electronic music’s biggest chameleons, and his consistently inconsistent genre hopping remains the hallmark of his creative output. ‘The End Of It All’ remains a majestic achievement, probably because it is the one time he’s successfully married all of the elements in his head into one mind blowing, ever evolving and utterly original song. He’s also been known to flirt with the odd relentless club banger sound too, with ‘Sweat On The Walls’ no stranger to bringing a house down, and eh, being a particularly apt name for a track.
He’s back with a brand new album, the soon to be released ‘Parabolas’, on Kompakt (Highbrow, I hear you say) A quick initial listen is pretty disappointing, and confirms the notion that genre hopping isn’t neccessarily a good thing at all. This means mediocrity lurks at almost every corner. This is probably because the whole thing seems like your listening to a poor man’s Pantha Du Prince record, or a cheap knock off. Sometimes the similarities are just plain staggering. I knew minimal was beyond trendy at one point, and M_NUS was essentially a fashion brand, but I never thought it would get so jaded it would see the day of spawning tribute acts…
But Tejada is still very respected, for good reason, and always has his moments. Parabolas is no different. It is worth checking out, mainly for the first two tracks. ‘The Dream’(above), is an impossibly haunting, atmospheric piece. Its also probably the most original bit of the album. Custom built for a soundtrack, it has the ability to probe you for introspection. I lambasted the likes of Nicolas Jaar and James Blake before for making a pretentious sparse soundscapes. Well lads, this is how you do it. Oddly simple with a few elegiac piano keys, yet completely ethereal and emotive. Can’t help thinking it would slot into a sci fi environment either for some reason, a la Event Horizon or Alien, but eh, maybe thats just me. I don’t even know if thats a bad thing or good thing. Put it this way, I suppose he probably didn’t have to ponder for too long on coming up with a title for the track.
Farther and Fainter is also excellent, even though its probably one of the most incriminating examples of the Pantha Du Prince sound being ripped off, its still an excellently produced and flowing track in its own right, retaining a hint of the atmospherics he’s been known for, and we can’t take that away from him. Lets just say, its a really good homage. Homages can be good too, right? Link for ‘Farther and fainter’ is below:
By only now doing an appraisal of Radiohead’s latest opus, the King Of Limbs, I may seem like I’m not exactly Mr Current Affairs. However, the delayed reaction is actually pretty calculated and totally on purpose. This is mainly due to the fact that its sudden release resulted in a CNN-esque blizzard of blanket coverage and hysteria. Much like a natural disaster a la Haiti or Japan, it becomes omnipresent news for a brief flicker, before people move onto something else soon after. The coverage and excitement surrounding the King of Limbs’ release was pretty bizarre all round. While I listened to it immediately with baited breath and was discussing its track by track merits with mates on GChat, (Hi McQuaid) it brought back memories of an era when we waited excitedly for an album to be released, used to go out and buy said album, come home, and savoured the listening experience. A bygone era. Those long gone days when people used to buy music. Strange, now when you think about. Places like Zavvi, oh the memories…
So thats what the King of Limbs release felt like, to a real music fan, reliving that experience. Which is completely normal. However, the hysteria in the press was a bit stranger, front page news on each paper, a cultural event of the year type adulation, and what illustrated it all best, Neil McCormick’s ‘live review’ in the Telegraph, updated every five minutes with his own track by track take. I’d never heard of that anywhere else before. Perhaps a bit much…? So as a result of all this, was The King of Limbs really going to be reviewed and appraised accurately? Radiohead getting a ‘fair’ trial? The best band in the world’s new album was always going to be pretty ‘amazing’, before anyone had even heard a note. And so the reports came to pass in that manner, and it immediately got universally positive and gushing reviews.
Now lets have a look at it objectively. Is it that good? I’m not so sure. And thats essentially because Radiohead are kind of paradoxically victims of their own success. They are masters of their craft, which guarantees any output is going to be good to some extent. But being victims of their own success, it must be getting harder to come out with genuinely brilliant work that stands up to all their other material. And I don’t think the King of Limbs does that. In its own right, it is a very good album, and if it was any other band, it would probably be hailed as a masterpiece. But just because its Radiohead, you can’t help thinking that its just not THAT good. And if reviewers are saying its good, maybe its a case of the emperor’s new clothes, and being in denial of its true worth.
If you look at their chronology and discography, their ascension to their current status has been consistently upward and stellar. Pablo Honey never really counts, we’ll let that go… The Bends was an incredible mix of emotional, intelligent yet wholly anthemic rock, OK Computer built on that with even more textured soundscapes and is now often regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time. Kid A was the revolutionary bold electronica experiment that was spectacularly successful (Amnesiac counts as part of that), Hail to the Thief was a rewarding and epic attempt and marrying old and new, while In Rainbows was where they had finally mastered and refined said marriage into wonderfully resonant and emotive songs, yet that were incredibly accessible. So each one represented a progression of sorts. Where were they going to go with this one?
The answer is, nowhere new really. Its not a patch on In Rainbows as a fully realised piece. I have a feeling it was recorded quite quickly, and for such a short album, not every track is a stand out. ‘Feral’ for instance is particularly weak for a Radiohead track, and sounds like a b side or out take from some saccharine experimental recordings. Thom Yorke’s dalliance with the South London dubstep sound continues, and is pretty prominent and takes over a lot of the record, for example, in ‘Feral’ and ‘Bloom’. The only thing is, these sounds are quite common these days, and people like Burial are the pioneers at this kind of stuff. Radiohead do so much other things so much better that they should really stick to and focus on. Each track sounds like a bit from previous albums, with some of the gloomy piano driven moments in Amnesiac recalled in Codex, or the Neil Young sounding Give Up the Ghost, which recalls a gentler version of How to Disappear Completely perhaps, but the King of Limbs stuff just isn’t as powerful as the predecessors. Like I said, victims of their own success. Good songs. Just not THAT good. And as a Radiohead fan, you may feel its all a little bit flat or deflating, and doesn’t stand up to repeated listening, particularly when you are used to such majestic brilliance.
So, it is a good album, and there are moments that really do stand up. Separator is a fantastic song, tender the whole way through with beautiful cocophany of gentle waves of sound that will give you pangs in your chest. Classic Radiohead. And speaking of classic Radiohead, Little by Little is probably the most Radiohead sounding song ever, if you know what I mean, showcasing some amazing vocal melodies, and Jonny Greenwood veering into Spanish guitar territory. Thom Yorke does a fine piano ballad by this stage (could rival Lionel Ritchie anyday, no doubt) and Codex, in fairness, is a very finely judged emotive piece of work.
One thing I will say that sets the album apart from previous works though, is that its a very content record throughout, and showcasing a band that are seemingly much mellower, mature and at ease with themselves. There are no targets or bile directed, which have always been a hallmark of Yorke’s, and there isn’t any of the tension in his voice that was such a big feature of many albums, particularly Hail to The Thief or parts of In Rainbows. Maybe he’s finally chilled out and eased into himself after all these years, and he’s not so concerned with his Chomsky-esque views on well, pretty much everything. And such mellow contentment suits Radiohead. Its a pleasant new aspect to their already utterly refined sound. Its certainly not ‘depressing’, to use that associated tag that absolute philistines have long used to describe them.
Ultimately, and post hysteria, The King of Limbs is a pretty good album. Just not really by Radiohead’s standards. Must be tough gig composing songs in a band that good…
When Nicolas Jaar was unearthed a little over two years ago, as an 18 year old University Freshman Student, the initial murmurings were laden with only superlatives. This was all due to the sheer brilliance of his now legendary Fall ‘08 Set, which had taken some of the finest parts of minimal, techno and house, added some haunting vocals, tweaked some brilliantly leftfield samples, and garnished a cultural and worldly touch throughout the whole thing that left listeners mesmerised, dumbfounded and scrambling for more. As his profile grew, Wolf and Lamb took him under their wing and his output became extremely prolific in terms of singles, and also in terms of his gigging. Jaar’s innovative and different angle on dance music was his unique selling point. Given his precociuosness and youth, he was heralded as a prodigy. Hyperbole led us to believe he was some sort of messiah, heralding a completely new direction of music a la Aphex Twin. Things were coming to head this year, with RA putting him at no.2 on their top ten live acts of the year. Yet hype can be an outrageous thing.
The Fall ‘08 set was worth all the hype, and more, as any listener will attest. However, maintaining that sort of standard was the only way for ‘Nico’ to live up to his billing. And it seems he didn’t really want to. That had a consistent, club friendly tempo throughout, whilst including all its fresh eclecticism. However, his output of singles became more and more distanced from that techno/house base, becoming more abstract, slower, experimental and quite simply, head scratching. Yet we still kept faith. ‘The guy is clearly a genius!’
He certainly had his own ideas and views. And he had a mission upon where he was going to take his music. In a club environment, he would take the BPM down to the unchartered territory of the 70’s, and declared that nightclubs were places where ‘heartbroken people’ went, and he therefore made music to cater for such heartbroken souls. I know what you’re thinking. Alarm bells. Because I was thinking the exact same.
The acid test of Nicolas Jaar’s hype, ability and talent is upon us, after an upward arc of two years, and fans suppressing their own questioning. His full length album, Space Is Only Noise, is soon to be released on Circus Company. And I’m afraid to say its probably where the patience runs out…
His defenders will say his style is a ground breaking mix of jerky dark hip hop beats and grooves crossed over with deep house, and these may be core influences, but Space Is Only Noise showcases none of his influences’ sensibilities. Despite its delicate and sharp production throughout, the entire record lacks a flow or tempo, and is instead a messy muddle of bloated and indulgent ideas. It attempts to be semi ambient, but only serves to antagonise the listener with frustration. It is over laden with sounds of the ocean, voiceovers in French discussing the beauty of landscape, intermittent ‘pops’ and piano keys, children laughing, Nico’s own vocals and consistently inconsistent off kilter beat structures that just lead to an infuriating mess. Despite the saturation of all these ingredients, nothing really happens in the vast majority of the tracks(certainly not the opening five), and its certainly very difficult to simply appraise it as ‘music’. Let alone decent, flowing music. It is almost like he’s trying to tease us, when the last thing we want is to be teased.
The stand out track on the album is when he actually does implement a consistent and remotely up tempo beat structure on ‘Keep me there’, and appropriately enough, it is both the most simple and most effective song. Even his samples here are restrained and subtle. Says it all really. As good as this track is in comparison though, it still only serves as some half baked chillout background music. He also should have implemented his hip hop brand more so, as there are many good things about ‘Problems with the Sun’, while the title track has some good electronica moments too. Yet both are ruined by the vocals. Unfortunately, if these are the most redeeming aspects of the record as a whole, it proves that the listener is really clutching at straws.
Apart from being crushingly disappointing, I can’t bring myself to consider this remotely house, hip hop or techno, let alone the broad expanse of dance that Jaar has been championed within. It is definitely poles apart from the dizzy brilliance of Fall 08. All I can say is that its completely Avant Garde. However, more akin to the infamous, self indulgent side of avant garde. I’m sure the musical equivalents of Cosmo Landesman will rave about this and find superlatives out of nowhere to shower it with. Not to mention being heralded for pushing boundaries. As far as I’m concerned, pushing boundaries counts for little if the essence of the flow and music is lacking, and in Space Is Only Noise, it is spectacularly so.
My word. BenAffleckhas certainly come a long way since slapping kissing J-Lo’sass in the video for ‘Jenny from the block’. Not to mention cinematiccatastophe’ssuch as Gigli, Paycheck, Daredevil and countless other forgettable garbage. I recall wondering what the hell I was doing when subjected to two and a half hours of just his jaw and a little bit of peripheral drivel in the appalling Pearl Harbour. More importantly, what was Affleck himselfdoing, seemingly little to arrest the irreparable plummet of a career that had seemed so promising with the breakthrough of Good Will Hunting. However, arrest this decline is exactly what he did, and in spectacular style, with the superb ‘Gone Baby Gone’.
Following on the heels of ‘Gone Baby Gone’ is this weeks new release, ‘The Town’, a film which consolidates that newly formed sub genre spawned by GBG and The Departed, the working class Boston crime thriller. Set in the down at heel Boston suburb ofCharlestown, a similar scene is created to that of GBG, although this time the story is built around of bunch of childhood friends who have developed into outrageously canny and slick bank robbers. Beginning with the taking of bank that exudes professionalism and ruthlessness, the police’s unplanned intervention compels the gangs to take bank manager Claire (RebeccaHall) hostage. Central character and gang leader Doug McCray (Affleck) soon realises that she is aCharlestownresident, putting them in a difficult situation. His best friend and resident psychoJem(Jeremy Renner) thinks he should take care of business with her, while McCray’s more subtle side leads him to take a less pragmatic approach, thereby leading him closer and more interested in Claire, thus supplying the obligatory love story. In the meantime, her questioning after the robbery leads her to come into contact with determined FBI agent Frawley(Don Draper, I mean, JonHamm) who is vehement to stop this gang in its tracks. And so the pursuit ensues.
The film latches onto a tried and tested template; crime thriller, heists, familiar setting, solid love story,dislikeableFBI agent at every turn, actions, some guns, car chases… You get the picture. It should really be rife with cliches, but it actually manages to rise above all of this and prove to be a pretty solid piece of work. The key to all of this is Affleck’s attention to detail, an ingredient which I believe is the backbone to any self respecting film. The strength of Gone Baby Gone was that it portrayed a real and gritty Boston, the ugly underclass that America hides at will and glosses over so easily. Affleck manages to show us the grim reality of what its really like, Wire-esque, with old timer barflys and their strawberry wizened noses, chain smoking teenage mothers that remind you of Hemel Hempstead council estates and tattoos that look like they were applied with smudgy biro pens. He and his crew blend into this setting seamlessly, with Renner stealing the show as the utterly sociopathic Jem. Authentically rough around the edges and within, Renner has the viewer on edge throughout, and owns every scene he is in.
Indeed, the performances are pretty flawless throughout, and in tandem with the attention to detail, really embolden this film as a whole. Apart from Renner’s brilliance, I haven’t seen Affleck impress this much before, while Hamm makes the skin crawl as classically snarling FBI agent. The fact that we realized we weren’t watching Don Draper, and that we disliked the character so much is a succinct testimony of his performance. In the latter part of the film however, Blake Lively, hitherto known as some random society princess from irrelevant TV tripe Gossip Girl, completely steals the show in her late emergence as a pivotal character. As McCray’s long term concubine, she is utterly convincing as the runt of Boston’s litter, and boozy, drug addled dysfunctional young mother (i.e. your average X Factor 2010 contestant) Lively and Renner’s performances add a that gritty realism to the Charlestown experience. This is all allied to a supporting cast that look the bona fide part, such as Boston rapper Slaine as part of the crew, while Pete Postlethwaite’s grim and sinewy Fergie is convincing both aesthetically and personally as just an utterly vile individual.
Not much can go wrong after building the film on such a solid foundation of detail and stellar performances across the board. But there’s some more nice touches. The action scenes are pretty explosive, with one car chase in particular being especially exhilarating and originally shot. The decision to show the terror and intimidation of the bank robbery through the black and white CCTV footage was a particularly innovative move on Affleck’s part, showing that he some good creative imagination up his sleeve. There is cliché’s throughout as I said, and on the whole, it does become slightly predictable, particularly towards the end. In addition, some scenes are frown inducing, such as Affleck and Renner’s striding through a corridor in police uniform and aviators, which could easily have been cut from a Police Academy movie or a Village People promo video. It also would have been nice to see a bit of research put into some authentically Irish names, considering the ‘Irish Omerta’ is something constantly referred to. Douglas McCray, James Coughlin (pronounced ‘Cofflin’) and Albert Magloan ain’t exactly classic Munster names…
On the whole though, ‘The Town’ is extremely solid, highly enjoyable and rewarding. It is another pretty good example of Affleck’s directorial capabilities, and bolsters his burgeoning reputation. However, it is also merely proof that he has just mastered the whole Boston Crime Thriller sub genre. Next time, it will be interesting to see if he can escape the comfort zone, and perhaps branch out a little.
