Three films for you this week, amazingly, and they are all at the smaller, independent end of the spectrum because I’ve had my fill of mainstream blockbusters, at least for the minute, and probably know all I will ever need to know about evil villains who wish to take over the world. (Just take it and go, why don’t you? Here, borrow my Oyster card.) I’ll start with Sound It Out, which happens to be my favourite, and is at the very, very opposite end of the spectrum, having been made by a crew of one with a budget of around $0 million and, I suspect, no catering beyond the occasional Greggs meal deal. (Actually, I love a Greggs meal deal, but I think you get what I’m saying.)
This is a documentary about the last surviving record store on Teesside, made by the young documentarist Jeanie Finlay, who filmed for a year in the shop without funding and financed this theatrical release via crowd-sourcing — a bit here, a bit there, from individual supporters — and it is lovely; full of heart, affection and thoughtfulness. The shop is owned and run by Tom, who loves his vinyl, can identify a track by a half-remembered hum, and is devoted to his customers, as they are devoted to him. There doesn’t seem much on offer for the residents of Stockton-on-Tees, a deprived area of high unemployment with a forlorn, deserted high street, and this shop is a place of belonging and mutual respect.
Some of these customers are followed home. Mostly, they are those music-collecting fanatics who tend to live in bare, half-painted rooms populated by a single chair, a record player, and stacks and stacks of albums (alphabetised). There is Shane, who fills shelves overnight in B&Q and lives for Status Quo (he has seen them live 350 times). There are Gareth and Sam, two teenage metal-heads who confess it is only head-banging that keeps them going. (One had attempted suicide twice before discovering ‘thrash’.)
In other hands, this might simply have provided a sad procession of sad losers, but Ms Finlay is so warmly empathetic and gently curious — you’d be amazed what people will tell you when they are simply asked to talk though the badges on their jacket — you do not feel anything like pity. Instead, you feel glad that these men have found something which gives their lives meaning and order and somehow colours it in. True, it’s not especially cinematic and could be television, but only, I suppose, if television still did television like this, and wasn’t obsessed with baking and celebrity dancing. (If I’m beginning to sound like a cranky old person, it is only because I am now a cranky old person; it happened last Tuesday when I wasn‘t looking.)
Jack Goes Boating is the directorial debut of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who stars in this just as he starred in the off-Broadway play of the same name. It’s a four-hander about a lonely limo driver (Hoffman) whose best friend, Clyde (John Ortiz), sets him up on a blind date with Connie (Amy Ryan), who works at a funeral parlour along with Clyde’s wife, Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega).
Got it? Good. Jack is shambling and shy, barely articulate, but fundamentally decent, and so determined to take Connie boating in the summer he learns to swim. Hoffman and Ryan are sublime as frightened, bruised romantics tentatively reaching out for each other, as are Ortiz and Rubin-Vega, who play a desperate couple hurtling towards disaster. But somehow this can’t shake off its stagey roots and lacks any emotional punch. I didn’t care if Jack and Connie made it work or didn’t. This may be one of those films where you can admire the acting but not believe in any of the characters and, even if you did, would they be interesting? I think, actually, I’d have learned more about Jack, a reggae nut, if he had turned up at Sound It Out half-humming ‘Rivers of Babylon’ and had spent a few minutes with Tom. Also, I might have been able to love him more.
Lastly, it’s The Future, Miranda July’s follow-up to her successful 2005 film Me and You and Everyone We Know, which was kookie, and this is even more so. There is a young couple (July and Hamish Linklater) who live together, but then she leaves, although not before doing some peculiar dancing. There is a talking cat, a talking moon, a girl obsessed with digging and, towards the end, time stops. Does this film have something to say, perhaps about facing a future we don’t especially want? No idea. Didn’t get it. Might have got it if I’d concentrated more, but I lost the will. Readers, I’m not proud of this, but will say it anyhow: I was baffled.
So, my venture into smalldom has been only a partial success, but at least I’ve been spared evil villains, weaponry, 3D and car chases. I am not against any of these things, but do believe I was due for a rest.
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