So we draw to a close on another year, and with it, another decade, as people with a smart-arsed sense of humour are very keen to point out. No, sir, I'm only throwing the one stone, the glass walls should hold. To be honest, I felt 2019 was a strangely underwhelming year for film; where normally most of the year's top five is pretty straightforward, and usually, at least one film becomes a new favourite of mine, 2019 comparatively hasn't delivered as much.
Now as always, the defence is that the cream of 2019's crop, things like Parasite or The Lighthouse or 1917 will probably come to define the year in retrospect, but I've decided this is a game I am finally sick of playing. I'm not indulging a load of films that feel they're too good to bother releasing in the UK in the year they claim to hail from, and would rather show up fashionably late just to show that they can get away with it, whilst still being judged alongside all the good films that actually did come out on time. The one student who's always tardy shouldn't be absolved from punishment just because his homework was really good; in the real world, punctuality is everything. They won't hold down a job long if they don't show up when they say they will.
Nick, are you trying to punish Hollywood release schedules like they're trouble-making scoundrels and you're some kind of matronly school teacher again? Lose the wig and the riding crop and get on with the blog.
OK, well how about this. From now on, I don't care if you've been on general release in America for months, I am from this point on only counting films that have had a general UK release within 2019 as 2019 films. Film festivals don't count, so yes, even though a lot of these films get shown at the London Film Festival which is open to the public, that's still not general release so it will not count. For anyone who follows my Letterboxd, I have updated my previous years' ranked lists to allow for this new rule, which has caused some shakeups in the 2015 list, if nothing else.
And if it turns out Parasite is the greatest thing since marmite toast, then brilliant, well done. Good for it. We can hear all about in the top five of 2020 list, but this year's list will not be touched. You're a 2020 release now, Parasite. Well, you should have thought about that before you stapled an arbitrary number of months onto your release date. Why we're being forced to wait this long for a film that's already been translated and is months into its general run in America is ridiculous. And they wonder why pirating is on the rise.
Anyway. It's New Year's Eve, now. Warmth and love and celebration and alcohol poisoning. Hurrah. Top five of 2019. Go!
5. Ad Astra - James Gray
One of this year's surprise gems, I went in pretty much expecting a run-of-the-mill space exploration with Brad Pitt's nice, big marketable face slapped all over it, but what I wasn't expecting was an artful and meditative retelling of Apocalypse Now with some stellar visuals and atmosphere to boot. It's definitely far from perfect, though: it feels like the studio hands have been meddling at certain points in fear that a mainstream audience won't get it. A moon buggy chase sequence feels particularly out of place, and there's a tacked-on happy ending as well as plenty of voice-overs from the main character, explaining exactly what he's thinking, which remind me of the original cut of Blade Runner. Like that film, I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of years down the line we get a director's cut of Ad Astra with all the strange additions trimmed off, lifting this to become a new cult classic. Another one of these oddities is an ongoing device about Brad Pitt's heartbeat never rising above 70bpm, which is apparently supposed to show he's depressed, but is such a laughably mechanical approach to showing depression it sounds like it was written by a robot. But ultimately, underneath all the dodgier elements and creative decisions, there is a heart of classic hard sci-fi, which beats with ideas of existentialism and the human condition. The further Pitt travels from Earth into space, the weaker the signs of human life become, our attempts to commercialise space thwarted by the sheer scale of it, and its these kinds of emotions and images where the film really shines. I hope Gray turns his hand to sci-fi again soon, because I can see real potential and passion in this, and with just a few improvements, we could be onto something great here. 8/10, Medium Recommendation
4. The Favourite - Yorgos Lanthimos
"But that's a 2018 film, Nick". No, it's a 2019 film now. It may claim it's a 2018 film, but that's because it's a liar. UK general release was on the 1st January 2019, therefore it's a 2019 film. Maybe if it had come out a day earlier I would have let it keep the 2018 title, but then it wouldn't have made my top five last year, so maybe coming out this year was advantageous after all. Sorry, I'm supposed to be talking about how much I like this film, aren't I? It's not you, The Favourite: it's Parasite that's pissed me off. I'm still as sore as I was at the time about The Favourite's poor performance at the Oscars, besides its one Best Actress win which it completely deserved, because this film seemed far and away one of the better of the main contenders this year. Lanthimos' films are generally pretty weird, with a particular idiosyncratic edge, and The Favourite is no different, translating his bizarre stylings into the stately homes and frivolities of 18th-century royals. The performances and style, as well as the surprising amount of humour, are what really makes this film work so well, and elevate it above the usual period drama ranks into something special. Not to mention Horatio, the fastest duck in the City. Move over Colman, he's the real MVP of this film. 8/10, Medium Recommendation
3. Joker - Todd Phillips
Yes, I'm putting it this high on the list. No, I still wouldn't call it a masterpiece, and in a more interesting year this probably wouldn't have made the top five either, but as I said in my review, it's still a good film, and it's definitely left an impression. Whether you agree with the film's message or even on what the message is, it's difficult to deny that it's a very well made film, and I don't think people would be reacting as strongly to it if it weren't so thoroughly absorbing and atmospheric. 8/10, High Recommendation
2. Midsommar - Ari Aster
Ari Aster is definitely one of the directors whose career I'm currently watching with keen interest, along with Chazelle and Villeneuve among others. A comparison with last year's Hereditary is pretty much inevitable, and while Midsommar is more consistent, I think Hereditary still had a deeper effect on me. There's a level of micromanaged perfection in this film that reminds me of Refn, where every shot seems to have been meticulously polished and tightened, right down to the steadiness of the camera as it glides through the environment. It's not an easy film to get fully on board with: its plot I feel is meant to be interpreted more metaphorically than literally, which isn't unusual for horror, and I think it'll be one of those films that starts to click into place a bit more on rewatches, but if nothing else this film has an absolutely suffocating atmosphere. It captures an overpowering sense of isolation, despite the characters being trapped in a field and surrounded by apparently helpful villagers. It creates a horror of boundaries, about a clash of cultures where the monsters aren't acting out of malice but merely enforcing their own traditions and practices, ones that are so alien to our own culture as to seem inhuman entirely. It almost seems like a comment on how Americans seem to perceive other cultures and the outside world, as creatures to be feared that are plotting against us, when they're the ones being intruded upon, and they're just trying to welcome you to their custom. I wouldn't say it's a scary film, as such, more intimidating and at points uncomfortable, but in a good way. Aster seems to have found a new spin on horror that works for the modern age, and as we enter the new decade, I cannot wait to see where it takes him next. 8/10, High Recommendation
1. Knives Out - Rian Johnson
Another film that I was not expecting to be anywhere near as good as it was, Johnson's Agatha Christie-inspired whodunnit is an excellently written romp. As a lot of people have already said, it's kinda difficult to talk about without going into detail on the plot, and this is not the kind of film you want spoiled for you. What I will say is that not an inch of this script is wasted, and every little moment has some significance later on, in a way that I found very satisfying as a writer. It's a film that's very self-aware and is able to throw even the smartest of viewers off the scent incredibly early on, so while you're distracted with what seems like the solution, you don't even notice all the other clues being established that point towards the true answer, even when some of them are staring you right in the face. It's an all-star cast, and there's this brilliant sense that each of them are loving every second of it, chewing the scenery and each getting their moment to shine in their malicious brilliance. Not all the jokes land, and there are definitely characters that I wish got a bit more to do, but overall this was a really slick and enjoyable thriller, and the final shot had me beaming ear-to-ear, which has historically been a good sign. 9/10, High Recommendation
And there we go, end of a decade. A shining sea of possibility stretches out before us as we enter the 2020s. What sights will this decade bring? First man on Mars? First woman on Mars? Hell, first everyone on Mars, as we all flee our doomed planet and let the politicians fight over what's left.
"Don't feel sad, Timmy. Yes, the Earth got destroyed by global warming, but we have Mars now, and it's got blackjack and hookers... and we even had time on the way over to collect every single copy of Cats and jettison them into space where they fucking belong."
Happy new year.
NB: For those interested, you can see my full 2019 ranking here
Tuesday 31 December 2019
Monday 23 December 2019
Cats (2019) - Off of the Stage and Into the Litter Tray
Don't worry, you'll still be getting the annual top five, but consider this a Christmas treat: a bonus review. Since it's the opening weekend and thus still very much the hot topic, I was gonna talk about Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, then I remembered it's Star Wars, which historically has a fanbase best likened to a honey badger trapped in a washing machine, and not only that, I'm one of those freaks who still loves The Last Jedi, and so I decided it might be wiser to avoid getting my eyes gouged out at an eco-friendly thirty-degree heat and turn my sights on the other, more agreeably bad film opening this weekend, Cats. Because frankly, I couldn't think when else I was gonna get a chance to talk about it and I can't let this travesty go uncommented on.
Now as a disclaimer, I'm well aware of the stage musical that this is adapted from, and from what I've researched the stage version is just as problematic story-wise as the film is, so the film has been effectively shot in the knee before it even left the gate. But here's the thing: a big part of adaptation is changing a story so that it will work in a new medium. A loose, barely existent plot might work on stage, where the musical is, in reality, closer to a ballet than anything, but on screen where story is a lot more crucial, you need to add something more for it to work, especially if you're trying to make a mainstream crowd-pleaser for all the family to enjoy.
With all that in mind, Cats is a film almost entirely devoid of plot, protagonists, character development or motivations. The closest thing that resembles a story is that a gang of London cats called the Jellicles have an annual talent show, the winner of which ascends to 'the Heaviside layer'. On stage, this is supposed to mean being reborn as a Jellicle but the film doesn't clarify that very well to my memory, so the Jellicles are essentially the cat equivalents of either a sacrificial pagan cult or Born Again Christians.
In practice, a nearly silent protagonist cat named Victoria is dropped off in some back alley and the Jellicles gang up on her and basically just sing and dance at her for about an hour like she's some kind of talent scout, while she vacantly stares back at them, presumably waiting for an opportunity to run away. Most of the songs consist of her being introduced to random cats like Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson), Rum Tum Tugger (Jason Derulo) and Bustopher Jones (James Corden) with no real suggestion of why we should care about any of them. And yes those are their real names. Wilson and Corden, in particular, are quite obnoxious, although this is probably just down to them as actors rather than their characters. It might just be me, but I've never really been particularly fond of Corden's comedy, there's a level of smugness to him where he thinks he's a lot funnier than he actually is and it makes him quite punchable. During his song, he gets a "wacky" fourth wall break moment which, to be honest, sounds more like Corden had some kind of breakdown mid-take and they just left it in, like he suddenly just realised he's in fucking Cats. In fact, his line at the end of this moment, delivered with a character breaking level of exasperation, ends with the sentence "you're all......cats!", spoken in such a way that it sounds like the word 'fucking' should be occupying the gap.
You know, that's probably a good a time as any to talk about the elephant in the room: the CGI. This film is somehow rated U, and yet the character design on the cats is child traumatisingly awful. Much has already been said about this when the trailer dropped, and supposedly improvements have been made since then, but I honestly don't know how any of this made it past inspection. For one thing, I don't know any human that would see an extended shot of Rebel Wilson as an anthropomorphic cat scratching away at her cat pussy, and say: "Yes, this is fine. No problems here. Children will love this." But hey, I guess if you're a degenerate, this film has you covered. In fact, that might as well be the tagline.
The character design is just flat out disturbing, in fact a lot of them remind me of Mike Myers in The Cat in the Hat, and trust me, no one wants to be reminded of The Cat in the Hat. The cats' appearance not only makes it hard to relate to them, but it's also just really distracting. They've made them anthropomorphic and yet rendered them with fur in a somewhat photorealistic way, but anthropomorphism doesn't really look very pleasing when it's live-action and certainly not when they still have human faces and hands, sticking them in this weird fur-lined uncanny valley that just triggers some primal discomfort. Genuinely, if they'd gone all the way and just given them cat faces too, I think the film would have been so much better for it, and people would probably not be slating the CG nearly as much as they have been.
There's also something almost sexual about the way they're designed, and while I'm sure it wasn't intentional, there's this kind of uncomfortable atmosphere where you just know someone somewhere is getting off to it. If the cats had more of a humans-in-a-costume vibe like in the stage show, it would probably be OK, but because they've tried to commit to the cat aspect, there's a lot of attention drawn to the fact that most of them while of human shape and proportion are not wearing clothes, and those that are do not have underwear. So now you're sat watching a film that's seems clearly aimed at kids, or at least families with relatively young children, with a load of essentially naked, although at least genital-less, humans slinking around, lapping up milk, nuzzling each other and just generally acting cat-like in a frankly fetishistic way. Luckily no-one goes uwu.
As far as I'm aware, the film is relatively faithful to the stage version, not that there's much plot to be faithful to, but there is one strange area where the film deviates. Idris Elba, who's clearly accepted the shit he's in and is just rolling with it and enjoying every second, plays Macavity, a villain cat who wants to win the talent show. Again, why this means so much to him is never explained, considering the only reward seemingly of becoming an Evanjellicle is official membership, which doesn't seem like something that would interest him. On stage, he occasionally shows up to abduct his competition, presumably by means of hessian sack or Fulton recovery system or another classic kidnap method. In the film, however, he just sorta vanishes them. He'll tap someone on the shoulder and POOF! Evaporated. Then they reappear on a barge in the middle of the Thames. It's a nitpicky detail I'll admit but it's just kinda baffling; call me cynical but I somehow don't buy that this is a world where magical teleportation exists, let alone a world where it's just shrugged off as something that happens.
It gets weirder though. Eventually, he disappears Old Deuteronomy (Dame Judi Dench, who definitely seems to have an air of 'I need to fire my agent' to her performance), leaving the Jellicles to wonder what to do next. "Maybe we can just magic her back", says Victoria, in one of the only lines she seems to have, and yes that's more or less a direct quote. And so cue Mister Mistoffelees' number, cause he's a magician, and despite him clearly not knowing how to magic Old Deuteronomy back, somehow he fuckin does it! Without any explanation outside of "iT's MaGiC", she's just back, problem solved and the "plot" continues. It's one of the most egregious deus ex machinas I've seen in ages, and the film barely even cares. Not to mention, we then see all the other kidnapees who've been chained on the barge all this time, and since I guess someone told them they need to wrap this trainwreck up, they just conveniently pull off their chains and escape with minimal effort. How did any of this get past quality assurance?!
Speaking of which, the editing is also pretty messy. There are reports that Hooper was still editing the film right up towards the deadline on Wednesday night, which first of all, I feel that. That was me editing my second-year uni film, knowing what a mess it was and desperately tweaking ANYTHING in an attempt to make it better. And second of all, it kinda shows. The moment that stuck in my mind was during Rum Tum Tugger's song, there's a shot of Rebel Wilson delivering a characteristically unfunny quip, and the shot awkwardly lingers on her for way too long, presumably waiting for the audience to recover from their paroxysms of laughter, but even accounting for that it's uncomfortably long. It feels like an editing error more than anything, you can actually see Wilson's character start to break a bit as she presumably waits for Hooper to call cut. In a broader sense, the film is just a bit of a drag. The lack of any real plot definitely doesn't help, but considering it's only about an hour and fifty minutes long, Cats feels about twice that. I genuinely fell asleep probably around the hour mark for about ten minutes, and when I woke up it honestly felt like I had missed nothing at all.
Cats is a bafflingly bad film, but in a way I do feel sorry for it. The idea of adapting the plot-less stage musical to screen in the first place is basically a massive handicap on the film's part, but the character design sealed its fate, and there's no amount of directorial magic that could have probably saved it. That being said, it's not like the film tries its absolute hardest to overcome its issues, and there were definitely a lot of dodgy choices made in the adaptation, casting and direction. I'd almost consider recommending it, not as a film, but as some kind of exhibition piece. Roll up, roll up one and all! Come and see the freak. Marvel at how James Corden gets smacked in the crotch and feels pain, despite visibly having no genitals!
You're right, you probably didn't want to think about James Corden's cat bollocks ever in your life, but this film made me think about them for multiple seconds and that is a crime that I will never forgive it for!
Cats - 2019 - Tom Hooper - USA
Score: 4
Recommendation: Low
Now as a disclaimer, I'm well aware of the stage musical that this is adapted from, and from what I've researched the stage version is just as problematic story-wise as the film is, so the film has been effectively shot in the knee before it even left the gate. But here's the thing: a big part of adaptation is changing a story so that it will work in a new medium. A loose, barely existent plot might work on stage, where the musical is, in reality, closer to a ballet than anything, but on screen where story is a lot more crucial, you need to add something more for it to work, especially if you're trying to make a mainstream crowd-pleaser for all the family to enjoy.
With all that in mind, Cats is a film almost entirely devoid of plot, protagonists, character development or motivations. The closest thing that resembles a story is that a gang of London cats called the Jellicles have an annual talent show, the winner of which ascends to 'the Heaviside layer'. On stage, this is supposed to mean being reborn as a Jellicle but the film doesn't clarify that very well to my memory, so the Jellicles are essentially the cat equivalents of either a sacrificial pagan cult or Born Again Christians.
In practice, a nearly silent protagonist cat named Victoria is dropped off in some back alley and the Jellicles gang up on her and basically just sing and dance at her for about an hour like she's some kind of talent scout, while she vacantly stares back at them, presumably waiting for an opportunity to run away. Most of the songs consist of her being introduced to random cats like Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson), Rum Tum Tugger (Jason Derulo) and Bustopher Jones (James Corden) with no real suggestion of why we should care about any of them. And yes those are their real names. Wilson and Corden, in particular, are quite obnoxious, although this is probably just down to them as actors rather than their characters. It might just be me, but I've never really been particularly fond of Corden's comedy, there's a level of smugness to him where he thinks he's a lot funnier than he actually is and it makes him quite punchable. During his song, he gets a "wacky" fourth wall break moment which, to be honest, sounds more like Corden had some kind of breakdown mid-take and they just left it in, like he suddenly just realised he's in fucking Cats. In fact, his line at the end of this moment, delivered with a character breaking level of exasperation, ends with the sentence "you're all......cats!", spoken in such a way that it sounds like the word 'fucking' should be occupying the gap.
You know, that's probably a good a time as any to talk about the elephant in the room: the CGI. This film is somehow rated U, and yet the character design on the cats is child traumatisingly awful. Much has already been said about this when the trailer dropped, and supposedly improvements have been made since then, but I honestly don't know how any of this made it past inspection. For one thing, I don't know any human that would see an extended shot of Rebel Wilson as an anthropomorphic cat scratching away at her cat pussy, and say: "Yes, this is fine. No problems here. Children will love this." But hey, I guess if you're a degenerate, this film has you covered. In fact, that might as well be the tagline.
The character design is just flat out disturbing, in fact a lot of them remind me of Mike Myers in The Cat in the Hat, and trust me, no one wants to be reminded of The Cat in the Hat. The cats' appearance not only makes it hard to relate to them, but it's also just really distracting. They've made them anthropomorphic and yet rendered them with fur in a somewhat photorealistic way, but anthropomorphism doesn't really look very pleasing when it's live-action and certainly not when they still have human faces and hands, sticking them in this weird fur-lined uncanny valley that just triggers some primal discomfort. Genuinely, if they'd gone all the way and just given them cat faces too, I think the film would have been so much better for it, and people would probably not be slating the CG nearly as much as they have been.
There's also something almost sexual about the way they're designed, and while I'm sure it wasn't intentional, there's this kind of uncomfortable atmosphere where you just know someone somewhere is getting off to it. If the cats had more of a humans-in-a-costume vibe like in the stage show, it would probably be OK, but because they've tried to commit to the cat aspect, there's a lot of attention drawn to the fact that most of them while of human shape and proportion are not wearing clothes, and those that are do not have underwear. So now you're sat watching a film that's seems clearly aimed at kids, or at least families with relatively young children, with a load of essentially naked, although at least genital-less, humans slinking around, lapping up milk, nuzzling each other and just generally acting cat-like in a frankly fetishistic way. Luckily no-one goes uwu.
As far as I'm aware, the film is relatively faithful to the stage version, not that there's much plot to be faithful to, but there is one strange area where the film deviates. Idris Elba, who's clearly accepted the shit he's in and is just rolling with it and enjoying every second, plays Macavity, a villain cat who wants to win the talent show. Again, why this means so much to him is never explained, considering the only reward seemingly of becoming an Evanjellicle is official membership, which doesn't seem like something that would interest him. On stage, he occasionally shows up to abduct his competition, presumably by means of hessian sack or Fulton recovery system or another classic kidnap method. In the film, however, he just sorta vanishes them. He'll tap someone on the shoulder and POOF! Evaporated. Then they reappear on a barge in the middle of the Thames. It's a nitpicky detail I'll admit but it's just kinda baffling; call me cynical but I somehow don't buy that this is a world where magical teleportation exists, let alone a world where it's just shrugged off as something that happens.
It gets weirder though. Eventually, he disappears Old Deuteronomy (Dame Judi Dench, who definitely seems to have an air of 'I need to fire my agent' to her performance), leaving the Jellicles to wonder what to do next. "Maybe we can just magic her back", says Victoria, in one of the only lines she seems to have, and yes that's more or less a direct quote. And so cue Mister Mistoffelees' number, cause he's a magician, and despite him clearly not knowing how to magic Old Deuteronomy back, somehow he fuckin does it! Without any explanation outside of "iT's MaGiC", she's just back, problem solved and the "plot" continues. It's one of the most egregious deus ex machinas I've seen in ages, and the film barely even cares. Not to mention, we then see all the other kidnapees who've been chained on the barge all this time, and since I guess someone told them they need to wrap this trainwreck up, they just conveniently pull off their chains and escape with minimal effort. How did any of this get past quality assurance?!
Speaking of which, the editing is also pretty messy. There are reports that Hooper was still editing the film right up towards the deadline on Wednesday night, which first of all, I feel that. That was me editing my second-year uni film, knowing what a mess it was and desperately tweaking ANYTHING in an attempt to make it better. And second of all, it kinda shows. The moment that stuck in my mind was during Rum Tum Tugger's song, there's a shot of Rebel Wilson delivering a characteristically unfunny quip, and the shot awkwardly lingers on her for way too long, presumably waiting for the audience to recover from their paroxysms of laughter, but even accounting for that it's uncomfortably long. It feels like an editing error more than anything, you can actually see Wilson's character start to break a bit as she presumably waits for Hooper to call cut. In a broader sense, the film is just a bit of a drag. The lack of any real plot definitely doesn't help, but considering it's only about an hour and fifty minutes long, Cats feels about twice that. I genuinely fell asleep probably around the hour mark for about ten minutes, and when I woke up it honestly felt like I had missed nothing at all.
Cats is a bafflingly bad film, but in a way I do feel sorry for it. The idea of adapting the plot-less stage musical to screen in the first place is basically a massive handicap on the film's part, but the character design sealed its fate, and there's no amount of directorial magic that could have probably saved it. That being said, it's not like the film tries its absolute hardest to overcome its issues, and there were definitely a lot of dodgy choices made in the adaptation, casting and direction. I'd almost consider recommending it, not as a film, but as some kind of exhibition piece. Roll up, roll up one and all! Come and see the freak. Marvel at how James Corden gets smacked in the crotch and feels pain, despite visibly having no genitals!
You're right, you probably didn't want to think about James Corden's cat bollocks ever in your life, but this film made me think about them for multiple seconds and that is a crime that I will never forgive it for!
Cats - 2019 - Tom Hooper - USA
Score: 4
Recommendation: Low
Saturday 14 December 2019
Extra Rambles: The Hidden Message in Ford v Ferrari
This year saw the beginning of a new endeavour on my part, one that had been floating around the back of my mind for a while as a potential idea, that I've now finally put into effect. A boycott against Disney films. Now, the complete list of reasons behind this decision could probably fill multiple blog posts, and any long-time readers or close friends of mine are probably aware of some of them, so for sake of brevity, this key reason is that I feel Disney are gradually moving towards a monopolisation of the film industry, homogenising and perpetuating their intellectual properties until every penny has been wrung out of them, and basically, I don't want to support that.
Annoyingly for me, this is a surprisingly difficult protest to totally abide by, with Disney's constant acquisition of other companies and properties. I took my dad to see Ford v Ferrari the other week (known by the slightly weaker title of Le Mans '66 over here) since it has been getting decent reviews and my dad is very much a petrolhead. Not to mention, modern motorsport films in general have been reliably pretty excellent, with the likes of Senna and Rush both impressing me.
And while I imagine based on the timescale and the type of production Ford v Ferrari is that Disney's input on it was negligible, that still didn't comfort me much as I saw the 20th Century Fox logo blaring on the screen and the little critic voice in the back of my head couldn't help but exclaim, "ah, fuck."
Strangely though, with Disney occupying my thoughts in the background as I watched the film, this knowledge started to reframe my perception of the story and became suddenly aware of a deeper message lurking behind the film, one that seems incredibly apt in the year that Fox was bought out by Disney, and, with James Mangold in the directing chair, the same man who bought us Logan, a superhero film that revelled in its deviance from the other cookie-cutter Marvel films that preceded it, a message that I feel can't be completely accidental.
So without wishing to sound like a stuck record, here's my reading of the film.
For those who haven't seen it, the film revolves around the Ford motor company, in the midst of a sales slump and eager to find a new edge to regain their popularity. They approach Ferrari with a proposal to forge a joint racing team, but after a brutal rejection, they decide to build their own car instead to beat Ferrari at the next Le Mans race.
And thus begins the construction of the Ford GT40, spearheaded by car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) with loose cannon Ken Miles (Christian Bale) down as the driver. However, the duo are faced not only with overcoming the engineering obstacles but political ones too, as the Ford executives constantly meddle to maintain what they feel is right for the Ford brand, rather than what will get the job done.
Some of you may have worked out where I'm going with this.
The driving philosophy of the film (no, that wasn't deliberate but it's fucking staying in) seems to be that auteurism is essential for creating a product with a clear intention or ambition and that achieves it. A product is better and stronger as one cohesive vision rather than fiddled and tampered with by lots of grubby hands thinking they know what's best for the brand. Just because something might be better received from a publicity standpoint doesn't mean it's what's best for the product, and in fact, what might look better for marketing and what will actually work are often completely different from each other. A message that I can't help but feel is made in protest of Disney and their approach to their film franchises, if not the company as a whole.
Here's one of the most prominent examples from the film. After finishing the first prototype of the GT40, Ford decides to test it at one of the upcoming races, but the executives make the decision that Ken Miles cannot drive the car, as he is far too abrasive and unpredictable to represent Ford, and might damage their image. Shelby protests, but they won't listen. Unsurprisingly, without Miles's maverick attitude or passion behind the wheel, Ford lose the race, and Shelby is able to convince them to rehire Miles, provided he can win Daytona, which of course he does.
Now I'm not saying it's a perfect comparison, but to me at least this seems more than a little reminiscent of the debacle Disney and Marvel have had over the firing of more visionary directors, such as Edgar Wright from Ant-Man and Phil Lord and Chris Miller from Solo: A Star Wars Story, in both cases being booted for supposed creative differences. These are writer-directors known for their ability to deviate from genre norms and a self-aware approach to their comedy, so it's not a huge leap to think that Disney took one look at what these guys had achieved so far, got frightened that the films were deviating just a bit too much from the regime to nicely represent the Disney brand, and promptly booted Wright, Lord and Miller and brought in directors who will do it how they're fucking told to and we'll have a little less of that lip, young man.
When it really boils down to it, Disney seems to be a company far more concerned with brand than content, making films seemingly more out of obligation than any actual artistic or creative drive. If the film isn't a smooth inoffensive slurry that can be easily poured down an audience's throat, then how will people ever bring themselves to buy up all the merchandise? And this is pretty much the indictment at the heart of Ford v Ferrari, as even in the film Ford's motivation for building the GT40 and competing in Le Mans is to inject more life into the Ford brand and get more people to buy their mass-produced factory cars rather than any real passion for racing, while the GT40 represents what can happen when a product is made with heart and passion and artistic vision. A final protest as Fox is swallowed by the amorphous mass of the Disney corporation.
And to clarify, I'm not saying that every Disney film is automatically terrible: there are always people involved with these projects that are at least trying to make quality cinema and they do often succeed. Love it or hate it, The Last Jedi was one of the more visionary tentpole Disney films of recent years and while there undoubtedly was studio meddling, the sheer divisiveness of it suggests that Rian Johnson probably had a fair amount of creative control and was able to do things how he wanted.
After all, this is only my interpretation of Ford v Ferrari; I'm just relaying what the film seemed to be saying. So if you've got a problem, take it up with James Mangold. Although, ya know, he ain't wrong.
There's also probably a lot more to this reading than I've been able to cover in this post, but I'll leave that for you to discover for yourselves. This is only Extra Rambles, after all: these are supposed to be shorter than the main posts...
Annoyingly for me, this is a surprisingly difficult protest to totally abide by, with Disney's constant acquisition of other companies and properties. I took my dad to see Ford v Ferrari the other week (known by the slightly weaker title of Le Mans '66 over here) since it has been getting decent reviews and my dad is very much a petrolhead. Not to mention, modern motorsport films in general have been reliably pretty excellent, with the likes of Senna and Rush both impressing me.
And while I imagine based on the timescale and the type of production Ford v Ferrari is that Disney's input on it was negligible, that still didn't comfort me much as I saw the 20th Century Fox logo blaring on the screen and the little critic voice in the back of my head couldn't help but exclaim, "ah, fuck."
Strangely though, with Disney occupying my thoughts in the background as I watched the film, this knowledge started to reframe my perception of the story and became suddenly aware of a deeper message lurking behind the film, one that seems incredibly apt in the year that Fox was bought out by Disney, and, with James Mangold in the directing chair, the same man who bought us Logan, a superhero film that revelled in its deviance from the other cookie-cutter Marvel films that preceded it, a message that I feel can't be completely accidental.
So without wishing to sound like a stuck record, here's my reading of the film.
For those who haven't seen it, the film revolves around the Ford motor company, in the midst of a sales slump and eager to find a new edge to regain their popularity. They approach Ferrari with a proposal to forge a joint racing team, but after a brutal rejection, they decide to build their own car instead to beat Ferrari at the next Le Mans race.
And thus begins the construction of the Ford GT40, spearheaded by car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) with loose cannon Ken Miles (Christian Bale) down as the driver. However, the duo are faced not only with overcoming the engineering obstacles but political ones too, as the Ford executives constantly meddle to maintain what they feel is right for the Ford brand, rather than what will get the job done.
Some of you may have worked out where I'm going with this.
The driving philosophy of the film (no, that wasn't deliberate but it's fucking staying in) seems to be that auteurism is essential for creating a product with a clear intention or ambition and that achieves it. A product is better and stronger as one cohesive vision rather than fiddled and tampered with by lots of grubby hands thinking they know what's best for the brand. Just because something might be better received from a publicity standpoint doesn't mean it's what's best for the product, and in fact, what might look better for marketing and what will actually work are often completely different from each other. A message that I can't help but feel is made in protest of Disney and their approach to their film franchises, if not the company as a whole.
Here's one of the most prominent examples from the film. After finishing the first prototype of the GT40, Ford decides to test it at one of the upcoming races, but the executives make the decision that Ken Miles cannot drive the car, as he is far too abrasive and unpredictable to represent Ford, and might damage their image. Shelby protests, but they won't listen. Unsurprisingly, without Miles's maverick attitude or passion behind the wheel, Ford lose the race, and Shelby is able to convince them to rehire Miles, provided he can win Daytona, which of course he does.
Now I'm not saying it's a perfect comparison, but to me at least this seems more than a little reminiscent of the debacle Disney and Marvel have had over the firing of more visionary directors, such as Edgar Wright from Ant-Man and Phil Lord and Chris Miller from Solo: A Star Wars Story, in both cases being booted for supposed creative differences. These are writer-directors known for their ability to deviate from genre norms and a self-aware approach to their comedy, so it's not a huge leap to think that Disney took one look at what these guys had achieved so far, got frightened that the films were deviating just a bit too much from the regime to nicely represent the Disney brand, and promptly booted Wright, Lord and Miller and brought in directors who will do it how they're fucking told to and we'll have a little less of that lip, young man.
When it really boils down to it, Disney seems to be a company far more concerned with brand than content, making films seemingly more out of obligation than any actual artistic or creative drive. If the film isn't a smooth inoffensive slurry that can be easily poured down an audience's throat, then how will people ever bring themselves to buy up all the merchandise? And this is pretty much the indictment at the heart of Ford v Ferrari, as even in the film Ford's motivation for building the GT40 and competing in Le Mans is to inject more life into the Ford brand and get more people to buy their mass-produced factory cars rather than any real passion for racing, while the GT40 represents what can happen when a product is made with heart and passion and artistic vision. A final protest as Fox is swallowed by the amorphous mass of the Disney corporation.
And to clarify, I'm not saying that every Disney film is automatically terrible: there are always people involved with these projects that are at least trying to make quality cinema and they do often succeed. Love it or hate it, The Last Jedi was one of the more visionary tentpole Disney films of recent years and while there undoubtedly was studio meddling, the sheer divisiveness of it suggests that Rian Johnson probably had a fair amount of creative control and was able to do things how he wanted.
After all, this is only my interpretation of Ford v Ferrari; I'm just relaying what the film seemed to be saying. So if you've got a problem, take it up with James Mangold. Although, ya know, he ain't wrong.
There's also probably a lot more to this reading than I've been able to cover in this post, but I'll leave that for you to discover for yourselves. This is only Extra Rambles, after all: these are supposed to be shorter than the main posts...
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