Impressive but disturbing films
Oct. 31st, 2018 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livA couple of weeks ago I wanted to watch a film with jack for our date night, and browsing through what happened to be available on a convenient streaming service, we picked Attack the block. I had heard good things about the film when it came out a few years back, and I liked the concept of an alien invasion through the eyes of teenagers from a dodgy south London housing estate. I did in fact like the film a lot, but I was not prepared for close-ups of ravening monsters devouring people.
Attack the block was a really good mixture of a shallow action thriller, with some really acute characterization and a pinch of social commentary. It was refreshing to see a film that centred people who aren't at all the usual Hollywood types.
I really liked the gang, they all seemed like people I cared about (which made it all the more upsetting watching several major characters get torn to pieces). They're really vivid as a portrayal of toughs who are violent and take a lot of drugs, but are also vulnerable pre-adults who don't have a lot of life chances. There is exactly one female character, the nurse played by Jodie Whittaker who enters the story because the alien invasion starts when the gang are in the middle of mugging her. Her relationship with the boys was really interesting; she comes from a completely different social milieu from them, and is justifiably angry about the mugging, but they build up a strange rapport in the strange circumstances. And nobody is rescuing any helpless damsels; it would be totally out of character for a bunch of disaffected teenagers anyway! The boys attempt to sexualize her, but the camera doesn't; the narrative clearly shows that as teenage boys trying to show off and coming across as basically ridiculous.
And then there's John Boyega as Moses. The download we saw listed Whittaker and a couple of random white guys with about two lines each as the 'stars', and didn't mention Boyega as the lead at all, presumably because the film was made before he got famous in Star Wars. But Moses absolutely 100% is the main character. His name is not subtle; he is the leader who saves his people but doesn't make it to the promised land. He really really carried the film, and there's a great moment when the nurse has to go into his bedroom and realizes that even though he's a scary big Black guy who's the leader of a violent gang, he's also a child.
The sound track is great, the visuals are great. Just way way more gore than I was expecting.
And then yesterday I went to the film festival withjack, and we picked Rafiki. It's billed as a touching love story, and it sort of is, but it's also about two teenage girls trying to navigate a massively homophobic environment, and there's a very high ratio of awful, including violent, homophobia to sweet touching love scenes.
I really don't know what to make of Rafiki. It's amazingly well acted, with gorgeous cinematography, and a real sense of place and character. Both the main characters are incredibly vividly portrayed. There are no gratuitous white people, and the lesbians don't die. But almost all of it is a relentless catalogue of how homophobia is awful.
In some ways it felt like this film wasn't for me. It was so immersive that I felt almost voyeuristic when they showed a very mild sex scene, nothing more than kissing and soft focus and fade to black, but I still felt, why am I looking at these teenagers' first kiss on screen? And similarly with the very vivid explorations of Kena's troubled relationship with her divorced parents, her precarious friendships, her general day-to-day life in a relatively run-down part of a Kenyan town; it wasn't about me as a European viewer fluent in Hollywood tropes rather than African ones.
For the first section of the film, I had hoped that the obstacle in the path of true love was going to be centred around the political rivalry between the two girls' fathers and the class differences between them. But no, the obstacle they have to face is homophobia. They are discovered and horribly beaten up by some local youths, egged on by influential local gossips. I felt the amount that the camera lingered on the violence was excessive; it would have been fine to show the youths dragging the couple out of their van and then cut to showing their injuries. If the film avoids being porny in the literal sense, it seemed to skirt close to being violence and misery porn. And then the girls are arrested by homophobic police, and rejected by their homophobic parents and former friends, and prayed over by the homophobic minister, and the rebellious rich girl Ziki is sent away. The film doesn't end on that downbeat note, there's a little happy ending sequence tacked on where Kena succeeds in getting into medical school despite her unpromising origins, and Ziki comes back to her and they go off into the sunset. But there's nothing to show how they maintained their relationship while separated, nothing about them actually going on to develop a happy relationship, it's just a long section of them suffering from every type of homophobia that can be crammed in, and then suddenly happy sunset romance.
I suppose Hollywood went through a phase where the only films about same-sex relationships were Serious Issues films about homophobia (and AIDS), and it may be that African cinema needs to pass through that stage in its trajectory. I know this film is fairly ground-breaking and has been banned in its country of origin, so in some sense it's important for more people to see it. And I was genuinely pleased to see African actors being awesome. But I'm not sure watching a feature film all about homophobia, with explicit violence, was the right choice for me, especially not this week when I'm heartsick about people murdering Jews.
jack for our date night, and browsing through what happened to be available on a convenient streaming service, we picked Attack the block. I had heard good things about the film when it came out a few years back, and I liked the concept of an alien invasion through the eyes of teenagers from a dodgy south London housing estate. I did in fact like the film a lot, but I was not prepared for close-ups of ravening monsters devouring people.Attack the block was a really good mixture of a shallow action thriller, with some really acute characterization and a pinch of social commentary. It was refreshing to see a film that centred people who aren't at all the usual Hollywood types.
I really liked the gang, they all seemed like people I cared about (which made it all the more upsetting watching several major characters get torn to pieces). They're really vivid as a portrayal of toughs who are violent and take a lot of drugs, but are also vulnerable pre-adults who don't have a lot of life chances. There is exactly one female character, the nurse played by Jodie Whittaker who enters the story because the alien invasion starts when the gang are in the middle of mugging her. Her relationship with the boys was really interesting; she comes from a completely different social milieu from them, and is justifiably angry about the mugging, but they build up a strange rapport in the strange circumstances. And nobody is rescuing any helpless damsels; it would be totally out of character for a bunch of disaffected teenagers anyway! The boys attempt to sexualize her, but the camera doesn't; the narrative clearly shows that as teenage boys trying to show off and coming across as basically ridiculous.
And then there's John Boyega as Moses. The download we saw listed Whittaker and a couple of random white guys with about two lines each as the 'stars', and didn't mention Boyega as the lead at all, presumably because the film was made before he got famous in Star Wars. But Moses absolutely 100% is the main character. His name is not subtle; he is the leader who saves his people but doesn't make it to the promised land. He really really carried the film, and there's a great moment when the nurse has to go into his bedroom and realizes that even though he's a scary big Black guy who's the leader of a violent gang, he's also a child.
The sound track is great, the visuals are great. Just way way more gore than I was expecting.
And then yesterday I went to the film festival with
jack, and we picked Rafiki. It's billed as a touching love story, and it sort of is, but it's also about two teenage girls trying to navigate a massively homophobic environment, and there's a very high ratio of awful, including violent, homophobia to sweet touching love scenes. I really don't know what to make of Rafiki. It's amazingly well acted, with gorgeous cinematography, and a real sense of place and character. Both the main characters are incredibly vividly portrayed. There are no gratuitous white people, and the lesbians don't die. But almost all of it is a relentless catalogue of how homophobia is awful.
In some ways it felt like this film wasn't for me. It was so immersive that I felt almost voyeuristic when they showed a very mild sex scene, nothing more than kissing and soft focus and fade to black, but I still felt, why am I looking at these teenagers' first kiss on screen? And similarly with the very vivid explorations of Kena's troubled relationship with her divorced parents, her precarious friendships, her general day-to-day life in a relatively run-down part of a Kenyan town; it wasn't about me as a European viewer fluent in Hollywood tropes rather than African ones.
For the first section of the film, I had hoped that the obstacle in the path of true love was going to be centred around the political rivalry between the two girls' fathers and the class differences between them. But no, the obstacle they have to face is homophobia. They are discovered and horribly beaten up by some local youths, egged on by influential local gossips. I felt the amount that the camera lingered on the violence was excessive; it would have been fine to show the youths dragging the couple out of their van and then cut to showing their injuries. If the film avoids being porny in the literal sense, it seemed to skirt close to being violence and misery porn. And then the girls are arrested by homophobic police, and rejected by their homophobic parents and former friends, and prayed over by the homophobic minister, and the rebellious rich girl Ziki is sent away. The film doesn't end on that downbeat note, there's a little happy ending sequence tacked on where Kena succeeds in getting into medical school despite her unpromising origins, and Ziki comes back to her and they go off into the sunset. But there's nothing to show how they maintained their relationship while separated, nothing about them actually going on to develop a happy relationship, it's just a long section of them suffering from every type of homophobia that can be crammed in, and then suddenly happy sunset romance.
I suppose Hollywood went through a phase where the only films about same-sex relationships were Serious Issues films about homophobia (and AIDS), and it may be that African cinema needs to pass through that stage in its trajectory. I know this film is fairly ground-breaking and has been banned in its country of origin, so in some sense it's important for more people to see it. And I was genuinely pleased to see African actors being awesome. But I'm not sure watching a feature film all about homophobia, with explicit violence, was the right choice for me, especially not this week when I'm heartsick about people murdering Jews.
