May 2016 book and film review

BOOKS

THE SON, by Joe Nesbo. A young man has languished in jail for years, maintaining his drug habit via a porous security regime, until the opportunity for escape arises. Once free, he dedicates his life to bringing down those responsible for his father's death. But his targets include some of off the baddest badasses in Scandinavia...

This is my first experience with the most popular Scandinavian writer after a guy called Mankel, and I didn't regret it one bit. Like Albert Camus, Nesbo nearly made his career in professional football before injuring himself and deciding to become a rock star before settilng down to write a series of immensely successful crime novels. The Son is intricately designed; strong on character and a plot that has an almost dizzying intensity. Highly recommended airport reading.

LITTLE DORRIT, by Charles Dickens. A man falls on hard times and finds himself in debtors prison, where he spends decade after decade without hope of release. His daughter Amy is even born there and, though technically free, lives there also in order to care for her Dad. But outside the walls of the prison there are people working on his case, and not all of them well intentioned...

I will confess to being a tad disappointed by this book. It is long, there is (as usual) a profusion of characters, both saints and villains, but it fails to convince. Little Dorrit is one of those characters known to Dickens students who is so good, so unblemished that by comparison Mother Theresa would be a whorehouse madame who deals crack as a sideline. There may be people that good out there, but in my 65 years I've never met one. It is always the plot that makes you keep reading a Dickens novel, so that like an addictive soap you have to keep watching because of the compulsion to find out what happens next, I had to plough on to the end despite periods of boredom and frustration.
Strictly for Dickens fanatics.

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, by Virginia Woolf. A wealthy upper-middle class family spends the summer in its retreat on a Hebridean island, with a number of more or less talented hangers-on in tow. Will they take their much vaunted boat trip to the nearby lighthouse or will the weather prevent them?    The matriarch Mrs Ramsay, a beautiful woman of a certain age, is determined to be optimistic, but her grumpy academic husband is one of those glass-half-empty types who is equally determined to pour cold water on the idea. Meanwhile her guests pursue their hobbies, writing poetry or painting, desperately hoping for approval from their adored elders.

After reading the first twenty or so pages of this book, I began to develop the feeling that it wasn't for me. Then I stopped and re-assessed. I'd been reading it too quickly, and that is one thing you must not do with writing of this subtlety. I slowed down and gave it the wholehearted concentration it demands. After all, you don't gulp down a vintage champagne, you take it in small sips, savouring every exultant drop. That's what reading this book is like. Before long I realised I was in the presence of a masterpiece. In this book, where at one level hardly anything seems to happen, Woolf creates a world so acutely observed, so beautifully depicted that you almost feel you have wandered into a painting by Monet or Cezanne. The colours of the sea, the wind moving over the waves are described with the most sublime beauty, while on shore the thoughts, dreams and fears of the players interweave in a tableau that is quite stunning in its insight and wisdom.
Astounding.

FILMS

INSIDE OUT (2015) D- Pete Docter. Inside a young girl's head, a number of archetypes run things: Joy (who seems to be in charge), Anger, Fear, Disgust and Sadness. When her parents decide to relocate to a place far from home, which element of her pre-adolescent personality will come to the fore? Can Joy integrate them into a coherent whole or will the negative components hold sway and turn her into a "bad girl"?
A lot of people liked this Pixar animation and it duly won the Oscar for best animated feature this year. Deservedly so in my view. The visual ideas are excellent and the execution, as usual with Pixar, is superlative, but it is the psychological insight which raises it above the "normal" cartoon film, because it demonstrates the importance of all our character traits: Joy and Sadness, Anger and Fear. And don't forget Disgust. They're all part of who we are.

HOT PURSUIT (2015) D- Anne Fletcher. A straight-laced cop has to escort a couple across country to testify against the leader of a Mexican drugs cartel. On the way the husband is murdered and the two women barely escape with their lives. More "hilarity" ensues as they make their extremely hazardous way to their appointment in a Dallas courtroom.
This movie ought to be hot. I mean, it stars Reece Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara, two of the most sexy women currently working in Hollywood. Trouble is, it isn't. The hoped-for chemistry between the two stars never really takes off and the humour jars badly with the sometimes quite excessive violence. I don't quite know what went wrong, though I think we can blame the most usual suspect: the writing.

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (2010) D- Andre Tachine. A young Jewish girl comes home from a day in Paris and announces she has been raped by a gang of neo-nazis. The news gets out and there is a national outrage. But then, as the investigation proceeds, doubts begin to form as to whether the attack happened at all.
Based on real events, this film competently explores how this bizarre situation may have come about. Emily Dequenne is remarkable as the girl in question, though apart from her performance I found the whole a little sterile.

X MEN; APOCALYPSE. (2015) D- Bryan Singer. The original and genuine X Man takes the stage, with his plans to ethnically cleanse the entire human race. He's had a lot of time to plan it, as he was born in the time of the Pharaohs and entombed alive back then, only to be re-vivified, or whatever). Looks like the only ones who can foil him are today's X men and women, who band together in a last-ditch attempt to save the world.
And there you have it. If you're an X Men person you'll probably get a lot out of it, though I began to lose interest in the franchise when they lost Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. And based on this effort I fear it will be the last time I pay good money to see one.

TRAINWRECK (2015) D- Judd Appatow. Career girl whose heart isn't really in it Amy Schumer (who also wrote the script) fears she will never find Mr Right, and even when she does can't see what she's got. Will she see sense in the end and snag him, and do we care?
This film won a lot of praise when it came out, but it didn't work for me by a big margin. The main problem lies in Bill Hader who plays her boyfriend. He's supposed to be the orthopaedic surgeon to the New York Knicks, while working with "Medicine Without Borders" in his spare time. First, he looks about eighteen, with none of the gravitas one would expect of an eminent surgeon. Second, with a job like that how would you have any spare time to be changing the world in some far-off, war torn land? Like I said, lots of people didn't seem to mind this glitch, but I couldn't get past it.

THE DAY REAGAN WAS SHOT (2001) D- Cyrus Nowrasteh. In the spring of 1981, only weeks after Ronald Reagan was installed as president, a nut job called John Hinkley thought it might impress Jodie Foster if he pumped several bullets into his chest, so he did. Reagan is rushed to hospital, close to death. While doctors try to figure out how to remove a bullet lying against his heart (he was that close to dying) the administration struggles to come to terms with an unprecedented crisis: who's in charge? With the veep out of town, secretary of state Alexander Haig says he is, overlooking that part of the constitution which states that in a situation of this kind, power devolves, not to him, but to Tip O'Neil, Speaker of the House. Haig quickly admits his error, but the damage is done. As Reagan begins to improve, so Haig's fortunes decline, and he rapidly recedes into obscurity.
Moral: Be careful what you say in the heat of the moment, especially when the whole world's listening.
Produced by old hand Oliver Stone, I greatly enjoyed this TV movie, which features a thoroughly convincing performance by Richard Dreyfuss as Haig, and as for Richard Crenna as Reagan, his resemblance in both looks and voice to the real guy is really quite extraordinary.

OUR CHILDREN (2012) D- Joachim Lafosse. A Parisan doctor travels to Morocco and adopts a young Moroccan boy and takes his pretty sister for his wife. Years later the boy finds love with a French girl. They all live in the doctor's house, with the doctor continuing to exert his passive-aggressive control over the whole family. Children, one, two, three, four arrive, and the young family wants to move to a new home, or even back to Morocco. But doctor will have none of it, instead binding the adopted son into a lease agreement he cannot wriggle out of. Bit by bit, the young mother begins to fall apart under the strain, leading to a climax so shocking that, even though nothing is seen or even heard, it disturbed me to the point where I felt physically sick.
That a movie could have such a profound effect on me has a great deal to do with the performance of Emily Dequenne as the young mother worn down by her father-in-law's mind games. Even her physical transformation through the course of the film, from a pretty, carefree creature to the expressionless husk she is by the end of the movie is astonishing.
I haven't seen a better film this year.