Seven sinful films of 2014 from around the world that you should probably avoid but that you probably shouldn’t
Good behaviour doesn’t seem to make for particularly good drama, at least not for some of the most interesting films previewed earlier this month at the BFI London Film Festival. Listed in order of transgression, the films contain depravities each unique in character which I elaborate on in greater detail so that you can ensure their exclusion from our social body.
1. Gluttony
Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev)
The festival’s ‘Official Competition Winner – Best Film’ represents that rare thing: a truly original film, novelistic in its richness of character, cinematic in its scale and gripping in its plot, grimly working itself to final devastation. Starting with the minor drama of a middle-aged man trying to maintain the legal rights to his property against the claims of the rural town’s mayor, the scope stretches to both the wilds of nature and the nature of power in Russian society.
A washed-up whale skeleton appears, embodying the Leviathan of the title. It gives a pre-historic dimension to the Old Testament allegory of Leviathan that an Orthodox priest recounts. But it gives further layers to the meaning of the film. The philosopher Hobbes called for an all-powerful, absolute monarchy to act as a Leviathan keeping order amidst the chaos of 17th century England. A century ago, Russian revolutionary Trotsky criticised the Tsarist state as a bureaucratised Leviathan – a state that Trotsky was briefly to govern before the ever-expanding Soviet bureaucracy felled and then destroyed him. In the rural outpost shown here, little local Tsars feed their all-consuming appetites, as the ever-expanding, entrapping corruption of Putin-era Russia extracts a fatal price.
2. Envy
Foxcatcher (Bennett Miller)
On the other hand, bringing us to the all-American competitive fighting spirit, this true story was, for many, one of the best films of the festival. Steve Carrell plays the lonely dead-eyed heir of the Du Pont weapons dynasty, keen for a hobby, but without the discernable talent he envies in others. Channing Tatum achieves a breakout role playing Mark Schultz, an impoverished, monosyllabic wrestler enticed by Du Pont to his palatial Pennsylvania estate. The two form a co-dependent father/son relationship as they train the Foxcatcher team for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. However, their bond is disrupted by Du Pont’s ulterior urge to involve Mark’s older, more successful brother. The series of murderous events this sets in motion leads to eventual mutual ruination.
3. Wrath
Wild Tales (Damián Szifrón)
My favourite film of the festival was a type of film not seen much since the 1960s: a portmanteau film, or collection of short stories. A grandmotherly chef instructs the waitress to poison the mayor who has arrived in their diner; a yuppie comes to regret a minor act of road rage against a ‘redneck’ trucker; a demolition expert queries a parking fine he believes to be unjust; a gardener takes the rap for a rich man’s son; the wife of a handsome prince discovers his infidelity during their first dance at their wedding ceremony. Each of the five stories of this Argentine film condenses the pleasures of comedy, action and satire in the swift workings of their plot mechanics, in a film held together by the uncontrollable consequences of anger.
4. Sloth
Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)
Sloth would be the ultimate sin for players in an ultra-competitive jazz band. The music is great, but what elevates this story of bright lights and stage success from musical cliché, is the straight brutality that turns the rehearsals for the jazz ensemble into nothing less than a military camp with added rhythms. The real sin here is ambition, the desire to overreach, to be the greatest in musical history. The stunning dialogue conveys all the hatred and competition underlying creativity, delivered with as much speed and energy as the finger-bleeding drum solos. We never quite know until the very final moments whether acceptance, success, despair or brutal enmity will win out.
5. Lust
Serena (Susanne Bier)
Susanne Bier’s latest film takes us to the expanses of Depression-era North Carolina, where eagles soar above the beautiful Great Smoky Mountains. A passionate partnership for Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, together again after American Hustle, proves to have both matrimonial and business benefits, as Lawrence’s character shocks the conservative town by advancing her husband’s railroad interests with cut-throat endeavour. When, however, tragedy hits the pregnant wife, and a woman returns with her husband’s illegitimate son, the passion turns cruelly fatal.
Honourable mention: Casa Grande (Fellipe Barbosa)
This Brazilian coming-of-age tale about a teenager discovering romance, the favelas, and how to dance to the rhythms of forrò, takes its title from a phrase that means ‘master’s house’. The film’s take on sex, class and family relations in modern Rio is incisive, funny and touching throughout.
6. Greed
Chasing Berlusconi (King Curling)
This tale of a fat Norwegian jockey trying to pay his way, keep his wife happy, avoid the police and manage the various disreputable types that populate the worlds of racing and of debt collection has nothing to do with Italian politics. Berlusconi is a prize-winning racehorse whose name conjures dreams of hitting the big time. Much else gets hit in this hilarious farce, but it is by no means the big time, as a vast cast of characters each expose their petty shortcomings and vain desperations.
Dishonourable mention: A Hard Day (Seong-hoon Kim)
A cop runs a man over and decides to place the body in his mother’s coffin, to be interred the following day – but the misdemeanour will not be buried with the funeral casket. Everyone is on the make in this noir-ish South Korean action drama that will shred your nerves to pieces.
7. Pride
French Riviera (André Techiné)
In another true story, this great thriller by André Techiné recounts a still unsolved mystery. A casino owner, played by Catherine Deneuve, sees her business on the French Riviera threatened by predatory rivals connected to the Calabrian Mafia. This is no gangster film, but a dense drama about the mysteries of human motivations. Her hotshot young lawyer, who has also bedded most of the town’s eligible young women, attracts the attentions of her vulnerable, beautiful daughter. When Deneuve casts the lawyer adrift, her daughter is left to pay the emotional price. Each of the three is suspicious of betrayal from one of the others, and each one pays a high price in seeking redress.
Maybe films do have an effect on the morals of society; after all we still seem to exalt those who find fame on the silver screen. We British call those heavenly bodies ‘stars’, the Italians go one better and call them ‘divas’, or deities, while the French probably get closest to the mark when they describe them as ‘sacred monsters’. In 1955, the pope saw fit to summon filmmakers to warn them of the profane enchantment of movies, and many have compared our visits to the cinema as modern, urban acts of ritual devotion.
With that in mind, let us leave you with a truly uplifting morality tale, A New Girlfriend (François Ozon), a film whose… well, to say much more would be to risk spoilers, so let’s just say, whose path to the righteousness of love in defiance of social convention may not be an orthodox one, but is no less effective for that.
Image from: http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2014/10/serena4.jpg