In Contention

Tag: Nineteen Eighty

  • Yorkshire confidential

    I didn’t get a chance to mention it during our recent hiatus, but last Wednesday I saw a film that stands, for me, head and shoulders above any other 2009 release so far — one I can easily imagine still coming into play for my own Best of 2009 honours come December. A heady artistic breakthrough from a filmmaker I had never previously rated, with an immaculate cast of rising talent, it’s truly significant, surprising cinema.

    There’s a catch, however. It’s not showing at a theatre near you — or any other, for that matter. For the film I’m talking about is “Nineteen Seventy-Four,” the first part of Channel 4’s ambitious, much-hyped TV endeavour “Red Riding” — a trilogy of self-standing films chronicling the infamous Yorkshire Ripper murders of the 1970s and early 1980s.

    Deftly adapted by Tony Grisoni (“In This World,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”) from a quartet of novels by David Peace (a brilliant writer occasionally labelled, not without justification, as the UK’s answer to James Ellroy — he’s also behind the upcoming “Damned United”), the films examine both the social and official levels of corruption stirred by the crimes over an entire decade, but each has its own distinct thematic and cinematic character.

    I was first alerted to the project when interviewing James Marsh last year — the Oscar-winning “Man on Wire” filmmaker helmed “Nineteen Eighty,” the second instalment of the trilogy. Marsh’s contribution is a sober, intelligent piece of  procedural drama, enlivened by a terrific lead turn from Paddy Considine, but it’s really “Nineteen Seventy-Four,” the more oblique, mood-driven piece, that has stuck with me these past two weeks.

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Man on Wire’ director James Marsh

    James MarshIt’s a rare achievement, but through the ups and downs the last fortnight’s precursors, one film has failed to miss a beat, landing gongs from the New York, Los Angeles and Washington critics, as well as the NBR and the British Independents, not to mention Indie Spirit and BFCA nominations.

    That film would be “Man On Wire,” James Marsh’s crisp, witty and ultimately very moving documentary about Philippe Petit, the charismatic French performance artist who in 1974 committed the so-called “artistic crime of the century” — an illegal tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the New York’s World Trade Center. Despite being what some might have seen as a niche project, it has emerged as one of the most acclaimed films (a Metacritic score of 89 speaks for itself), not to mention one of the top-grossing documentaries, of the year.

    Marsh, for one, admits to being a bit taken aback to his film’s dizzying trajectory. “It‘s both a thrill and a surprise,” he tells me on the phone, taking a breather from the deadline-driven editing of his new film. “It’s a great, hopeful story, but there’s such a tragic connotation to those buildings now that I wasn’t sure how audiences would respond to it.”

    By avoiding any 9/11 discussion in the film, however, Marsh was keen to keep the focus on themes of art and ambition, and he believes this is what so many viewers have connected with in the material. “It’s a fairytale, really,” he elaborates. “A real, true movie premise about achieving the impossible. Philippe is an adventurer, a superhero made flesh and blood. I love that what he did was in a way kind of pointless — it’s beauty for its own sake. And I love that audiences appreciate that.”

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