The Savages is the third film featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman to be released here in the space of two weeks, but that's no bad thing. The actor was on great form in both Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and Charlie Wilson's War, but in each case his impressive characterisation was wasted on a film in which he was by far the most interesting element. Finally, in Tamara Jenkins' new picture, Hoffman's best performance yet is complemented by equally superb displays from the rest of the ensemble, and a screenplay which tackles uncomfortable themes with astounding perceptiveness and wit. Hoffman and Laura Linney play siblings Jon and Wendy Savage. He's a downbeat theatre professor struggling to finish his long-in-gestation biography of Brecht ("well, he was a very complex man"), while she's a neurotic would-be playwright having an unfulfilling affair with a married man (Peter Friedman). They are brought together when their irascible father Lenny (Philip Bosco) starts showing signs of dementia – writing 'prick' on the wall in faeces during an early scene – and they have to struggle with the reality of caring for a man who never showed them much love when they were growing up.
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney are two of the best actors working in cinema today, and the opportunity to see them playing off each other in this picture is one no lover of great screen acting should pass up. Hoffman is all crumpled cynicism while Linney is highly-strung and self-absorbed, and while neither character seems particularly likable on paper, the richness and nuance in their performances are completely absorbing. Every scene is pitched at exactly the right tone, both actors displaying a stunning ability to draw both humour and pathos out of any given situation as required, and their tangible chemistry is a joy to behold. Still, you can't blame Lenny when, in one scene, he switches off his hearing aid and turns his face to the car window while his offspring squabble like children next to him. At times, Jon and Wendy appear to be so wrapped up in their own dilemmas they are in danger of forgetting about the man whose malaise has brought them together, but Jenkins never allows us to forget about him. Lenny is cranky and abrasive, but Philip Bosco's performance grows increasingly touching as his character tries to hold onto some semblance of dignity in the face of his debilitating illness, and struggles to make sense of his brief moments of clarity.
Jenkins directs her own script with great sensitivity and openness. She has a fine eye for small, telling details – minor gestures which can speak volumes – and she tends towards hinting at the characters' backstories instead of spelling out Lenny's abusive past. The Savages does follow a straightforward narrative arc, with Jon and Wendy growing and changing as they grapple with their experiences, but Jenkins won't let her story slide into easy sentimentality or settle for pat resolutions. Her writing retains a toughness throughout and she gives her characters the opportunity to grow in organic, believable ways; but the film's biggest achievement lies in the tonal balancing act it walks with such grace. The Savages is moving and realistic, sure, but it's also frequently hilarious, finding unexpected humour in almost every scene, and Jenkins never errs in her shifts between this story's darkness and light. I could have done without the weak final scene, and Jenkins' decision to open with a strange set of dancing ladies hints at a quirkier, less engaged route that she (thankfully) doesn't take; but aside from those minor caveats The Savages is a satisfying, adult piece of work which is never less than brutally honest, and never less than seriously funny.
Dan Burns (Steve Carell), the lead character in Peter Hedges' Dan in Real Life, is a newspaper advice columnist, and in the language of cinema that generally indicates a person who has plenty of wisdom to offer others but who has no idea how to control his own life. Ever since his wife died four years previously, Dan has been left to raise their three daughters on his own, and while he's done a pretty good job, he's still having trouble handling the problems inherent in dealing with teenage girls. 17 year-old Jane (Alison Pill) is angry that he won't allow her to drive, and 14 year-old Cara (Brittany Robertson) is angry at his attempts to deter the boy she claims to love, so Dan only has youngest daughter Lilly (Marleen Lawston) on his side by the time they leave for a family gathering at his parents' luxurious home.
What a confusingly large family it is too. Dan's parents are played by John Mahoney and Dianne Wiest, he has two brothers (including Mitch, played by Dane Cook) – each of whom has a wife – and there appear to be a few dozen children racing through the building at any one time, although it's unclear who they belong to. No wonder Dan needs space, and when he takes time out at a local bookstore he bumps into the woman of his dreams, the beguiling Marie who, as she is played by Juliette Binoche in sparkling form, would probably be the woman of any man's dreams. There's one snag, though – Marie is Mitch's new girlfriend, and she's going to be spending the weekend with the family, which means she and Dan will have to put their obvious attraction on hold. Cue a lot of pent-up tension and plenty of scenes in which the pair are almost caught in compromising positions, and cue plenty of tortuous twists in the screenplay as writers Pierce Gardner and Peter Hedges desperately scramble to keep this thin story afloat for 98 minutes.
Hedges also directed the film and, as in 2003's uneven Pieces of April, he shows a knack for working with actors that proves to be the film's strongest suit. Every member of this cast is on fine form – even Dane Cook, a less-than-charismatic presence in films like Good Luck Chuck and Mr Brooks, manages to be tolerable as Dan's brother – and Hedges has struck gold with his unlikely central partnership. This is exactly the kind of film Steve Carell needed after going down with the ship in last year's bloated dud Evan Almighty. Dan is a likable everyman whom Carell plays with understated humour and a hint of the clumsiness and frustration that characterised his star-making turn in The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Alongside him, it seems strange to see the radiant Binoche in a film like this, but it's a rare pleasure, with her lightness of touch complementing her co-star beautifully. This couple has genuine chemistry, and that's why the contrived and false nature of the film they're starring in is such a letdown.
Dan in Real Life wants to be a comedy of awkwardness, but the film never gets the tone right. It veers from sitcom-level silliness (Dan and Marie trapped in the shower), to scenes in which Dan's emotions force him to act like a jerk, to sequences which aim to wring out the tears by any means necessary (that's the main purpose of cute little Lilly), and none of the above truly convinces. The screenplay is cluttered and overwritten, and prone to drawing lazy parallels in Dan's relationship with his girls (he tells one she can't be in love after three days, which then happens to him. He tells one she can't drive, and then she has to drive him during the hackneyed finale), and all of this only serves to highlight further how hollow the picture is. By the end of the film everything works out pretty much as you'd expect it to, and while there's nothing inherently wrong with conventional storytelling, Dan in Real Life would need to be a damn sight funnier than it is for its flaws to be overlooked. Peter Hedges doesn't exactly set high targets for himself with this film, and even with the best efforts of a perfectly capable cast, he still manages to miss those targets with dispiriting frequency.
In the first few minutes of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, you might be forgiven for thinking that this is just more of the same from Tim Burton. After all, the opening credits are basically a rehash of those employed for the director's last film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, except in this case it's blood that we watch dripping down the screen instead of chocolate. Aside from that superficial similarity – and the inevitable presence of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter among the cast – this adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical feels like something fresh coming from a filmmaker who has struggled to find a suitable outlet for his unique sensibility ever since 1994's Ed Wood, his last truly satisfying effort. Sondheim's account of the vengeful barber, who butchered his clients and turned them into meat pies, is a perfect match for Burton. It's a tale ready-made for his gothic style and perverse humour, and it allows him to explore the darkest recesses of his imagination like never before.
Sweeney Todd also gives Burton the opportunity to finally make a full-on musical, after including song-and-dance sequences in a few of his previous films, and this is a musical in the proper sense, with the vast majority of dialogue being sung instead of being restricted to isolated numbers. The film opens with a ship emerging from a thick fog, passing under London Bridge, and a young man on the deck (Jamie Campbell Bower) is moved to sing the city's virtues, telling us that "there's no place like London", but his fellow passenger offers a different view. "There's a hole in the world like a great black pit, and it's filled with people who are filled with shit, and the vermin of the world inhabit it, and it goes by the name of London" Sweeney Todd (Depp) sings, his voiced filled with loathing and disgust. 15 years earlier, Todd was a respected Fleet Street barber named Benjamin Barker, but he was arrested under false charges by the corrupt Judge Turpin (a sneering Alan Rickman) – who had designs on Barker's wife and young child – and exiled forever.
The flashbacks to Benjamin Barker's once-happy life are bathed in golden light, as if from a half-forgotten dream, and there's a later fantasy sequence which is vividly coloured; but whenever the film brings us back to the central story the colours are leeched out of the picture. Burton has always been at his best when allowed to work in black, white and shades of grey, and these are the predominant hues in Dante Ferretti's superb production design, Colleen Atwood's costumes, and Dariusz Wolski's cinematography, giving us an almost monochromatic picture which is dripping with atmosphere. Even the actors appear to have been drained of colour, and Depp certainly cuts a striking figure with his pale skin, darkened eyes and Elsa Lanchester wig. The character of Sweeney Todd fits perfectly within the stable of strange outsiders he and Burton have created over the years; he's another odd loner, viewing humanity from the outside and seemingly unable to connect with others on a normal emotional level, and Depp is remarkably good in the role. He's essentially playing a monster, a man driven only by thoughts of vengeance and hatred, but he manages to suggest a real humanity and soulfulness under the surface, doing some of his most impressive acting only with his eyes.
But what about his voice? Neither Depp, Bonham Carter, nor most of the other cast members are renowned for their singing talents, and it's true that they are unlikely to be taking Broadway by storm any time soon, but their voices have different qualities which are well exploited here. Depp's singing voice is deep and gravelly, but he compensates for his lack of real scale by infusing his songs with emotion. Every line he spits out in that cockney growl comes from deep within him, the tone and pitch of his performance giving us a resonant portrait of a tortured soul. Bonham Carter's voice is even smaller than Depp's, and more problematic – she has trouble wrapping her tongue around some of Sondheim's lyrics – and she is often noticeably weaker than her co-stars, such as during Not While I'm Around, in which the exceptional young actor Ed Sanders (playing her assistant Toby) out-sings her comprehensively. But Bonham Carter brings a tenderness to her character and there's a palpable sense of longing in her scenes with Depp, particularly during the wonderful By the Sea sequence.
This film version of Sweeney Todd doesn't need booming stage voices anyway, and Burton understands that. He makes his film an intimate drama, favouring tight close-ups in claustrophobic sets, and his staging of the musical numbers is terrific. He and editor Chris Lebenzon cut in rhythm with the score, generating a thrillingly kinetic energy in many of them, and presenting songs which flow beautifully. Some of these songs are amusing, like Pirelli's Miracle Elixir (Pirelli is played by Sacha Baron Cohen, trying another foreign accent and getting big laughs); some of them are plaintive, such as Depp's ode to his razors in My Friends, while others are deeply sinister. During the duet Pretty Women, Judge Turpin sits in Todd's chair, without knowing his true identity, and the pair both sing the praises of the same girl as the barber's blade moves swiftly inches from his target's throat. It's a devilishly clever sequence, and extraordinarily tense.
Not everything in Sweeney Todd works. The secondary romance between Todd's teenage daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener) and his onetime shipmate Anthony (Bower) is an insipid strand of the story which pales in significance with the main narrative; occasionally it can be hard to make out exactly what's being said in some of the more intricate songs, and Timothy Spall overplays his hand as Turpin's creepy sycophant. But taken as a whole the film is a dazzling achievement. In its second hour, Burton cuts loose, showering the screen with fountains of blood as Todd despatches one victim after another – slicing their throats, flicking a switch, and sending them down a chute into Mrs Lovett's pie shop, where they land with a horrible crunch. These are extraordinary sights to be witnessing in a mainstream Hollywood musical, and the film escalates to a climax which is shockingly cruel, but totally apt. It would have been all too easy for the filmmakers to soften the pill a little by giving us a happy ending for the film's star-cross'd lovers, or for young Toby, but instead it closes with death and darkness, leaving the Demon Barber alone in a pit of his own despair.
Our Daily Bread is documentary filmmaking in its most distilled form. There is no narration, there is no music; the film comes without any captions or interviews, and we are given no context for the pictures we're seeing. Instead, director Nikolaus Geyrhalter leaves everything open for audience interpretation, declining to offer any fixed perspective on the food processing practices his film depicts, and simply allowing us to observe the day-to-day life of those working in this industry as they pass before his dispassionate lens. We see animals being slaughtered, we see crops being picked, and we experience both the horror and the monotony of life on the production line in unsparing detail, as hi-tech machinery enables us to kill and package mass-market food in an ultra-efficient manner. It would have been very easy for Geyrhalter to turn Our Daily Bread into a Fast Food Nation-style exposé of the meat trade, turning our stomachs with grisly shots of dying livestock, but instead he has chosen to take his film down a much more ambiguous and intriguing route.
In a way, Our Daily Bread is like a minimalist slaughterhouse version of Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi (sans music), with wordless sequences of everyday incident being edited together to form a dreamlike, weirdly compelling whole. The film unfolds in long, elegant takes, often with the camera (operated by the director) remaining in a fixed position for the duration, and editor Wolfgang Widerhofer shows fine judgement in the way he cuts between scenes, often taking us to a vastly different location without disrupting the film's flow. The film exerts something of a hypnotic pull on the viewer as it examines the various processes food must pass through before it ends up on our plate; but in case talk of this detached, mesmerising aesthetic proves misleading, I should point out that Geyrhalter doesn't shy away from showing us the bloody reality of meat production. One of the most unsettling sequences shows a cow being stunned by a bolt to the brain and immediately collapsing into a twitching heap, before being moved away as another agitated animal takes its place. We also witness a seemingly endless supply of dead pigs being eviscerated in seconds by a fast-moving machine, a sight that is both impressive and disturbing, and we watch as a chicken is killed, plucked and cleaned. As I watched Our Daily Bread, I did worry on a couple of occasions that my barely-digested breakfast was about to make a surprise reappearance.
What these images make plain is the way food production of this scale has become a mechanised industry, where new technology has enabled humans to turn living, breathing animals into packaged meat in the most streamlined fashion possible. Geyrhalter's camera revels in depicting the clinical, sterile surroundings in which these practices take place – some of his compositions might have come from a science-fiction film – but he also finds time to focus on the specific roles people have to play amongst all of the conveyer belts and metallic slicers, and if you've ever complained that your job was tedious and unfulfilling, then Our Daily Bread is the film for you. One woman here is employed solely to chop the trotters from pigs' bodies as they pass in front of her, another has to tag thousands of chickens, and a particularly unfortunate soul has been given the task of pulling apart one cow stomach after another. None of these people seem disgruntled with their lot, though, they simply get on with the job at hand and go about their business with the minimum of fuss. Occasionally, Geyrhalter will show us one of these employees as they take a break, sitting with a cup of tea and a sandwich, chewing distractedly on their lunch before getting back to work.
The major obstacle faced by filmmakers aiming to depict monotonous action is that their film can easily grow monotonous in itself, and despite the beautiful visuals (one crop duster shot is a dazzling visual coup) and moments of humour (the baby chicks sequence is inexplicably hilarious), Our Daily Bread doesn't entirely avoid that trap. The rhythmic, repetitive pacing – so crucial to the film's effect – ultimately leaves it dragging in places, even with a relatively tight running time. Another of the film's bravest moves, Geyrhalter's refusal to editorialise his material in any way, also proves slightly frustrating, as a little contextualisation could have helped to give us some insight into the practices we're watching. But I suppose it's a rare pleasure to experience a documentary which is happy to simply document; a film which simply says "this is how it is", and then allows us to filter the information in our own way. Our Daily Bread is an inventive and admirable piece of work which offers us a genuinely eye-opening experience as it presents life in the globalised food industry; a strange, cold and fascinating world where human beings are mere cogs in the machine.
A startling and horrible piece of news broke this evening, when Heath Ledger's body was discovered in a New York apartment. He was 28 years old.
Ledger was an actor who seemed to have the world at his feet, earning a richly deserved Oscar nomination for his performance in Brokeback Mountain, and excelling in a wide variety of roles, from Monster's Ball and A Knight's Tale, to Candy and I'm Not There. Later this year, he will be appearing as The Joker in The Dark Night, Christopher Nolan's sequel to Batman Begins, and the notion of this intense and skilful young performer taking on such an iconic role was a tantalising prospect which will now be very difficult to watch. One got the sense that the best of Heath Ledger was yet to come, and the realisation that his potential will never be fulfilled is a very sad thought indeed.
