film reviews
Wajib review - poignant, profound humanism
Tom Birchenough

Annemarie Jacir’s third feature may have picked up a subtitle, “The Wedding Invitation”, for international distribution, but the key to her intimate portrait of Palestinian life seen through a father-son relationship lies in understanding the full nuance of its title. The word wajib, best translated from Arabic as “social duty”, is spoken only once in the film – an invitation is taken to an old lady whom the hosts know will be unable to attend, but they offer it because that is the accepted, the proper way in their society – but its concept pervades the entire film.

Jacir has located her story within the Palestinian Christian community in the Israeli city of Nazareth, where the tradition remains strong that the father of the bride must hand-deliver wedding invitations to family and friends, and that it’s the duty of his son to accompany him. Even though this is a community that is as geographically contained as it is closely bonded, it’s a task that can take days – not least because every stop brings an almost ritualistic invitation to drink coffee, another aspect of tradition that cannot be disregarded.WajibThat may sound like a perfect opportunity for some père-et-fils quality time between sixty-something Abu Shadi and his man-bunned son, Shadi (Mohammad Bakri and Saleh Bakri, father and son in real life, pictured above), but in reality the sturdy old Volvo they are driving sometimes appears more resilient than their relationship. Jacir’s beautifully observed script skilfully outlines their wider circumstances and family story, taking in both the very particular realities of their life as Palestinians in a particular environment, as well as the general hazards and frictions of family life that might be found anywhere in the world.

The difference between home and abroad is one central division between them. Shadi was sent abroad to study by his father, and has settled in Italy, where he works as an architect. The reasons for that earlier departure become clearer as the film proceeds, involving the general question of Abu Shadi’s necessary accommodation with the Jewish authorities – “I have to deal with them!”, he explains with the exasperation of the pragmatist – and is crystallised into one particular issue that gives rise to a strong late scene of angry conflict. That Shadi’s girlfriend is the daughter of an exiled PLO high-up only accentuates the distinction, emphasising the restricted reality of occupation against the broader perspectives of the diaspora. It doesn’t help that the younger man is forthright with his criticism of conditions in his erstwhile hometown, directed at everything from its street rubbish and neglect of architecture to the “closed minds" of its people.

The father can certainly be an awkward cuss on occasions, but has a humour that wins us over

The fact that his son has anchored his emotional life abroad clearly saddens his father, who would like nothing better than to marry him off to a local girl. He drops hints to that effect at almost every stop, lamenting that “It's too bad people don't marry their cousins anymore” when a family lunch introduces an independent female relative into the company. The older man’s sensitivity to the issue of marriage is no abstract matter, however: it gradually becomes clear that he himself is separated from his wife, who now lives with another man in New York, her return to the wedding proving complex in every sense. He had been left to look after their two children on his own, a blow that hit hard not only for personal reasons but because it broke with values and tradition, prioritising personal freedom over the kind of obligation that is there in the film’s title.

Bakri senior plays this with a wounded dignity that hits home, his face revealing more through craggy restraint than anything more obvious. He can certainly be an awkward cuss on occasions, but has a humour that wins us over, especially when set against the peremptory remoteness of his son: the experience of age, even when it has had to admit compromise, wins out over the intolerance of youth. “The most beautiful bride!” he exclaims simply to his daughter as she tries on wedding dresses (pictured below), his words spoken with such rich pride that they resound long after we forget all the younger man’s frustrations and anger.WajibWajib is a film anchored to its very depths in a particular territory, with Jacir giving us all the particular details of life of her chosen world – its everyday aspects but also a sense of its past, of roots that extend further back than any current politics. The director was born in Bethlehem and, after growing up in Saudi Arabia, education in New York, and some years based in Amman, has now returned to live there: we may wonder whether the profound humanism of her new film somehow reflects that relocation. It’s there in the film’s look, too: there’s little obvious beauty in the Nazareth locations, but they’re caught with real resonance, as well as poised framing by French cinematographer Antoine Héberlé (perhaps an outsider’s eye helps).

Jacir’s previous film, When I Saw You from 2012, overlapped a personal story with the wider circumstances of the history of her people. Wajib may appear to have narrowed its horizons, but in burrowing down to the essentials, allowing detail to speak volumes, she proves, resoundingly, that less can be far, far more.

Overleaf: watch the preview for Wajib

Lucky review - fabled character actor stars in his own obituary
Adam Sweeting

Harry Dean Stanton died in September last year aged 91, and will forever be remembered as the embodiment of the lean, lonely, laconic stranger, a man of few words but imbued with an enigmatic allure. This film, the directorial debut of character actor John Carroll Lynch, has been conceived as both homage to and starring vehicle for the departed Stanton, but doesn’t quite hit the spot on either count.

The Seagull review - Chekhov classic gets the all-star treatment
Matt Wolf

A starry and mostly American cast does well by The Seagull, Chekhov's eternally moving portrait of egomania run wild and self-abasement turned tragically inward. Combining two major players from the New York theatre world in director Michael Mayer (London's Funny Girl, Broadway's Hedwig and the Angry Inch) with a Tony-winning adapter in The Humans' Stephen Karam, the film suffers only from an occasional literalmindedness that exists at odds with the multi-layered nuance of the source material. Still, Annette Bening in full flow is always worth one's attention, and a distinguished supporting cast for the most part matches her a large part of the way. 

Karam's Broadway treatment of The Cherry Orchard (with Diane Lane in the lead) was fairly savagely dispatched last autumn, and his Seagull has similarly come in for some hard knocks that, to this observer at least, aren't altogether deserved. True to the emotional geometry of the play if sometimes inclined to underscore it too intently, this Seagull captures the cat's cradle of crossed affections that animates Chekhov's merciless portrait of vanity and ego and of a mother (Bening's Arkadina) who surely loves her son (Billy Howle's impressive Konstantin) even as she can't help wreaking havoc with both his professional and personal aspirations. Annette Bening in 'The Seagull'This version provides a prologue for Arkadina that find this vainglorious actress in her natural theatrical habitat, before the narrative of the play itself kicks in with the return to her brother Sorin's rural estate of Arkadina and her retinue, which includes the spineless if charismatic Trigorin. (In that crucial and difficult role, New York theatre regular Corey Stoll manages to be both imposing and weak, as required by the dictates of a plot that spans several years on the way to its tragic finish.) And whether revelling in the applause of her unseen audience or interrupting her son's play to proffer a deflating aspersion or two, Bening (pictured above) is in full command of the ever-mercurial Arkadina, a part this terrific actress should at some point revisit onstage; while we're at it, she'd be an excellent Ranevskaya, as well. 

Funny and spiky (Bening gets a laugh proffering a nominal tip to the household help which, she announces, is to be shared three ways), her Arkadina captures better than most this mother's belated awareness of the the full damage being wrought on a hyper-sensitive son whom she both cossets and destroys. You feel at once her essential blindness to the reality of the scenario unfolding around her, alongside a slow-aborning realisation that her recklessness has consequences, for sure. Stoll's Trigorin, by contrast, knows that he is one of life's destroyers but carries on regardless, his psychic evisceration of Konstantin's beloved Nina (Saoirse Ronan) running in tandem with the imploding artistic despair of the young writer, Konstantin, doomed to exist on life's margins.

Elisabeth Moss as Masha in 'The Seagull'A name-heavy cast (a pragmatic Jon Tenney here, a tearful Mare Winningham there) includes Elisabeth Moss (pictured right) in terrific form as the mordantly funny, black-clad Masha, trapped in a marriage that roils her to the soul, and Brian Dennehy as the ailing Sorin, who at least is allowed to expire in something resembling the natural order of events: a luxury not always available to the younger generation around him. Amongst that blighted lot, I expected rather more from Ronan's Nina, the self-described seagull of the title, who seems hampered by an American accent that never sounds as lived-in as the one this three-time Oscar nominee assumed so well for Lady Bird. That said, this Seagull compels and wounds as it must and ends with the requisite moment of hinted-at recognition as Arkadina and co get on with life, even as they exist forever to be shadowed by death. 

Overleaf: watch the preview for The Seagull

The Miseducation of Cameron Post review - learning the right way
Tom Birchenough

This is Desiree Akhavan’s second film, following on from her rather ironically titled Appropriate Behaviour of 2014. That was a coming-out drama about a bisexual, Iranian-American woman, whose story closely reflected the director’s own – and Akhavan played its lead role, too. With The Miseducation of Cameron Post, she has widened her perspective considerably, and her new film, while surely retaining gay community admirers, will also speak, it must be hoped, to a considerably wider audience. On which note, mainstream name Chloë Grace Moretz’s presence in the title role, as well as the film's winning the Grand Jury prize at this year’s Sundance festival, can only help.

It’s to the director’s credit that Cameron Post is a film that plays down opportunities for obvious drama in favour of something much more considered, more reflective. Akhavan has made the story of her eponymous late-teenage heroine’s experience in a gay conversion therapy centre, a Church-led correction facility that aims to change participants’ sexual orientation, largely non-judgemental. We see Cameron’s lonely experience through her own eyes, and feel it with her, but blame, such as it is, is attached more to the abstract principles of blind religious dogma rather than (largely) to those directly involved in the process.The Miseducation of Cameron PostIt’s an adaption of Emily Danforth’s 2012 coming-of-age novel that told the story of a 12-year-girl who, after the death of her parents in an accident, is adopted into the evangelical Christian family of her aunt. The film has taken the final third or so of the book, from Cameron’s developing relationship with schoolmate Coley – their passionate embraces are interspersed with watching films like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – through to their being discovered, by an accompanying “boyfriend” date, making out in the back of a car during the school Prom.

It’s a moment of sheer shock for Cameron, one which will turn her world upside down: until then she’s been a sports star, and the pervasive background religion has not obviously intruded into her life. Now it certainly does, though not with any fire-and-brimstone denunciation, rather sotto-voce words from pastor and family that see her sent off to God’s Promise, a rather particular educational establishment that’s set in the beautiful wilds of nature.

Sessions to “pray away the gay” take place alongside therapy that tries to establish childhood experiences that may have led to “SSA”, same-sex attraction, instincts, and thus “cure” it. (There are more curious – for British eyes, at least – manifestations of religion in everyday life here, such as the “Blessercize” TV channel, which brings God into the gym.) It’s overseen by the coldly concerned Dr Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle), who established the place after “converting” her own brother, Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr). (Pictured above: John Gallagher with Chloë Grace Moretz)

'There’s no such thing as homosexuality,' the doctor insists at one point, 'Would you let drug addicts throw parades for themselves?'

The irony here, and about the only positive aspect of Cameron’s initial experience, is that for the first time in her life she can be open about herself, in the company of those who have been through similar experiences. There are distinctions between those attending, however, from anguished determination to clutch at any straight straw – however precarious such convictions of change may be – through to the more sagacious resignation adopted by the two new friends she makes, Jane Fonda (Sasha Lane, from Andrea Arnold’s American Honey) and Native American Adam Red Eagle (Forrest Goodluck); their bonding is encouraged by the weed that those two are clandestinely growing (and which, in a nicely gothic touch, Jane conceals in her artificial leg). There’s further irony in the fact that both had been living in their wider environments without family issues, in particular Adam, whose tribal identity as a third-gender, or “Winkte”, almost endorsed his sexuality; only when external circumstances – her mother marrying an evangelical, his father going into politics  – changed, were they sent away for reformation. (Pictured below: from letf, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck)The Miseducation of Cameron PostThey’re all too aware that release back into the wider world will depend on the appearance of change rather than anything else. But their readiness to bide time in so laid-back a fashion doesn’t extend to all, however, as one searing late scene – with a stand-out role from Owen Campbell – reveals.

But this isn’t a lock-up environment, and good behaviour ameliorates some of the facility’s hardship, which principally involves isolatiion (following Danforth’s book, the film is set in 1993, so has no phones or internet). That’s a note that reveals some of the dramatic strands on which Akhavan has surely drawn: you can’t help thinking of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, for its associations both of confinement and concomitant absurdity, with Ehle’s character a loose variant of Nurse Ratched (she’s even referred to as a “Disney villain” at one point). “There’s no such thing as homosexuality,” the doctor insists at one point, “Would you let drug addicts throw parades for themselves?” Reverend Rick can’t match his sister’s unflinching certainties, however.

Akhavan has cited John Hughes as another point of reference, and as a teen movie Cameron Post was surely always going to adopt an attitude that bounced back against authority. It’s a coming-of-age drama, in which learning from new human contact plays a far greater role than any group therapy, made clearest when, in a late scene, Cameron can simply ask, “How is programming people to hate themselves not emotional abuse?”

The surface composure of Akhavan's film rather belies the director's emotiional engagement; she certainly leaves the question of what the future may hold for her heroine open. We can hope that Cameron will never allow herself to be persuaded away from what she has learned on her bleak journey. As well as that Akhavan’s film may reach some of the young viewers, in her homeland especially, for whom its story could prove essential.  

Overleaf: watch the preview for The Miseducation of Cameron Post

Under the Wire review - risking everything to tell the world the truth
Sarah Kent

She was “the most important war correspondent of her generation”, says Sean Ryan, her editor at The Sunday Times. And her colleague Paul Conroy describes her as “a complete and utter one-off – exceptionally driven, with a real sense of purpose”. These tributes are for Marie Colvin, who was killed by President Assad’s forces on February 22 2012.

Conroy was on assignment with her when she died. He was badly wounded in the attack, but escaped from Syria to write the book which forms the basis for Under the Wire. Speaking directly to camera, he tells the gripping story of their illegal entry into the country to cover the siege of Homs. His account of events over the following days is so vivid that you feel as if you were there with him, experiencing all the excitement, fear, noise and confusion.

She felt she had betrayed the people of Homs by agreeing to leave

Most foreign correspondents considered the war in Syria too dangerous to cover; but Colvin and Conroy (main picture) had other ideas. Denied a visa, they smuggled themselves over the border from Lebanon. “Being a war correspondent is about what people are going through,” Colvin had said, and she was determined to report on the carnage being wreaked on the hapless civilians trapped in Homs by the Syrian army.

Director Chris Martin has recreated their perilous journey from Beirut. After several nights of “being passed from one shadow to another”, it ended with a hike through a mile-long storm drain. This was the only way into Baba Amr, a poor suburb of Homs where 28,000 civilians were being subjected to constant bombardment. “It wasn’t war, it was slaughter,” recalls Conroy. “It was impossible to go out in the street because it was raining shells and missiles. And Assad’s snipers were on all the tall buildings.”

They managed to visit “the Widow’s Basement”, a dank cellar where dozens of women and children had taken refuge from the bombs. We see Colvin interviewing them for an article that featured with Conroy’s photographs on the front page of The Sunday Times on February 19. By then the journalists had already left – forced to go by rumours that a ground offensive was imminent. When the rumour proved false, Colvin was distraught. She felt she had betrayed the people of Homs by agreeing to leave (pictured below: Colvin taking notes in a bombed house in Homs).Under the WireFlashback to 1999 in East Timor, where foreign correspondents were advised to quit a UN compound, when it was surrounded by murderous militiamen. Colvin refused to go and her presence deterred the attack long enough for the 1,000 refugees inside to be rescued. Afterwards she summed up what she learned from the experience: “I thought that journalism can make a difference. It is not in vain.” 

She had a reputation for falling out with colleagues who were less driven than herself and so were reluctant to take as many risks. Even the loss of an eye from shrapnel in Sri Lanka failed to dampen her sense of purpose. She simply covered the socket with an eyepatch and carried on, wearing it like a badge of honour. And for parties, she sported a black patch decorated with rhinestones. One photographer described her as “scarier than the war they were covering”. But Conroy was a former soldier, used to combat, and during a stint in Libya reporting on the Siege of Misrata in 2011, the pair formed a deep bond of mutual respect. 

Without an exit stratagem, their chances of escaping the hell hole were not good

Unknown to their editor, they decided to return to Homs, even though Conroy had “a bad feeling” about the possible outcome. He was right, of course. Without an exit stratagem, their chances of escaping the hell hole were not good especially as, according to Conroy, conditions there were “the worst we’d ever seen”.

Back in Baba Amr, we see them at a makeshift medical centre where Dr Mohammed “works miracles” without any drugs or anaesthetic. He can only watch helplessly, though, as a baby dies from shrapnel wounds. ‘I felt rage,” recalls Conroy, “and I knew that, for Marie, this was her story and she was going to go for it whatever the cost. She decided to do as many broadcasts as possible as a plea to the world.” In that final broadcast the newscaster asks her: “Why is it important to see these images... Why is it important for you to be there?” She replies: “I feel very strongly that they should be shown. That’s the reality. That little baby probably will move more people to think ‘Why is no-one stopping this murder that is happening every day?’ Every civilian house on this street has been hit. There are no military targets here... the Syrian army is simply shelling a city of cold, starving civilians.”

The next day the shelling resumed at 5am; the building where the journalists were staying was hit. Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik were both killed and the French correspondent Edith Bouvier was badly wounded. As he watches the footage, Conroy murmurs: “May God bless your soul, dear Marie. My life will never be the same again.” Under the WireShrapnel had also torn a hole the size of a fist in his thigh (pictured above: Conroy recaling his ordeal). He was taken to the medical centre and operated on with only cigarettes to dull the pain. The building, meanwhile, took 10 direct hits. Assad, it seems, was determined to finish them off. They put out an SOS on social media, which was answered by a ceasefire and the arrival of a Syrian Red Crescent ambulance (not the Red Cross that they were hoping for). And prompted by a whispered warning from the accompanying medic, they declined to leave in the regime’s vehicle. 

On the fourth night, a convoy of cars took them on a mad dash through deserted streets to the storm drain. They came under heavy fire and 20 Syrians were killed helping their escape. A motorbike drove Conroy along the tunnel to a wall of mud that blocked the way. “Tell the world,” said the biker as he shoved him towards a small opening at the top. Dragging himself up, Conroy got impaled on a metal spike. “I thought I was going to die, but I had Marie on my shoulder and the people of Baba Amr who sacrificed everything to get me to that point. So I just ripped the staples out and all the flesh and muscle, and fell into a pool of water and some guys carried me on a piece of plastic to the end of the tunnel.” 

Next he had to crawl across a field to a waiting van. “It was snatching life from the jaws of death,” he recalls. “That’s where my life began again, in the back of that van. I wanted to tell Marie’s and Rémi’s story. And those beautiful people who were being slaughtered, I wanted to tell their story. To this very day I carry the weight and responsibility of what I promised. And I’m still doing it; its never going to stop.”

One of the most moving moments of this dramatic documentary is watching Conroy’s reaction as he sees, for the first time, a film on YouTube of the residents of Homs braving the bullets to demonstrate their thanks to the fallen journalists. Placards reading “We Will Not Forget You” are held high alongside others bearing the names of Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik. 

The saddest aspect of this story is that Colvin’s determination to tell the world what she had seen cost her her life, yet no-one responded to her plea by coming to the aid of the people of Homs. Her bravery and commitment were in vain. This time journalism did not make a difference.

Overfleaf: watch the trailer for Under the Wire

Yardie review - Idris Elba shoots straight in his directorial debut
Jasper Rees

The first significant British film to explore the influence of Jamaican sound systems in London was Babylon. Shot in 1980, its street patois was deemed impenetrable enough to merit subtitles. Times change. Yardie revisits the same world and era – it is bookended by heaving get-togethers in which sound systems pulse and throb.

Cold War review - a gorgeous and mesmerising romance
Saskia Baron

Can we ever really know the passion that brought our parents together? By the time we are old enough to hear the story of how they first met, that lovers’ narrative has frayed in the telling and faded in the daily light of domestic familiarity.

BlacKkKlansman review - absurd and angry satire
Nick Hasted

What happens when you let racism sit and fester in the middle of your culture? That’s the question Spike Lee keeps asking while telling the mostly true story of black policeman Ron Stallworth’s bizarre spell in the Ku Klux Klan.

The King review - the myth behind the man
Owen Richards

The most famous face in musical history, and perhaps the instigator of modern culture as we know it; he truly was the King. But for a documentary focused on such an icon, The King touches very little on Elvis Presley the man.

The Guardians review - beautifully crafted drama
Saskia Baron

A slow tracking shot over the gassed corpses of soldiers, their masks having failed the ecstasy of fumbling, opens The Guardians. This French art house film would perhaps have been better served by the English title The Caretakers; it's closer to the original French meaning and would have made it less likely to be confused with a superhero movie.