Shortlisted: Revolting Rhymes (Animated Short)

The BBC has a lot of credibility with American audiences for mysteries, literary costume dramas, and Britcoms, but we really haven’t considered animation one of their comparative advantages. Yet, they have amassed an impressive record of Oscar nominations and festival play for their animated adaptations of the books of Julia Donaldson (The Gruffalo, The Gruffalo’s Child, Room on the Broom). Now, two of the animators who collaborated on the Donaldson specials have turned their talents towards an author with a much wider American readership: Roald Dahl. Originally broadcast on consecutive nights, Jan Lacheur, Jakob Schuh, and (co-director) Bin-Han To’s Revolting Rhymes (trailer here) has since been rolled into one, but it is still short enough to be shortlisted for the best animated short film Academy Award.

In this fractured fairy story collection, the Big Bad Wolf will be the Hans Conriedian teller of tales, as well as the ominous villain up to no good. He starts his night by introducing himself to a kindly elderly woman enjoying a cup of coffee before she babysits for Little Red Riding Hood. As you might expect, there is some bad blood between her and the Wolf. However, for her to truly understand what actually happened, the Wolf must also tell the intertwined stories of Snow White and the Three Little Pigs.

In part two, the Wolf’s schemes successfully earn him entry into Red’s flat, but to buy time, her two children convince him to tell them a story, sort of employing the Scheherazade strategy. In this case, it is the stories of Beanstalk Jack and Cinderella that were in fact interrelated.

The Donaldson films were cute and sweet, but Revolting Rhymes are really funny, very much in the tradition of Fractured Fairy Tales. It should definitely appeal to fans of Shrek, but it is not as desperate to prove its hipness. While nowhere near the level of Studio Ghibli lushness, the animation is pleasingly colorful, lively, and faithful to the spirit of Quentin Blake’s illustrations.

The Revolting Rhymes bind-up also boasts an absolutely marvelous voiceover performance from Dominic West. It is safe to say his rich, commanding voice makes the Wolf quite a charismatic predator. Rob Brydon returns to voice assorted goofy characters, while Gemma Chan and Rose Leslie bring out the personalities of besties Snow White and Red.

There is no question RR is the best BBC animated special to make it into Oscar contention. It is consistently witty, not infrequently morbid (mostly in a kid friendly way), but always tied to tradition, just as you would expect from Dahl. Very highly recommended, Revolting Rhymes is on the Oscar shortlist and available on DVD.

Submitted by Sweden: The Square

According to the old saying, a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. Alas, that cannot be the case for experimental art curator like Christian. It is his job to be hip, trendy, multicultural, and morally relativist. Business is booming for Christian, but the loss of his smart phone is seriously destabilizing. To hasten its return, he might just shred the remaining tatters of the social contract in Rune Östlund’s The Square (trailer here), Sweden’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens this Friday in New York.

The Swedish monarchy has finally been done away with once and for all. Stockholm Palace now triumphantly houses the X-Royal Museum of Art. Where once royalty tread now sits heaps of ash and other such provocative exhibits, but their upcoming conceptual installation will be a tough sell, even by their standards. The titular Square is a specially demarcated zone in the museum’s grand plaza, where everyone within must treat each other with respect and extend a helping hand to each other. The museum’s millennial online marketers find this concept boring, so they will craft something spectacularly lurid for the social media campaign. This will come back to bite everyone, but initially Christian is more concerned about the theft of his phone and wallet.

Somewhat ironically, Christian was pick-pocketed while he thought he was being a good Samaritan, protecting a random woman on the street from her supposedly abusive boyfriend. His ego was stoked in the moment, but clearly it was all a scam. However, Christian uses GPS to track his phone to a nearby low-income housing project. At the instigation of an immigrant security guard, the curator writes a threatening accusatory letter demanding his property be dropped off at a local convenience store, which he hand delivers to every mailbox in the building. This too will cause tremendous problems in the long run, but in the short run, it does indeed prompt the return of his stolen items.

Holy cats, if ever there was a cinematic statement that defied easy classification, it would be The Square. Frankly, the sum of its parts is greater than its whole—in spades. There are individual scenes that are already firmly ensconced in cinema history, yet they are almost entirely disconnected from the over-riding narrative. Östlund unleashes more biting social satire than the last five seasons of late night television combined in one soon-to-be notorious scene featuring Dominic West as a visiting artist, whose on-stage interview is repeatedly disrupted by a man with Tourette Syndrome. It is a real squirmer, precisely because Östlund directly challenges viewers to wonder what they might do in such a situation.

Then there is Terry Notary, an actor known for portraying simians for motion-capture special effects, playing a primate-inspired performance artist doing his act during the museum’s gala. He vividly and shockingly reveals how thin and fragile the boundary is between polite human behavior and animal savagery.

There is no question Östlund should have ended the film with Notary’s jaw-dropping turn, but the film just keeps going and going. In fact, this is rather a cheat, because Östlund basically wishes away the repercussions that surely should have resulted from Notary’s bedlam. Nevertheless, he spends an interminable amount of time in various stairwells playing out Christian’s final, small-ball moral dilemma in what must be one of the most egregiously anti-climactic third acts ever.

Still, there is no denying the sexually potent but wildly uncomfortable chemistry forged by Claes Bang and Elisabeth Moss as Christian and Anne, the American journalist who interviews the curator and shares a hugely awkward one-stand with him. She also seems to be sharing a flat on roughly equal footing with a chimpanzee, which the understated Moss makes look almost natural.

Östlund skewers art world pretensions with laser-like accuracy and frequently undercuts hypocritical white liberal political correctness. Yet, Östlund is clearly so uncomfortable with the implications of his satire, he insists on imposing a lesson in compassion on poor emasculated Christian. That is a two-fold mistake, because it blunts the film’s acidic edge and further draws out the overlong narrative. Less would have been more, but the parts that work are unforgettable. The Square is recommended, warts and all, because there is stuff in there that is too good to miss when it opens this Friday (10/27) in New York, at the IFC Center and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

The Awakening: the Interwar Ghost-Hunter

It was always an old English tradition to have a ghost in your country house.  After World War I, there were also plenty of dearly departed to be visited by.  Of course, this led to a grand opportunity for a host of charlatans armed with a few garden variety parlor tricks.  Florence Cathcart has made it her calling to debunk those flim-flam artists while she struggles with her own emotional issues in Nick Murphy’s The Awakening (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Cathcart is a bestseller, celebrated and sometimes reviled for her work exposing phony spiritualists.  That is actually no small accomplishment for a British woman in 1919.  While she is on friendly terms with Scotland Yard, she feels hollow inside.  Robert Mallory is also skeptical, at least of her brilliance.  However, with the boys of his private school spooked by sightings of a spectral student from years past, he reluctantly seeks her help, which she reluctantly gives.  Much to her surprise though, Rookwood’s haunting is not so easy to dismiss.

Determined to crack the case, Cathcart stays on at Rookwood over the holiday break, with only Mallory, Maud Hill the kitchen matron, and young Tom, a student unable to return home during the academic hiatus, for company.  There might be a few more malevolent entities as well, such as the brutish groundskeeper and perhaps the odd supernatural element.

Awakening starts out strong, establishing a vivid sense of time and place.  Much like Rodrigo Cortés’ nose-diving Red Lights, the early séance-busting scenes are fun and atmospheric.  The locations are certainly evocative too.  Lyme Park in Cheshire, where most of the exteriors were shot (having previously stood in for Pemberley in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) has to be one of the most severe looking estates the aristocracy ever summered in.  Cinematographer Eduard Grau certainly makes it appear ominous and full of foreboding.  Unfortunately, it all builds towards an over the top conclusion, loaded with contrived twists that would only leave M. Night Shyamalan satisfied.

Rebecca Hall is okay as the doubter in crisis.  She has the necessary intelligent presence and shivers with admirable conviction.  However, the real standout work comes from Dominic West (terrific in BBC America’s The Hour) as the WWI veteran Mallory, with the heart of a romantic and a persistent case of survivor’s guilt.  It is sensitive, deeply humane turn.

Like many supernatural films, The Awakening completely dispenses with its better judgment in the third act.  Still, its first two thirds are effectively eerie and entertaining.  Frankly that is above average for the genre standard.  Recommended for those who enjoy the conventions of old dark British haunted houses, The Awakening opens this Friday (8/17) in New York at the Angelika Film Center and the AMC Empire.