58. Out of Africa (1985)

Plot Intro

Danish woman, Karen Dinesen (Meryl Streep), moves to Kenya with her new husband, Bror von Blixen (Klaus Maria Brandauer), where they intend to establish a dairy farm. However, Bror is more interested in sleeping with the servant girls and big game hunting, so is away a lot, and Karen must run the farm on her own, and conduct an affair with handsome game hunter, Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford).

Doug says...

This was the perfect film for a Sunday evening. I think I actually dozed off about three times and still grasped entirely what was happening. It’s a soft drama, aiming to be an African-based version of the BBC hit series Lark Rise to Candleford in which literally almost nothing happened and there were lots of soft-focus shots of sunsets.

Unfortunately, a film approaching three hours demands a little more plot, and we’re not really given that here. It doesn’t help matters that only a couple of years ago we had the extraordinary Gandhi which managed to capture a real sense of a very-far away land. Here Africa is one of the main subjects - it is the catalyst for everything happening and everyone coming together - and yet it never feels more real than a painted backdrop. They’ve clearly hired actual African villagers to be in the film, and yet never use them above fleeting glimpses as if to ground the action before swivelling back to the rather beige romance between Karen and Denys.

The fact is that Karen and Denys’ affair in real life was actually just a fragment of a far more interesting background. There was a hedonistic and elitist group of largely British aristocrats in Africa at the time, including Beryl Markham, the first woman aviator to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from east to west. Markham actually moved in with Karen, set her sights on Denys and began an affair with him - Denys actually ended up having affairs with both women simultaneously, under the same roof. A tad more scandalous than the tame matter we’re offered here.

It’s not great stuff, and there’s real missed chances - both with the plot (Markham doesn’t even appear, but is ‘represented’ briefly by a character called Felicity), and with the setting - Africa doesn’t feel integral in any way, beyond a pretty backdrop. What I found most interesting is Meryl.

Meryl Streep has long been regarded as one of our greatest film actresses. But the appearances I’m seeing from the ‘80s, and the stuff I’ve seen from the ‘90s doesn’t lift her much above her peers. While she has some flashes of great acting here, it’s all a bit too held back to affect us. In films like Kramer vs Kramer she was heavily out-shadowed, and looking ahead she has the great campy classics like Death Becomes Her - but nothing that makes her shine.

In fact a quick Wikipedia shows that while she made her name with these soapy melodramas in the ‘80s, she lost top billing fairly quickly in the ‘90s and it was actually her role in a certain fashion-based film that sent her soaring back into the echelons of highest Hollywood. That’s right - her career was flagging pre-Devil Wears Prada. I, for one, had always assumed she’d just always been up there, but what actually transpires is we are currently in the golden age of Streep’s acting. She’s never actually been better than Prada, The Hours, August:Osage County, Doubt - and my own favourite Florence Foster Jenkins. It’s actually quite cheering to see that an actress who really got going in the ‘80s actually hits her real stride in the early noughties.

The film? Eh, it verges on instantly forgettable. It seems odd that it beat the seminal The Color Purple, but at least it didn’t win any acting trophies. It’s not hateful, it’s just not…anything. 

Highlight 

Those few moments when Meryl delivers a line a certain way or shoots someone a look and suddenly you see a glimpse at the great actress that’s a few decades away in the making. 

Lowlight

Why would you shoot everything actually in Africa and then somehow make it all seem two-dimensional and dull? How?! 

Mark 

5/10

Paul says...

As Doug says, this is ideal Sunday evening entertainment. It would be completely at home at 9pm on ITV, and have the word “heart” somewhere in the title. But instead, this is the 1985 Best Picture winner, so expectations are, understandably, a little higher.

The biggest and, for me, only strength of Out of Africa, is its beauty. Director Sidney Pollack does for Kenya what Richard Attenborough did for India and David Lean did for the Arabian desert in previous films we have blogged about. He establishes a setting that is a character in itself- visually stunning and perfect for Instagram, but also terrifying due to its natural power over mankind. Scenes in which Meryl Streep finds herself face-to-face with lions, and Karen and Denys’ lengthy flight over the Kenyan countryside, remind us of this remarkable superiority that the natural world has over humans.

But whilst the film is Beautiful (and yes, the capital B is intentional) in that it ticks all the boxes to be considered for a place in the Louvre or to have gap year students waxing lyrical about their own experiences in this part of the world, Out of Africa is pretty lacklustre. Which is a massive shame because Karen Blixen led a pretty interesting life. The film shows her gradual loss of the farm and money troubles; her affair with Denys; her contraction of syphilis from her husband’s own affairs; she painstakingly brings resources to her husband’s regiment during the First World War; she sets up a school and contributes more advanced medical care to the Kenyan people. But the script and direction tackles all of this with such an objective, mannered and understated eye that nothing lifts above murmur. A film such as this needs to shout louder and have more to say.

Karen herself could have been presented as much stronger and feistier to put the audience behind her and Denys especially gets nothing to do except look handsome and be American. The real Denys Finch Hatton was an English aristocrat, so it seems very calculated that Redford should retain his American accent and act more like Indiana Jones, but with no sense of humour, because it would make the film appeal to the less esoteric members of the audience who may favour Mills and Boon romances over historical drama. This tale of an aristocratic woman falling in love with a the grizzled local hero is not what happened, nor is it told with a shred of fun or emotion. If you want that sort of story, I would recommend seeing Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen, Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone, or Rachel Weisz in The Mummy, all far more exciting and more deserving of notoriety than this.

Out of Africa’s mediocrity is further shown through the fact that it covers about 20 years of history, but at no point is this scale of time felt. I only found out by reading up on the real Karen Blixen, and this was at a point where I thought the film had covered less than half that time. None of the characters aged, nor did their fashion or hair styles change with the times. Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia and Gandhi are similarly ambitious and episodic epics, but their sense of scale leaves you physically and mentally exhausted by the end, much like the characters you’re watching. By the end of Out of Africa, I felt nothing. I don’t think the film even climaxed at any point.

To reiterate Doug, Out of Africa is not terrible mostly because it’s lovely to look at. But like Instagram models, this is not enough. There’s a deadness behind the eyes that makes it fit well within a decade that is quickly turning out to be trite. 

Highlight

Karen and Denys’ plane flight is actually quite a lovely sequence. It’s captures the beauty of the African landscape and it’s a shame the rest of the film couldn’t match this sense of awe.

Lowlight

A lengthy dialogue scene between Karen and Denys on a beach in which they discuss the future of their relationship is a prime example of why the film fails. Much of it is just words, words, words, and left me with a distinct feeling of “so what?”

Mark

2/10

57. Amadeus (1984)

Plot Intro

Vienna, the late 1700s. Court composer, Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) is at the height of his career under the Austrian Emperor, Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones). When he hears of an impending visit from musical child prodigy, the infantile and foul-mouthed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce), Salieri is thrilled, but then horrified to realise that Mozart’s ability far supersedes his own. With his position as the Emperor’s favourite threatened, Salieri concocts a plan to impede Mozart’s growing popularity, to ensure his operas never gain notoriety, and, eventually, to kill him.

Paul says...

Hamlet was adapted by Disney into The Lion King. Seven Samurai became A Bug’s Life. And here, we have Amadeus, which provided the prototype for Toy Story. It’s a tale about the old being threatened by the new, with the irony that the new is far more enticing, and more interesting, than the old. Does one maintain the old for the sake of posterity, or give in to an unconventional, potentially dangerous modernity?

These are the questions that Peter Shaffer’s adaptation of his own play purports, and it’s an enjoyable addition to the '80s Best Picture winners. It has the grandeur, budget, bolshiness and love for melodrama that is so synonymous with this era, which is refreshing after last week’s rather dreary entry. It also benefits from two great performances from the main male leads, which is necessary as their characters are the cement holding the whole thing together. F. Murray Abraham especially, who nabbed the Best Actor Oscar from Tom Hulce for this, narrates and drives the film with gravitas. I loved his background looks of discomfort whilst listening to Mozart play his own tunes, and make them better, and his unhinged mental state as an old man in a lunatic asylum. His proclamation of himself as the Patron Saint of Mediocrities whilst wheelchair-bound and surrounded by deranged and chained-up patients made me question whether we’re supposed to wonder if his killing of Mozart was real, or a figment of his imagination. A well-deserved win for an actor who you may have seen in other films without even realising it - look him up.

Tom Hulce (who also voices Quasimodo in Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame) injects genuine energy into Mozart, revelling in his puerile humour (Mozart really did have a love of toilet humour and swearing), his playfulness, and his arrogance as well. I certainly fell on his side in his opening few scenes in which he wows snobbish and unlikeable court officials with his ability.

The downside to Amadeus is how static it is sometimes. This is a lively, ridiculous tale, and almost entirely made up. Mozart drove himself to an early grave through over-work, over-spending and over-indulging. He lived a chaotic and cluttered lifestyle, leaving behind various gambling debts, an apartment impossibly full of furniture, and a legacy that had barely taken off. Salieri being the orchestrator behind his death is so daft that the film needs a lot more humour and flamboyance than it lends. 

This is what the recent stage adaptation at the National Theatre offered. Fragments of scenery, ballet-like movements of the Chorus, and lucid, flowing direction created a dream-like, deliberately over-blown presentation of life at the Viennese Court. It was a prime example of how writing, acting, movement, lighting, music and scenery can all work together to create a sumptuous whole, and it was so good we saw it twice. The film needs more of this. The Emperor especially was a massive disappointment. He’s depicted in the play as an under-educated, egotistical philistine, who simply says “well, there it is” whenever someone says something he doesn’t understand (which is frequently). Many of his comic lines were missed here, and although Jeffrey Jones had a Golden Globe nomination for his role, I didn’t think he was putting in much effort.

Various sequences needed more life. A satirical performance of Don Giovanni; a battle over whether an opera includes a ballet; Salieri and an ailing Mozart composing furiously together. All of these had the opportunity to explode on the screen and provide more insight into characters - but they all felt flat and lifeless and, as a result, far too long to me.

Amadeus is great Sunday afternoon entertainment. It’s not too taxing, it’s visually quite stunning, and it’s got enough drama and great music to keep you entertained. What it’s missing is the sort of directorial innovation that the works of Guillermo Del Toro and Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina had, as well as a stronger sense of fun.

Highlight

Amadeus’ first appearance, in which Salieri moves about the room trying to guess who the infamous Mozart is. It’s a sequence made all the more enjoyable by the realisation that Mozart is the one pursuing a woman and making lewd remarks to her.

Lowlight

The satirical Don Giovanni, involving dwarfs, various horses, and acrobats, sounds great but doesn’t really do much for the story. It’s 5 minutes that could have been cut altogether.

Mark

5/10

Doug says...

The problem with Amadeus is that, as Paul said, we’ve seen the far superior stage production of this, which being able to fully embrace its theatricality, packs more of a punch. Here, they try to keep it realistic and natural which ends up feeling a little bit clunky at times. 

The story is fab, it’s a classic tale of jealousy and ultimate betrayal and Salieri makes for a brilliant anti-hero, his fascination and disgust with Mozart in equal measures drive him to try and destroy him, while still unable to stay away from his music, visiting every show of his productions. In this film we see older Salieri recounting his tale to a priest - and this is an example of my issue with it. In the stage production, the actor playing Salieri flips between young and old in the space of a scene, addressing his monologues directly to the audience, shocking and appealing to us - the watchers - and making us consider his actions more deeply. 

Here, there are moments of good staging - Mozart, dying, directs Salieri to write a line of notes for his ‘Requiem’. Salieri writes it down and then we hear the music as it is, highlighting Mozart’s genius at grasping complex musical styles and making it sound effortless. But these moments are few and far between. 

I think I’m being slightly unfair, but it’s hard to applaud something even if it’s fine, when you’ve seen how it can be done a hundred times more effectively on stage. This is a passable film but the same material has been made electrifying on stage simply by the director refusing naturalism and taking an artistic angle. As Paul says, this isn’t impossible on film - Anna Karenina did this incredibly well, and created something fresh and fitting to the source material. Here they don’t rise to the challenge, but rather force the play into a natural setting, and hope by the liberal use of Mozart music on the soundtrack that we will appreciate his genius. 

Acting-wise it’s decent. Again, neither the leads stand up to the National Theatre’s version, but Lucian Msamati’s Salieri was an extraordinary performance, and likely as not will never be surpassed, so that’s not saying F. Murray Abraham does a bad job - his performance doesn’t strike me as particularly awards-worthy but the Academy thought otherwise, and his ‘old Salieri’ is absorbing at least. 

In essence, it’s a decent film that’s not going to stick in too many minds, but it’s a perfect example of when one medium is probably better - and here the National Theatre’s stage production blew this out of the water and didn’t even look back. 

Highlight

I’ll always enjoy the moment when Mozart sits down, plays a little ditty Salieri wrote for him, and then improves upon it ten-fold. It’s a moment that would stick in any craw, let alone a self-absorbed, pompous court musician’s. 

Lowlight

It doesn’t embrace its innate theatricality, forcing a play bursting with life and vigour into overlong static scenes that insist upon realism. Considering the Salieri-Mozart rivalry has been pretty much proven to be fiction, this seems unnecessary…

Mark

4/10 

56. Terms of Endearment (1983)

Plot Intro

The movie follows the lives of a mother and daughter- over-powering Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) and free-spirited Emma Horton (Debra Winger). While Emma marries Flap (yes that is his real name) (Jeff Daniels), moves away to Iowa and has 3 children, Aurora conducts a relationship with her predatory and vivacious ex-astronaut neighbour, Garrett Breedlove (again, that IS his real name) (Jack Nicholson). 

Doug says...

Terms of Endearment is what I thought Ordinary People was going to be. It’s a full, overblown family drama, complete with an obligatory ‘character-gets-cancer’ storyline and over-the-top approaching-melodrama acting. I’d love to say it goes over and above the triteness of such frippery filled pieces, but unfortunately it lands slap bang in the middle of the cliched genre. 

I think where I fell away from this film was when I saw the description of it as ‘offbeat’. Offbeat usually means ‘unusual’ or ‘quirky’ but here I take that label quite literally. It misses the beats that it sets out to achieve. Moments that would be incredibly funny somehow just miss the comic timing beat. Moments that would verge on the emotional and heart-wrending also miss their timing, resulting in what feels often overwrought and not really steeped in real emotion. 

It’s another big outing for Shirley MacLaine (who we last saw in The Apartment) and while I liked her performance more here, it still didn’t quite ring true for me. She’s overbearing and terrifying, yet utterly devoted to her daughter, while also sniping at her without cease. It’s a Dickensian stereotype but (a little like Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People) we don’t get to see much beyond the surface. 

The director apparently went out of his way to cause tension on set as he preferred working that way (creatives eh?!) and the improvised nature of many of the scenes is very obvious. Jack Nicholson and MacLaine bounce off each other well and in many ways their relationship (overblown as it is) is the main highlight of the film. The other storyline, focusing on the daughter is dull, partially thanks to Debra Wing’s not-great performance. Apparently she was coming down off of cocaine while doing this, but you might have thought her performance would be a bit more sparky for that. Ah well. 

It’s not a bad film by any means, but with the standard of the ‘80s already highly promising, it’s a tad disappointing to find this incredibly middle of the road film being crowned supreme. Perhaps it was a dud year for film-making. 

Highlight 

Jack Nicholson has a lot of fun as a drunken, roaring old astronaut, including a scene on the beach where he drives his sports car standing with his feet on the wheel, MacLaine grimly operating the pedals next to him and shouting ‘I am not enjoying this’ at him. It’s one of the few comic moments that really landed. 

Lowlight

It got too slushy without enough real heart, and the last half hour dragged on. 

Mark 

5/10

Paul says...

How does one create an ‘80s movie? Well, according to Delia’s Movie Cook Book, you need an emotional tale about a family in some sort of crisis or crises; a whimsical piano-driven soundtrack that doesn’t over-stimulate; some platitudinous speeches or conversations about love, life, death etc; a gratuitously bittersweet ending; a nauseating amount of florals in the costumes and set design; at least one socio-political issue to discuss didactically. 

And that’s basically Terms of Endearment. Even it’s mother-daughter-centric storyline pretty much turns it into a heavily-truncated season of The Gilmore Girls, with some Knot’s Landing thrown in for good measure. The fundamental problem is that so much happens in it that the story has no focus whatsoever. About 30 years pass between the beginning and the end and in that time births, marriages, extra-marital affairs; deaths; long-term illnesses; short-term illnesses (the baby has croup, oh God no!); moves to new locations; all of this is thrown at you so thick and fast that I had no time to digest or engage with any of it. All interspersed with irregular fade-outs to black and lovely, gentle, twee music that ensures anyone over the age of 70 can watch a film that mentions abortion once. It’s a similar problem that the second half of Gone With the Wind has. 

The entire film is also extremely inconsequential. These various events happen and we move on to the next one with little or no reflection or later reference. Like a badly-written soap opera, Terms of Endearment seemed to be getting made up as it goes along (and it may well have been). Yes, I know, this is very reflective of life and it’s randomness, but I don’t watch a film to see reality. I want escapism.

I didn’t rate Debra Winger much either, despite the acclaim she gets for this. I get that her character, as the youthful daughter, is meant to be more impulsive and rebellious than her prudish mother, but Winger swings dramatically between big expressions of these aspects of her character, and the more subtle, gentle acting styles that MacLaine seems to be prefer. There’s not much consistency and therefore the character feels vague. She also apparently had a feud with MacLaine (Wikipedia is a little vague on this one), so it feels judicious that MacLaine should walk away with the Best Actress Oscar that they were both nominated for.

Ah yes, Shirley MacLaine. The one saving grace. I loved her in 1960’s winner, The Apartment, in which she could evoke everyday mannerisms and line deliveries whilst also oozing effortless charisma. Here, she is similarly strong, and deserves all the more praise for giving life into a lifeless script. In one scene in which she climbs the stairs to Garrett’s porch, she shows through body language alone that she is reluctantly admitting to her attraction to this obnoxious pig, is giving into it, and also amused at her own hesitation. The character is by far the best drawn out- a closeted bundle of insecurities and loneliness, heavily disguised by a hard-nosed, steely-eyed exterior. The rest of the cast pale in comparison- even Jack Nicholson felt like he was on auto-pilot to me. Go Shirley!

True, the film was a large hit. True, MacLaine’s character and storyline are far more engaging. But the fact that the film jumps all over the place in time and content leaves me cold and unengaged towards it. Ordinary People had a similar tone, but it was far superior due to its focus on the aftermath of a family death, and because it had bigger things to say about grief, mental health and how a certain class of people deal with these things. Watch that, instead. Not this bromidic rubbish.

Highlight

Altogether now: GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTT!!!!

Lowlight

Debra Winger’s overrated performance. Again, Go Shirley!

Mark

3/10

Foreign Language Film 4: City of God (Brazil; 2002)

As we have continued along this project, we’ve begun to notice that there aren’t any international films taking home the ‘Best Picture’ trophy. While we’re reviewing the main winners then, we’ve decided to recognise some of the most famous non-English speaking pieces every three weeks, continuing with the 2002 gang epic City of God. 

Plot Intro

“Rocket” (Alexandre Rodrigues) is a young boy born into the Cidade de Deus suburb of Rio de Janeiro. As he grows up, he fosters an ambition to be a photographer. But he is surrounded by gang wars, betrayals and drug dealers that prevent him from escaping the cycle of violence he born into, particularly the activities led by psychopathic Li’l Ze (Leandro Firmino). Rocket narrates his life through a series of interconnected tales set in this suburb, and his eventual achievement of his dream.

Paul says...

Shameless plug alert, but I have recently bestowed unto this blog its own Twitter profile (@anightattheoscars), on which I have been networking from time to time with other film nerds, one of which recommended City of God to me as part of our foreign-language movie tangents. This fast and furious account of gang activity in Brazil is based on a novel by Paulo Lins, who was himself born in the Cidade de Deus but managed to escape it to become a successful writer. So not only is much of the film’s events based in fact, but most of the actors were amateurs who lived in slums, hired to achieve authenticity. Support groups were set up after the movie was completed to try and ensure that these budding actors had the option of leaving their violence-ridden poverty for good.

And personally, I think this is an excellent piece of work. It succeeded in totally transporting me into the Brazilian favelas. Directors Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund have edited the entire two hours with a frantic, fast-paced tone. They capture the terror, the thrill and the tragedy of life in the City of God. They manage to convey huge amounts of action and event in a very short space of time. Some events happening at the same time are told concurrently through 24-style split screen, and some events that are happening in totally different time periods are spliced together to show how huge consequences can be - and deliver some of the plot’s most surprising twists with absolute relish. We’ve watched a lot of movies in this project that feel longer than they are due to sheer sluggishness. This film felt longer than it is due to its intensely speedy storytelling. On our first toilet break, I was convinced that over an hour had past, but we were only 45 minutes in, just because so much had happened. This is a great compliment because I found myself wanting to discover more stories from this world that I know virtually nothing about.

The film also succeeds in being gritty and sometimes horrifying, but without becoming arduous or gratuitous in its violence. In fact, the violence (and there is a lot of it) adds to the atmosphere. Some critics have complained about the repetitive nature of the story. Admittedly, it is just a seemingly endless string of revenge killings. But then, that’s just what life in these areas is- a seemingly endless string of revenge killings. The main gang war at the centre of the plot is a result of the villain, Li’l Ze’s, insecurity about his looks when a woman shirks him off for a better looking guy; the police are seen to be not helping the situation but provoking it by arresting whoever they can find or accepting bribes; and the film ends with a group of children (some as young as 4 or 5) forming a new weapon-laden gang in place of the old one. These relentless atrocities led to me feeling desensitised to it all. I wasn’t shocked by the new child-led gang, I felt tired and accepting of it, much like the residents of this very suburb who have resigned themselves to their fate.

City of God has also been criticised for not providing much in the way of Brazilian social commentary. There’s some reference to the fact that men and women turn to gangs because they get far more job security and wealth from them than an honest living, but the film is more interested in the actions and internal struggles of the gangs. Admittedly, this would have given the film a much bigger dimension, but then I would argue that the directors intended us to see Brazil from the point of view of these people who live and die within these sweaty, bullet-laden, wild-west-style districts. This is not an observational movie, this is an immersive piece of drama. And I found it thoroughly captivating.

Highlight

A very distressing scene in which the main villain exacts revenge on a child gang. He holds two children, visibly under 10, at gun point, and asks them to choose between being shot in the hand or the foot. They choose their hands- so he shoots their feet. Then asks one of his gang members to kill one of them anyway.

Lowlight

Whilst I was gripped by the film, I found that I didn’t feel much sadness when even the “good” characters die (and I use good in the loosest sense of the word bearing in mind everyone’s a criminal except the narrator). This is a minor quibble because the twists and turns in the plot kept me on the edge of my seat.

Mark

10/10

Doug says...

A critic described this film as ‘kinetic’, and that’s exactly it. Two hours rushes past in a frenzy of lighting, angles, and quick character appearances and deaths. Within half an hour we are resigned to most of the characters dying, and deaths are shown with little to no importance or gravitas. This is a gritty tale of life in the roughest of Brazilian favelas, and there’s no shirking of the very real possibility of young death. 

The acting isn’t particularly astonishing, but this is a film where that doesn’t actually matter, because the whole thing is really a masterstroke of direction. Directors Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund cover scenes rapidly, showing two different angles of the same scene on split-screen to quickly convey all the information you need to know. They also play fast and loose with chronology, pausing to go on quick tangents to explain a certain character’s backstory or in one memorable case the history of a room. The latter is a scene focused on from many angles, first telling it from the perspective of the narrator, then telling the history of the room (a drug dealer’s den), then telling it from the owner’s perspective (and filling us in on his history), and then finally the perspective of the intruder (and giving us his backstory and answering one of the mysteries the film had already set up). It’s a dazzling, dizzying way of telling a story and means you get a load of information rapidly in a way that’s easy to pick up on and digest. 

Halfway through the film we paused to make a cup of tea and I wandered through our London flat. For a moment, the white walls of our hallway seemed quite unreal, and I had the odd sensation of not being in a real place. That’s a testament to how absorbing and real this film is. It sucks you in entirely. And when Rocket goes to the newspaper offices, clean and white with bright lighting and obviously wealthier surroundings, it feels jarring, a world away from the bright, bloody streets of the villages. 

Ultimately it felt a little bit too dark. The opening scenes often have a touch of humour mixed into the constant tragedy and death, and while an argument about this reflecting the Brazilian life is easily made, I believe we find humour in any life - it’s part of being human. I’d be surprised if these people never laughed, even in the favelas. But the cyclical nature of the narrative is heartbreaking in its truthfulness. Rocket gets out, and gets ahead, but the gang of young kids who pass by him, waving their guns and planning who to kill first, end the film and by doing so Meirelles and Lund make the believable point that most people in this cycle will die there - and probably quite young. 

Highlight 

The moment when they tell the same story from three angles, and even fit in a history of the location, is a masterstroke of film-making. It’s not something you see often, and when done well it’s hugely satisfying. 

Lowlight

Even the darkest of situations will have a little more humour mixed in with the tragedy.

Mark 

10/10