Andrea Arnold: Red Road & Fish Tank...

Surprised to find that there doesn't seem to be a thread about either of these films, nor about the writer-director Andrea Arnold. If I've missed one, sorry. If not, then onwards...

I loved Red Road and just went to see Fish Tank this evening and thought it was excellent. By parts intensely sad and massively terrifying. Compelling.

What say thee?

it's not easy to get me to see social-realist films but i did think 'red road' (which was only incidentally social-realist i guess) was pretty good.

I thought at the time of 'Red Road' that Andrea Arnold had an interweaving Glasgow trilogy planned, which it was the first part of, so having avoided all press about 'Fish Tank' before going to see it, I was a wee bit surprised at first. Not that it really matters, as it was grand anyway, just curious if I am remembering rightly?

it's the first part of a (projected) trilogy, but not hers. devised by some danish people iirc. called the 'advance guard' trilogy or something similar.

Thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Party_%28film_series%29

I enjoyed both films (if that's the right word for Red Road, lol) But I wish they’d made the music tastes of the lead more believable and up-to-date. Sticking in a shot of a Soul-Jazz MC comp does not constitute street. K? Thanks.

i herd they use 'california dreaming' in the new one which is a bit corny/wong kar wai-ish.

i wasn't sure if oasis in the last one was a bad choice or not. someone likes 'em!

but idk that's sort of the deal with the social-realist tradition, is that its viewers tend to be soul-jazz compilation owners, as it were, unlike the people being represented.

Myabe you're right. Would have like to have had a soundtrack of funky though.

It uses Bobby Womack's version of California Dreaming, but I thought it made total sense, as it comes from the older boyfriend originally, who styles himself as a bit of a musical connoisseur (ha).

That bit made total sense, but I was less convinced by the girl listening to 15 year old Nas tracks and introducing her thirty-something mother to them, as well as thorwing old-school b-boy moves to Rakim and Gang Starr tracks.

I didn't know any of the rest of the music, so I can't really say.

I'm sure they'd think about this stuff when making the film though. I have no idea what kids in Essex housing estates might be listening to. The lead was a non-actress spotted in the area, apparently, so wouldn't she speak up if it were totally unrealistic bs?

Anyway, it’s really a small criticism as I thought the film was excellent - such a great mix of kitchen sink, shock, humour, bleakness - but all done with a heart. The framing of the film in such a square aspect really worked for me too.

Did anyone feel there was a stab of hope at the end?

I went to see it with my sister and she thought that there wasn't. Her take was how cyclic and unescapable it all was, with the younger sister going to way of Mia and Mia going the way of her Mum.

I thought that her escape at the end and the way that the family did finally bond in their way in the final scenes gave a glimpse of hope that things weren't necessarily on an unremmittingly bleak downward spiral.

I was terrified at lots of points that something truly awful was going to happen though. It could have ended so much more shockingly.

The filming was beautiful. The close follows of Mia with the shifting focus, for example when she creeps into the caravan wasteground to save the horse, were wonderful.

i loved red road, can't wait for this

When you go, give me a shout...

Absolutely *loved* this. Arnold's direction felt much more surefooted than Red Road and I found the repeated "breathing" motif hugely effective (when Connor carries Mia, when she's dancing, etc). The emotional core was beautifully focused and I'd absolutely agree that the ending was looking up rather than down (esp with the balloon drifting free, which was about the only clichéd shot in the whole film).

Got to add to the praise for the visuals - the Academy aspect ratio (or thereabouts) and extensive shallow focus looked wonderful; it felt to me that the continual focus on Mia helped to create the connection with her character in a similar way to the Dardenne Bros "Rosetta" - the sporadic slo-mo and dreaminess was great too; the sequence where Connor carries Mia to bed was pretty much the aesthetic highpoint of any film I've seen this year.

On a different tack, the UK's filmgoing public disappointed me again tonight: a film this good, which I saw in a big city-centre multiplex, and is recently so well (and widely) reviewed and there were literally 20 people in the cinema = A crying shame.

this is great

haven't seen Red Road, quite liked FT last night, especially the girl and Fassbender.

*SPOILER*

Of course, if Gary Oldman had directed the film, kid woulda drowned.

using the Bobby Womack "California Dreamin" is more like Tarantino

I really liked Red Road and Fish Tank although I thought the dancing sub-plot in the latter was a bit.... Step Up 2 The Streets.

I thought the whole point of the dancing was that it was shite... like there was never a realistic way that Mia's rubbish hip hop dancing was ever going to get her anywhere.

I was terrified at lots of points that something truly awful was going to happen though. It could have ended so much more shockingly.

having seen two Andrea Arnold films now, I think her thing might well be suggesting that ye liveliest awfulnesse is just round the corner, and then not delivering it. And yeah, I thought the ending was a bit upbeat - Mia goes off with her nice Traveller boyfriend, she bonds with her sister and mother (and dog) through the medium of expressive dance, shifty adulterous nonce clears off.

Great movie. Was expecting grimy realism but it's so much more - the visual beauty, the dreaminess, the use of music, the pacing, the unpredictability. Need to see Red Road now.

Supposedly Arnold's next film is a new version of Wuthering Heights o_0

With Effy out of Skins as Kathy. Yikes

Trying to see Wuthering Heights at TIFF. In the meantime, be pleased to enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKPg7-GbK8Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTnwkeDD1c0

Have fun at TIFF, Owen! I might spy you there.

Mumford & Sons have recorded two songs for Andrea Arnold's adaptation of Wuthering Heights, one of which (entitled "Enemy") will be played over the closing credits.[28]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoOuB9PAVug&feature=related

Saw Wuthering Heights yesterday, coming to it fresh as I've never read the book or seen any other adaptations. I'd echo many of the reviews that the first half (with young Cathy and Heathcliff) is much better than the second - Arnold's style serves the maelstrom of their relationship really well, and I could watch Robbie Ryan's camerawork all day. There were a few beautiful sequences in the second half, but not much magnetism between the leads. As a whole, it didn't have the emotional force of Fish Tank and I kind of wished that Arnold could have broken with the aesthetic template she's worked with before. Fucking Mumford & Sons certainly didn't help either.

One of the Red Road flats is being demolished in about an hour from now. Live webcam here... http://www.redroaddemolition.co.uk/

I'm just heading out on the bike to try and find a view (though the exclusion zone is pretty huge), as they're about a 15 minute cycle up the road from me.

^ Brief video here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-18386790
Wasn't aware before today that there was demolition planned for that area, although obv the demolition of high flats from that era in Glasgow is a gradually ongoing thing.
Anyway, Red Road the film is great great great. I started watching Game Of Thrones recently and was kind of surprised to see the main actress from RR crop up there, didn't recognise who it was for a while. Still need to get round to watching Fish Tank.

she's also in Prometheus

Kate Dickie takin over the world 2012.

She (along w/James McAvoy, Jamie Bell, Jim Broadbent, Shauna Macdonald and others) will be in the upcoming film version of Irvine Welsh's Filth as well.

American honey is p good. def understandable why it'd get compared to 'Kids' but its far less nihilistic

I loved it. I want it to overtake Springbreakers in cult classic status.

idk if I could watch 3 more hours but agree abt Arnolds lack of judgment of the characters as a massive plus, good writeup

American Honey is amazing. It's like a neo-realist musical

watched it on the shitey wee screen of an air canada flight flying from toronto to vancouver. a remarkable film. found the amount and lengths of singalongs a bit interminable and excessive (at over 2 and a half hours i feel like the film could've taken a little bit of pruning). but the lead whose name i can't remember and whose first acting role it was was incredible. shia lebouef (!) was fantastic.

yep

There was a lot that I liked throughout American Honey, but one of the central plot points did get in the way: magazine subscriptions--really? At first I just assumed that was meant as a code for whatever nefarious scam they were up to, but no, they were really out there selling magazine subscriptions. Took a while, but I guess I adjusted eventually. Looked fantastic even at home, and I loved the last few minutes. I saw Red Road a few years ago and really liked that, but didn't make the connection until searching for this thread afterwards.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/us/21magcrew.html

jesus!

smdh on account of all those sophisticated voters who thought we needed the wise guiding hand of 'a successful businessman'

That Times link--right after I posted last night, I looked up David Edelstein's review and found out the film was indeed based on actual events. Majorly surprised; for most of the way I was thinking it was just some movie contrivance, with a symbolic meaning that escaped me.

Anyway, I already want to see the film again (nothing to do with the truth/non-truth of the plot point).

I want it to overtake Spring Breakers in cult classic status.

I want it to obliterate Spring Breakers--so much better.

f i n a l l y watched Fish Tank after meaning to do so for eight years. incredible. some of the best use of music I've ever seen in a film - the Life's A Bitch scene at the end was as emotionally powerful as Diamonds in Girlhood. I think the ending was as hopeful as it could have got given that the film has just spent two hours painstakingly crushing Mia's emotions and ambitions, but yeah it makes it clear that a proper happy ending isn't an option.

can't believe Katie Jarvis has done essentially nothing since then and seems to have all but opted out of acting as a career.

my god, American Honey is incredible

too short, too

incredibly pretentious

it was about AMERICA do u see

Shia is repellent

when i heard the Rihanna needledrop i thought "ILX Film of the Year"

such easy marks. sad!

not seen AH yet but i find her gaze somewhat patronising.

and girlhood was similarly overrated. as i wrote on some other thread about it here, the directors view of her subjects is clearly one of if not dislike, then ferocious ambivalence, needling towards the suspicious

Typically facile guff from morbs. This is a beautiful film. I loathe Shia but even I got to admit hes excellent in this

"facile guff" says it all about this movie, save for maybe three scenes.

and girlhood was similarly overrated. as i wrote on some other thread about it here, the directors view of her subjects is clearly one of if not dislike, then ferocious ambivalence, needling towards the suspicious

― StillAdvance,

this is as different a take as I've ever read

how is American Honey about America other than its setting? I must've missed that.

"ferocious ambivalence" an apt description of ILX's attitude towards Rihanna

btw I did think Sasha Lane was an arresting presence, she was the chief asset of the film.

Arnold:

I don't think I represented in the film half of what I saw. I steered away from some of it, actually. If I put in the film some of the things I saw, it would have been a much bleaker film. The characters come from difficult places, but I didn't really show them. Muskogee, Oklahoma is one of the poorest towns in America, so I'm told. That's where we started. And it's a fantastically beautiful town, surrounded by amazing countryside. And we had the best time with all the people we met there. I actually just wanted to live there. It was an amazing place. I've actually fantasized about living in Muskogee. I just loved it. But some of the things I saw, with people in poverty, the film doesn't go anywhere near it. If I had, people's eyes would open even wider. The reaction to the film would be completely different.

*throws up hands, walks away*

http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/29/13109072/american-honey-movie-director-interview-andrea-arnold-tiff-2016

uh the condition of the hotel rooms, what they ate, and the attitude of, say, those oil guys – plenty bleak.

I guess I’m an easy mark, because I thought it was wonderful, not patronizing at all (in Fish Tank, sure), and just bleak enough because that wasn’t the story it was trying to tell. It’s difficult to see how it wouldn’t be about poverty and class, etc. considering its subject matter, but she steered clear of miserablism. Everyone was believably human – thinking of the truck driver and the cowboys, but, yeah, even the oil men. Shia is often repellent, but he's weirdly good in this and Sasha Lane is great. And the scenes on the bus with the non-actor kids were outstanding. Agree with Lex it was too short.

I'd had a low opinion of S LaBeouf beforehand but when I was watching realised I'd never actually seen him act and he was pretty amazing in this.

I quite enjoyed Girlhood but would agree that Sciamma's perspective was almost voyeuristic at times...you could feel her trying to shoot her subjects with respect but she didn't quite manage not to other them to an extent. I don't think that applies to Arnold's work - I think she deliberately feints at that possibility towards the beginning of some of her films with deliberately "shocking" scenes (the brawling that opens Wasp, the chicken scene in American Honey but she also swiftly shows how that moment of poverty or bleakness or w/e isn't the point to her characters and doesn't define them). Also she comes from a working-class Essex background herself so it's not top-down poverty tourism even if she acknowledges that possibility. Plus, ultimately I find her films optimistic and celebratory - I guess the notion that trauma is around the corner as punishment for her characters' poor decisions is so much of a movie trope (that ties into the toxic idea of poverty as a moral failing) that you spend much of the film with a chronic feeling of dread, but none of the horror arrives (which isn't to say it couldn't!).

I don't think it's about America except as a lovingly shot backdrop. It's too much of a spiritual sequel to Fish Tank and insofar as it's about anything, it's about gleaning joy and solidarity where you can.

I liked this piece on her (scarily on-point and subtle) use of music - http://moviemezzanine.com/andrea-arnold-music-essay/ - esp the point about the old-school hip-hop Mia preferred to Cassie and Ashanti in Fish Tank indicating her own feeling of superiority to her surroundings.

I got the impression from the script she co-wrote for André Téchiné's Being 17 and watching Girlhood that Sciamma is almost too invested in her characters.

I don't know about "lovingly shot." I've been to Kansas City, it's kind of a hole. Oklahoma, no thanks.

I really like this video (which in turn has gotten me to like the song). Haven't been able to find any corroboration, but I'm guessing Cara or the director has seen and is paying homage to American Honey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De30ET0dQpQ

(I mean, I get the obvious Sendak connection--haven't seen the film--but visually it's American Honey.)

I wanted my second viewing of American Honey to be in a theatre, but I settled for a bootleg DVD. I think the sound might have been a little wonky--weirdly muffled at times when music played in the car--but thinking back to the actual DVD I watched a few months ago, that might just be the way the movie is.

I'd really have to search my memory for a film that affects me in quite the same way as this one. It's just so strange. The ending, and the scene towards the end where Star drops in on the family that mirrors what she left behind, are beautiful.

Had no idea about Riley Keough (Krystal) being Elvis's granddaughter.

she is really great in it

I wish American Honey were online; I could spend a day pulling images. (There are a few good YouTube clips.) One day, far into the future, I hope to finally see it on a movie screen.

I believe it's still on American Netflix, but that doesn't help you tho.

I think it was on the Canadian Netflix too but got taken off. More for a computer thread, but does a laptop-to-TV connection flow both ways? I've got a cord that lets me watch movies played on my laptop on the big TV--can I play a DVD on the big TV and take screen shots?

If you're just trying to get screenshots, you should be able to get them through the laptop, either through your DVD player program (such as the "Snapshot" command in PowerDVD), or by using the "Print Screen" function/key and pasting into Paint.

Can't play DVDs on the laptop, though--no tray.

One of my favourite directors--didn't realize she had a new (or delayed-and-new) documentary out, Cow, and that it's playing at a nearby rep. Guessing I will like it better than First Cow.

Cow ends unforgettably--I'm sure you can guess how, and I suspect the ending is why she wanted to make the film--but it was a slog for me getting there. I'm trying to figure out why I was so bored, even though she basically adopts a Wiseman approach.

I've long been broadly pro-Arnold but Bird feels a little corny overall. Somehow a bit, er, familiar at this point, despite admirably risky fantastical flourishes.

(Not the easiest title to search for -- possibly not the best thread to revive)

Bird is no Cow or Wasp or Dog *flees*

I didn't care for it.

I heard bad things, but maybe because I had low expectations I quite enjoyed this one.

Still kicking myself for missing Wuthering Heights in 35mm some years back