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Revengers Tragedy
*
Cinema
Reviews - Week of March 28, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. UK.
109 minutes. Directed by Alex Cox. Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce; based
on the play attributed to Thomas Middleton. Starring Christopher Eccleston,
Eddie Izzard, Derek Jacobi, Diana Quick, Andrew Schofield, Anthony Booth,
Fraser Ayres, Joe Cottrell Boyce, Jean Butler, Margi
Clarke.
It was February 20, 2002. Some sort of special
screening was to be held at the Plaza in Crosby, a cinema that is quite some
subway distance from my house, but holds fond memories, and tends to warm
my heart when I bother to visit. I didn't know much about the night's event,
except that Alex Cox was meant to be there, and the screening might be of
his new movie. Despite hard times of late, this is still the guy who made
"Repo Man" and "Sid and Nancy". I was excited.
Turns out that this was indeed to be a screening
of the new Cox film, "Revengers Tragedy". The cast and crew
screening. Me and a small lot of other paying patrons were sat in the auditorium
with many an eager technical chap buzzing with reminiscence about his
contributions behind the camera, and much of the cast was there too. This
was fairly interesting. It was also inspiration to make sure and like the
movie; should anyone ask me what I thought, it would be nice to react with
warmth and admiration.
But I just couldn't do it. An honest man can only
kid himself so much, and in the case of a movie like "Revengers Tragedy",
the line gets crossed in about five minutes. The film could use a few things
-- like, I dunno, maybe life, skill, comprehension and the wisdom of knowing
that jokes and a sense of humour are not the same thing. With masterful tact,
when the screening was over, I mumbled something about the visuals being
"brave" and got the hell outta there. Mr. Cox signed my old Moviedrome programme,
but thankfully I had gotten that autograph before we got a look at his
film.
Are the visuals brave? I suppose they are. They
try a lot of experimentation, for one thing, and considering how badly it
all turned out, it could be said that the filmmakers are acting with bravery
in exhibiting them with straight faces. "Revengers Tragedy" is painful to
look at; it's a murky, clumsy post-apocalyptic semi-discoish jumble that
combines Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet" with "Brazil", "Threads" and
"Brookside". The sets are heaps of grimy rubble -- photographed, it seems,
from whatever angle the assistant left the camera at the start of each day's
shooting. Beneath palls of grey are ugly colours that do not match; there's
green in there, as I recall, and bits of pink and yellow, and shoot, you
name it.
Christopher Eccleston, a good actor who has no
doubt been having fierce rows with his agent, plays Vindici, who is, well,
out for revenge. His story is from a 17th Century play attributed to Thomas
Middleton, here transplanted to Cox's vision of a futuristic Liverpool. This
involves shots of miserable-looking parts of the city, with Orwellian video
screens plonked here and there, and long passages of verse interrupted by
bits of crude Scouse slang. It's supposed to be funny and all crazy-like,
you see; it's "anachronistic", and remember that this is cleverness, not
desperation.
Anyway, Eccleston wanders around looking anguished,
and there are cutaways to lots of young local theatre types who run around
making silly noises and spurting out the jumbled dialogue more or less inaudibly.
Margi Clarke plays Eccleston's mother, who is blind -- and I don't think
she bumps into any walls, but it's close. Derek Jacobi wears a lot of white
makeup. So does Eddie Izzard, if I remember right. Lots of extras wear
weird-shaped costumes that reminded me of "Dune". When any part of a movie
reminds anyone of "Dune", it means that certain lessons have not been
learned.
Okay, so I'm getting sarcastic now, but there
is some genuine emotion going on. That screening was embarrassing. Of all
the contemporary directors who have drifted into oblivion after early careers
of promise, Cox is one of the most heartbreaking cases. He used to have such
distinctive energy and visual flair. Now he makes movies that are rejected
by audiences and critics, tells himself in a weekly column for BBC Online
that he's a misunderstood artist railing against the system, and by the looks
of what was going on in the Plaza, surrounds himself with sycophants who
are eager to tell him that it's all good. He has been described as a punk
filmmaker, but punk was fast and forceful, and "Revengers Tragedy" is endless
and ineffectual.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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